Community Rail Lancashire is very pleased to be celebrating its successes at last night’s National Community Rail Awards hosted by the Community Rail Network.
CRL submitted six projects and all six were shortlisted ahead of the awards ceremony that, due to the current Covid restrictions, had to be held virtually. On the night we were extremely pleased to ‘walk’ away with two wins, three second places and finally a third place. See below for the categories and projects and at the bottom for some short videos of the awards.
Horizons at Dewsbury Station
Community Art Schemes (Permanent or Larger) – a win for ‘Horizons’ (see image above)
Women in STEM
Best Community Engagement Project – a win for ‘Women in STEM’ (see image above)
Involving Diverse Groups – second place for ‘From Seats to Sacks’
Community Art Schemes (Renewable or Smaller) – second place for ‘#BeeFreeMCR’
Influencing Positive Change & Sustainable Development – second place for ‘The Autism Friendly Line’
Involving Children & Young People – third place for ‘Ticket to Pride’
The Community Rail Education Network meets in the Bunker at Accrington
The last award of the event each year is the Community Rail Network Award for Outstanding Contribution to Community Rail and this year the award went to the CRL led Community Rail Education Network (see image above).
Karen Bennet, CRL Community Rail Education Development Officer said this; “I am delighted both Horizons and Seat to Sacks projects have been awarded first and second place in the Community Rail awards. The schools, artists and community champions involved are thrilled to have been recognised for their efforts. The Community Rail Education Network’s Outstanding Contribution to Community Rail award was an absolute shock and it wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the group, both before and during the Covid-19 Crisis. It has been an honour to chair the network online through the pandemic and I am looking forward to continuing the good work in 2021”.
But this was not this year’s final award as a special award called Railway Family Supporting Communities Award was created for 2020 to recognise individuals within the rail industry and community rail who have gone the extra mile to support their communities during the coronavirus pandemic
Shellene & Christine at Blackpool Victoria Hospital
The award, sponsored by the Rail Delivery Group, was awarded to Shellene Divall and Christine Holland for their ‘Scrubs Project’ (see image above).
The huge demands of the Covid-19 pandemic on the health service saw Shellene and Christine making much-needed scrubs and laundry bags for their local hospital and other medical centres and care homes. As volunteers for the Friends of St. Annes Stations they also worked with their community rail partnership, Community Rail Lancashire and St. Annes Town Council to obtain funding to support their efforts and had support from local businesses, one of which cut all the patterns on their industrial machines.
Read about all the winners and placed entries in the Community Rail Network’s Winners Brochure on this link: 2020 Awards Winners Booklet
Click the links below to see short videos compiled from the evenings events:
Seats to Sacks https://youtu.be/_muWKPkb-dE
Horizons https://youtu.be/uiA0KIFaL5U
Ticket to Pride https://youtu.be/CSABO8EBzqM
#BeeFree MCR https://youtu.be/tvH0GOZ3V8A
SFL Scrubs Award https://youtu.be/O-TPUemghpY