How do you reduce anti-social behaviour and turn a ‘dark’ and ‘dingy’ local underpass into somewhere people choose to walk through every day? In Meldreth, we did exactly that.
From station gardens and local history boards to ‘Try A Train’ trips for vulnerable people, I work with communities across the Great Northern network to make a difference to the places around their stations. With funding from Great Northern, this is how we work together to make Cambridgeshire brighter and more welcoming for our communities and visitors alike.
My journey into community rail
Before my role at Cam Valley Community Rail Partnership, I worked for a company that provided interpreters for deaf people. The turning point came when I spent a year working on a large project, which involved long hours in front of a computer and a lot of technical work. Once the project was finished, I decided to resign.
I knew I wanted to work with people again, to be out in the community rather than spending my days in front of a screen. Then this job came up, I went for it, and I’ve now loved it for the past eight years.
I’m employed by the local council, and we receive funding from Great Northern and other sources for our community projects. My favourite part of the job is working with people and getting out and about on the Great Northern network. Although my area is Meldreth, Shepreth and Foxton, I regularly travel across the network, from Welwyn Garden City to Ely.
Bringing local history to life
One of my favourite projects has been creating history boards for Meldreth, Shepreth and Foxton. I loved doing the research, finding old photographs, and discovering interesting events and occurrences from the local area. It’s a lovely way of bringing some of that history to the stations and sharing it with the people who use them.
I also really enjoy working directly with the community. We do projects in local schools and work with groups such as the Girl Guides. Railway safety is a big part of this, particularly around level crossings. We use games with children to reinforce those safety messages and make them memorable. That’s a really important part of community work: finding ways to engage people that work for them.
A station community is about people
To me, a successful station community is all about the people who are concerned and care about it. We have gardening groups who volunteer in each other’s gardens as well as looking after the station gardens.
It’s also about looking out for one another. If there is an incident of vandalism, or perhaps a theft of bicycles, the community lets me know straight away so that we can do something about it. People really care about their station and their community. They want it to be well used and well kept, and that sense of ownership makes a huge difference.
From ‘dodgy’ to a community artwork
One of our most successful projects was the Meldreth to Melbourn ‘Wonderpass’ mural. The underpass sits beneath a main road and forms part of the safe walk to school for local children. When it was first painted 35 years ago, it had a funky, graffiti-style design, but over time it became affected by vandalism.
We went into the local school and asked the children what they thought about the underpass. They used words such as ‘dodgy’, ‘dark’ and ‘dingy’. Our research found that over 70% of the local community avoided the area after dark.
The turning point came when there was an attempted assault in the underpass. We worked with the local community and asked what sort of artwork they would like to see there. They told us they wanted something lighter and brighter.
We had lights installed, which are on most of the time, and engaged local artist Bec Barnes to come up with an idea where each community organisation had its own frame to paint.
More than 200 people came along to paint the underpass. Some were artists who helped to turn other people’s ideas into artwork, some simply wanted to paint because they found it therapeutic. Even teeny tiny tots got involved, using a dibber to fill in some of the paint. We now have a magical garden covering the walls, with creatures, bugs, flowers, butterflies, birds, a fox, hedgehogs, a kingfisher and some fantasy birds.
Changing our community for the better
We also planted the path with wildflower seeds, with funding from Great Northern. The combination of the wildflowers and the artwork has completely changed the space. It has gone from an area associated with anti-social behaviour to somewhere that local people enjoy being.
One woman walks through it every day. Other locals have told me that walking through the underpass has become part of their daily routine. The proof in the pudding is that we completed the project in 2023, and it hasn’t been graffitied or vandalised since. People respect it and care about it.
The Police and Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire officially opened the Wonderpass, recognising that improving the environment could help to reduce anti-social behaviour. For me, this has proven that community projects can genuinely improve local spaces.
Helping people discover the confidence to travel
Another project I love is our ‘Try A Train’ trips where we work with lots of diverse groups. Most recently, we took a group from Hope Active on the train to Ely. These are people who can be quite isolated, and some of them hadn’t been on a train for 35 years.
The project gives people the confidence to use the train network, it gives them independence. It’s the loveliest thing.
Putting rail safety into the game
Looking ahead, I’m particularly excited about our youth engagement work. Next year, I’ll be focusing on two projects funded by Great Northern: one around sustainable travel and another around rail safety.
Trespass can be a big problem in our area, so we’re working on ways to educate children about railway safety through youth sports teams. It’s called ‘Playing it Safe’, and we’re working with existing local football, netball and rugby teams.
These teams are incredibly important to children locally, so we’ll be incorporating games about railway safety into sessions that are already happening. That is particularly useful for children who are more kinetic learners and can find it difficult to learn in a classroom.
For me, community work is about meeting people where they are, whether that is at a station, in a school, in a garden, or on a sports pitch. It’s about bringing people together, helping them feel confident using their local railway, and giving them a reason to care about the places around it.
