CRL - Community Rail Lancashire

The Community Rail Lancashire (CRL) team were very pleased and excited to be invited to a Parliamentary Reception to celebrate the success of Avanti West Coast’s (AWC) Feel Good Field Trips project.

The Feel Good Field Trips project was designed to give up to 5,000 pupils aged between four and 18, the chance to travel by train for hands on learning and culturally diverse days out that may have previously been inaccessible to them. In the end nearly 5300 pupils and 875 staff were taken on over 210 trips to 65 different venues covering over 50,000 miles in the process. The project funded by AWC was facilitated and delivered by Dave Savage from CRL and has been a huge success.

The Parliamentary Reception was attended by staff from Avanti West Coast, Community Rail Lancashire, other railway operating companies and staff from some of the venues visited including:

+  Bolton Wanderers in the Community Staff
+  Warrington Wolves Foundation Staff
+  Soho Sonic Recording Studio
+  The Guardian Foundation
+  Harrison Ward (Fell Foodie)
+  The Country Trust
+  The Herbert Gallery
+  The Dukes Theatre
+  Food Sorcery

Pupils and students from four of the schools and colleges that went on some of trips were also invited and these included:

+  Underwood West Academy, Crewe
+  Willow Lane Primary, Lancaster
+  West Coventry Academy, Coventry
+  St Anthony’s, Solihull.

Andy Mellors, AWC’s Managing Director got the speeches underway and he was followed by Connor Naismith MP (Crewe & Nantwich), and CRL’s Chair Richard Watts. Before Dave Savage, a Liverpudlian and an Accrington Stanley season ticket holder, took to the stage to speak he was presented with a T-shirt commemorating the cup tie match that had taken place over the weekend.

Dave spoke passionately about the project and thanked everyone who had been involved behind the scenes and all the hosts at the venues and specially thanked Joanne (JoJo) Buckley, Avanti West Coast and Richard Watts, Community Rail Lancashire for all their support throughout the project.

Dave was followed on the stage by Jo Kerr, from West Coventry Academy, who explained how this project had deeply affected a number of the pupils who had not even been on a train journey before let alone visit some of the exciting and educational venues. The we heard pupil Lois Wilson from St. Anthony’s School, Solihull speak about her experience of a Feel Good Field Trip.

To close the speeches Andy Mellors was back on stage to thank everyone involved in the project and to explain how much of a success that Avanti West Coast thought the project had been and to personally thank Dave Savage for all his time and passion that he had brought to the project and then presented him with a memento for all his hard work.