Exploring What Makes Women And Girls Feel Safer While Traveling.
Rapid, inclusive community research to help Transport for London (TfL) understand the barriers to travel from the perspective of women and girls.
Client
Transport for London
Date
2023
Location
Canning Town, London
Improving confidence to travel
As part of TfL’s Ending Violence Against Women and Girls, Akou and 4OC’s Safer Spaces project explored what could be done differently to keep women and girls safe and improve their confidence when travelling.
Our 12 week engagement focused around Canning Town Bus Station, exploring creative, community-led solutions to improve safety on London’s bus network
Creating safe space and building trust
A sensitive approach to engagement was crucial to gathering insights, reflections and perspectives from the local community. In order to build trust and allow the community to feel safe to share their views we crafted a series of women and family-focused events in safe spaces.
Over 12 weeks we engaged with over 650 individuals, delivered 10 community events, and complied a rich new dataset exploring perceptions of safety to levels of which TfL have never had before.
Designing new initiatives
The new evidence base is now being used to shape and support a range of community focused interventions that will look to improve the perception of safety for Women and Girls who use the bus station. And will aim to drive up usage of the bus network, supporting TfL to improve the commercial performance of its network.