Gloucestershire CRP delivered a comprehensive communications campaign to celebrate the county's diverse cultural heritage and connect its Black history to the present day.

Local artist Rider Shafique was commissioned to create a new station exhibition. Using photographs and quotes, the artwork focuses on themes of identity and honouring the contributions of Caribbean migrants who worked for British Railways. The exhibition was installed at four key stations (Gloucester, Stroud, Stonehouse and Cam & Dursley), which collectively saw over 2.5 million entries and exits in 2022-23 (Office of Rail and Road's 'Estimates of Station Usage 2022-23' dataset).

The exhibition linked to Gloucestershire CRP’s previous collaboration with Black Ark Media on Gloucestershire’s first Black History Map. The map serves as a guide to discovering the diverse contributions of Black Britons to art, education, and culture in the local area, highlighting walking routes and active rail and sustainable travel experience radiating from Gloucestershire’s nine railway stations, leading to a series of significant Black History sites.

By leveraging partnerships, coordinating across media channels and creating compelling content, Gloucestershire CRP successfully raised awareness of important cultural and historical themes while promoting community engagement and sustainable travel. The campaign's integration of art, history and community involvement created a rich, engaging experience that resonated with local residents and media outlets, achieving its core objectives of celebrating diversity, fostering understanding and connecting Gloucestershire's past with its present.

When Northern enlisted the help of High Peak & Hope Valley CRP to boost the dwindling post-Covid passenger numbers on the Buxton Line, the CRP rose to the challenge. The aim was to raise awareness of the great places to visit in under an hour by train from Manchester Piccadilly and to encourage day-trippers to choose sustainable travel options to access countryside, nature, heritage and culture.

Arts, film and photography formed the key elements of a multi-faceted campaign that spanned social media and broadcast, designed to promote each of the stations along the line and the diverse array of visitor attractions that surround them. Over the two-week launch period, High Peak & Hope Valley CRP’s Facebook reach increased by 57%, and in the six months after the campaign, passenger numbers to destinations including Whaley Bridge, Chapel-en-le-Frith and Disley showed a marked increase of between 18-27%.

The idea for an accessible guide to help people explore the UK’s 28 World Heritage Sites by public transport was born out of a pilot project workshop led by Tyne Valley CRP and the Hadrian’s Wall Youth Ambassadors, who were surprised to discover that World Heritage Sites did not already collectively promote sustainable travel to their visitor attractions. Working in collaboration with World Heritage UK, the CRP supported the young people to generate ideas on how to effectively promote rail travel to and around the sites, aligning with UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goal to ‘build sustainable communities and take climate action’.

The leaflet was launched at Newcastle Central Station on World Heritage Day, and copies have been distributed from railway stations and tourist information centres nationally. The digital ‘flipbook’ version has been viewed globally, from Asia, Australia and New Zealand to North America and Argentina, enabling messaging about greener leisure travel and tourism in the UK to be promoted worldwide.