This category recognises community rail activity that empowers diverse groups, for instance spanning ethnicities, ages, disabilities, genders, sexual orientation, religions or beliefs.  We are looking for approaches that have empowered wider audiences, especially bringing together different groups, and/or socially marginalised people to direct, lead or strongly inform projects or pieces of work. We’re keen to see evidence of promoting inclusion, cohesion, skills, mobility, health, or wellbeing, as well as promoting diverse leadership in projects or regularly occurring work.

We would like to hear how you reached out to diverse groups to enable their voices to be heard; how your work supported local resilience efforts and brought new voices to community rail, enabling leadership and collaboration. 

Entries invited from:

We invite entries from community rail partnerships, station adoption or friends’ groups, or other community groups and representatives. Rail industry partners can submit entries where a project was undertaken in partnership with a community rail partnership or community group, but the entry must clearly demonstrate this partnership working, be agreed with the community partner(s), and their contact details provided.

Judging criteria:

• A good fit with local needs and contexts – designed to meet local needs and appropriate to local opportunities, especially to build more inclusive, connected communities, informed by strong diverse voices;
• Engaging, enjoyable and beneficial – there is evidence it enabled diverse voices to lead work, well-received and those involved saw benefits to mobility, inclusion, health, wellbeing or awareness;
• Empowering and awareness raising – it successfully shared knowledge, amplified voices with lived experience, gave opportunities (for example new project leadership) and grew confidence and/or awareness, for example about rail travel, local history, culture, leadership skills or environment;
• Interactive and amplified ideas and input – the initiative empowered those who identify with protected characteristics to lead, direct, strongly inform and collaborate, demonstrating diversity within the community.