Brighton residents are all of a ‘twitten’ about sustainable travel
Resource Futures work with communities to develop and deliver local sustainable travel initiatives.
During 2009 Resource Futures developed and delivered innovative community facing initiatives to encourage sustainable travel in Patcham and Preston in Brighton for Peter Brett Associates (www.peterbrett.com) on behalf of Brighton & Hove City Council.
The brief was to research and identify key community ‘movers and shakers’ and encourage them to coalesce around a cause close to their hearts and encourage more sustainable travel.
Resource Futures representatives, skilled in community engagement, spent time in the local community and networking on the phone and email with local community representatives to get to know them and invite them to initial meetings with a travel flavour.
The meetings were used to investigate local travel habits and orientation, barriers to more sustainable transport and areas where there was interest in encouraging better local travel habits.
During the meetings it became clear there was local pride in what were called ‘twittens’; cut thoughs that riddled the local area, often following old drovers’ routes and presenting short cuts to the local shops or bus stops.
Resource Futures, worked with local residents, libraries, history groups and the ramblers to build a picture of where the twittens lay and collated this information into a handy local map.
A community launch
The map was so popular with the local community that, having been involved with the initial idea and gathering twitten information, they were keen to launch it and organised for it to be incorporated into two local events in June 2010. At the events, the map was introduced to the local community and at one event there was a Twitten Treasure Hunt using the twitten map to navigate around the clues.
The results say it all.....
In a randomly conducted survey a few months after the launch of the map, encouraging results were seen with 17% of respondents recalling the map and 11% reporting that they had their own copy.) project in Oxfordshire, with 30 active local groups working on a range of initiatives from energy and waste reduction to local food.
A representative from a local library, who was closely involved in the project said: ‘Without Resource Futures we would not have realised how many local twittens there were. The maps this project has produced are great. Many people feel they should pay for them as their quality and usefulness is top notch. They cannot believe they are free. They love the information included and families are still having fun exploring the twittens. Many of the older generation are used to cut-throughs but for children they are a novelty especially as many of them are used to being driven around so had no knowledge of twittens or thought there were only a few in the area.’
This project demonstrates Resource Futures’ ability to understand community behaviour, tap into community interest and energy and galvanise community action. It links naturally with our long established Community Action Group (CAG) project in Oxfordshire, with 30 active local groups working on a range of initiatives from energy and waste reduction to local food.
To find out how we can develop and deliver community initiatives for you, contact us.