Thursday 25 March 2010

Article on Citizen Schools blogspot 21st Feb

21st Feb
Article on Citizen Schools blogspot
http://citizenschoolsuk.blogspot.com/2010/02/lilian-baylis-secure-30000-for-their.html

Lilian Baylis secure £30,000 for their Citizen Schools bike project!

Amazing news from south of the river... Lilian Baylis Technology School have been awarded £30,000 of TfL funding to turn its Citizen Schools community bicycle idea into a reality!

It all began with students creating ideas for change during the Autumn term, where they focused on trying to improve local bike facilities. And it shows the importance of London Citizens borough organisers to schools' succeeding in getting community backing - Jamie Audsley, borough organiser for Lambeth, brought Lilian Baylis together with local cycling activist and London Cycling Campaign member Charlie Holland, and the rest is now history.

Students, parents, the school and its local community will now come together as a steering action team to set up the Cycle Hub (a place where young people and the local community can go for bike riding & maintenance workshops), increase the number of community rides, and build a successful model other London boroughs will want to emulate.

Next step for the school is building the team - recruiting an alliance of school, student, parent and community constituencies, and then negotiating the site for the cycling hub... the site of the old Lilian Baylis school is target number one!

Congratulations to all involved with the project - particularly the student team, assistant head Karen Chamberlain, humanities teacher Sian Williams and the parent team at Lilian Baylis School, and Charlie Holland for bringing it all together to get such a result.