We are proud to announce that the Backtrack national anti-trespassing competition won the best project for Involving Children and Young People at last week’s Community Rail Awards.
The competition’s creators, the Community Rail Education Network, included our Education Officer, Maddy Mills. The group knows that young people pay attention to their peers, so we asked young people to share their anti-trespassing messages with other young people, for the chance to win some great prizes including GoPro bundles and ‘money can’t buy’ experiences. Messages could be in the form of a film, song/rap, storyboard or script.
The Backtrack competition first ran in the summer of 2020 after incidents of young people trespassing increased by 25% during the first Lockdown. Maddy Mills, the Sussex CRP’s Education Officer said, ‘At our first Zoom meeting we were shocked by the increase in trespassing and the ‘room’ immediately said ‘We must do something about that’. In a matter of weeks, a national competition has been devised, prizes sponsored and backing received from across the rail industry.’
This year’s competition began in June with an online launch featuring the Backtrack 2020 winner, Henry Plume playing his winning song. The competition now has a website with lots of inspiration and ideas for entries and also contains an online form to upload entries. It is www.backtrackcompetition.co.uk. We also increased the age range from 7 year-olds right up to 18+, so adults could submit entries too!
Make sure you follow Backtrack on social media to find out all the latest information! Look for @backtrack_comp. Backtrack will be back in 2022!
