News Articles Archive - Page 74 of 148 - Cross River Partnership

We all need to prioritise looking after our own health and wellbeing first so that we are then able to look after loved ones, friends and colleagues.

CRP’s accountable body, Westminster City Council, recognises the value of ensuring that the emotional wellbeing of staff is of utmost importance and have implemented departmental Wellbeing Pioneers as part of the commitment to the Healthy Workplace Charter. The Wellbeing Pioneers are a group of staff who are passionate about health and wellbeing. They are from all areas and levels across the council and champion health and wellbeing in their business areas, helping to plan initiatives, support and deliver activities and signpost colleagues.

The Pioneers have developed dedicated pages on the Council’s intranet providing staff with a wealth of tips, information and support, along with information on Five Ways to Wellbeing. Some of the activities undertaken virtually to date have included bingo, yoga sessions, mindfulness, knitting and craft sessions and staff choir.

For further information please contact CRP’s Carol Quamina

The Totally Thames 2020 programme is now live!

From 1-30th September 2020 the festival is celebrating the River Thames with arts events, active adventures, environmental initiatives, heritage and education programmes. Get involved!

Rivers of the World is teaming up schools and artists from around the world to bring children together, creating art about the rivers they love and at the same time learning about cleaning up our planet.

CRP is proud to have been involved with the festival right from its beginning!

CRP’s latest Thames project, Clean Air Thames, is working to clean up harmful emissions along the river, working with vessel operators, the Port of London Authority, the City of London Corporation and the Mayor of London.

(Image credit: The Ship of Tolerance by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. Produced by the Kabakov Foundation and Art, Action Change in association with Thames Festival Trust)

Clean Air Walking Routes are being developed for each of the village areas. These routes will offer alternative A to B walking journeys that result in reduced exposure to pollutants and some will direct people past places of interest and / or shops.

CRP’s CAV team are speaking with businesses and organisations local to the villages in order to find out how operations have changed since lockdown was imposed in March. The team are also offering advice and guidance on how businesses can save time and money whilst improving local air quality.

In some of the village locations, traffic monitoring devices are being installed which will provide partners with valuable information that can be used by CRP to calculate vehicle emissions. The devices will also monitor pedestrian movements which can provide project partners with valuable information about social distancing.

For further information, please contact CRP’s Kate Fenton: katefenton@crossriverpartnership.org

Join us for CRP’s next online, interactive LiveShare session THIS THURSDAY at 2pm! We will be joined by the London wide Idling Action campaign to discuss the steps you can take as an individual or business to help improve air pollution in your local area. We will also hear from CleanCar who will be sharing their innovative tool informing users of sustainable alternatives to combustion engine vehicles, promoting behaviour change through data collection. Finally, we will cover Cross River Partnership’s Defra-funded Clean Air Villages programme, highlighting the pioneering trials being rolled out across London to help businesses and local authorities operate more sustainably through the use of eco-friendly delivery options.

Register here

As September quickly approaches and children start preparing to return to school, many local authorities across London have been busy implementing School Streets. As a result, the Hackney School Streets Hotline provided by CRP’s Healthy Streets Everyday (HSE) project, has been busier than ever!

The Hackney School Streets Hotline is a free telephone service aimed at helping HSE Partners and London Boroughs to design and implement successful School Streets. In July, the Hotline service was extended and made available to ALL London Boroughs, helping to provide tailored one-to-one support as well as up-to-the-minute, site specific advice from The London Borough of Hackney – a HSE partner who has years of direct ‘on the ground’ experience in implementing School Streets. Since the extension, the hotline service has actively helped 7 Local Authorities with the implementation of school streets, including Haringey, Bromley, Richmond and Brent.

As schools reopen, School Streets will play an important role in enabling social distancing at drop off and pick up times by creating more space outside of schools. The Hotline service, which is available until the 28th of September, can help HSE Partners and other London Boroughs to quickly implement School Streets that facilitate social distancing, support travel to school by walking, cycling or scooting, and that are in line with TfL ’s Streetspace programme.

As the service has been increasingly busy, we encourage booking a 30 minute time slot in advance of the hotline’s weekly Monday operating hours to avoid disappointment.

CRP and its partners are extremely grateful to the Mayor’s Air Quality Fund for making this Schools Streets Hotline Extension possible.

For further information about the service, including how to book a session, please contact CRP Project Manager Fiona Coull – fionacoull@crossriverpartnership.org

Car Free Day will be celebrated on Tuesday 22nd of September 2020 globally and on Sunday 20th September 2020 in London. COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the plans for a number of Car Free Day events around the world, however, there will still be great opportunities to promote walking and cycling and playing outside through digital events this year.

CRP will be hosting a workshop at World Car Free Day London Summit on the possibilities of using low emission freight strategies to encourage car free behaviour. We are excited to share how our partners and communities have been implementing cargo bikes, electric vehicles and consolidating deliveries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. These shifts are a brilliant way of demonstrating how businesses can react quickly to external factors and implement changes to improve their business operations and air quality in their area.

Whilst our Healthy Streets Everyday partners continue to promote active travel through Streetspace initiatives that improve walking and cycling, some are also implementing school streets that are encouraging and enabling social distancing through the removal of cars.

School Streets will play an important role in enabling social distancing at drop off and pick up times by creating more space outside of schools. It is brilliant to see so many of our HSE partners delivering these initiatives to give more space for children and parents when schools reopen in September.

International Youth Day is United Nations (UN) initiative, celebrated annually on 12th August since 1999. The day promotes the education and awareness of young people among their responsibility as representatives of the future of the planet. Currently, through the Global Action for Youth, the UN encourages political actions and guidelines that support the improvement in the quality of life of young people around the world.

This year, the event “Youth Engagement for Global Action” will happen in a Podcast format in order to reinforce the importance of youth leadership in the face of current challenges, such as climate issues and COVID-19. With a focus on youth action at both local, national and global levels, the event aims to think of ways and strategies to improve youth representation and engagement in formal institutional policy by increasing democracy, contributing to better and more sustainable policies and promoting the restoration of trust in public institutions, especially amongst young people. Access the event here!

For more information, please contact CRP Project Officer Carina Mesquita, carinamesquita@crossriverpartnership.org

Cycle to Work Day is the UK’s biggest cycle commuting event, which took place on 6^th August this year. With many of us continuing to work from home, why not go on a bike ride before or after work! We have come up with 7 top tips which may be of use to those starting out with cycling from lockdown, or a refresher for the more experienced cyclist.

Take part in some cycle training (TfL free training is available for all abilities).
Adapt for the seasons – check the weather, invest in a good waterproof! And make sure you’re always visible and illuminated, especially in the early Autumn evenings.
E-bikes are a good option if your journey is longer. Take a look at the CRP Clean Air Villages Directory for some great bike suppliers.
Look at where other cyclists are heading and don’t cycle right next to the pavement or on drain covers.
Keep hydrated!
Find a cycle buddy to help build confidence.
Check out the cycle parking at your work space.

For more information, please contact CRP Project Officer Rachael Aldridge, rachaelaldridge@crossriverpartnership.org

The CRP team are still working hard remotely, respecting the desk capacity constraints at our hosting accountable body Westminster City Council. In order to reduce screen fatigue and support the health and wellbeing of our staff, we have started incorporating Walking Meetings into our regular schedules. The CRP team are also able to tap into support from Westminster City Council’s Health and Wellbeing Hub whenever they need it.

The CRP Team Walking Meetings have provided a great outlet for the team to share information, keep in close touch, feel connected and to get some exercise. At one recent meeting participants joined from a Park in Lewisham, a Garden in Kent, a Lake-side cycle path, and even a Vineyard in Switzerland! Susannah just about remembered all of the Actions Agreed to include in the notes afterwards!

For more information please contact CRP’s Director Susannah Wilks, susannahwilks@crossriverpartnership.org

CRP’s Clean Air Villages 3 (CAV3) project is in its third year running and the team is excited to be working with both familiar and new areas of London. From Seven Sisters to South Bank, from Holloway Road to Richmond Town Centre, the CAV3 Project Officers are working across lots of London’s neighbourhoods – all in the name of better air quality.

Excitingly, this year’s participating villages are focusing on some of London’s busiest Business Improvement Districts, central-city communities and two hospitals. The CAV3 Project Officers have been developing their village-specific solutions to air quality problems, as well as planning an expansion of the Clean Air Walking Routes to the new areas. The Clean Air Villages Directory has been expanded to include all CAV3 sites in order to provide businesses with an array of low or zero emission services and deliveries.

In exploring the village-specific solutions, Project Officers are developing projects surrounding employee engagement programmes, cargo bike trials, air quality monitoring with citizen scientists, vehicle emissions data collection and much, much more! It’s going to be an exciting and busy summer as the team continues to work with more business partners and community representatives. Can one person make a difference in air quality? Definitely! But to really change the city? Well, it takes a (Clean Air) Village!

For more information, please contact CRP CAV Project Manager Kate Fenton, katefenton@crossriverpartnership.org

Archives: News Articles

It is OK not to be OK

Totally Thames 2020

The Clean Air Villages project pedals forwards

New LiveShare – ‘Keeping Our Air Clean: It’s Everyone’s Responsibility’

Healthy Streets Everyday’s School Streets Hotline is busier than ever!

Celebrating Car Free Day 2020

International Youth Day – Youth Global Action

#CycleToWorkDay

CRP Walking Meetings

Improving Air Quality? It Takes a Village!