Naomi Frauenfelder –
I’m not sure whether any of you have had this feeling before, you’re standing in a crowd of people and you still feel completely alone? Perhaps you were standing on a train platform surrounded by hundreds of people and still feel isolated and disconnected from the world.
You may have felt this because a group of people standing on a train platform isn’t a community. A community is so much more than this, it’s a shared psychological connection, a mutual understanding that a group of individuals belong and are part of something.
Last week during Mental Health Week, the TrackSAFE Foundation launched Community Stations, a ground breaking research project that encourages this sense of social connectedness at train stations.
Coffee carts, cultural performances, art, buskers and puppies are just some of the pop-up activations that will feature at a number of Melbourne train stations from October 2016 through to March 2017.
Community Stations has been years in the making. The TrackSAFE Foundation has seen this project grow and develop with more and more buy-in from a range of partners all looking to collaborate on this positive and powerful community engagement project. Our initial partners included Metro Trains Melbourne, V/Line and PTV, and then vitally about a year ago, we saw local councils and services (Maroondah City Council, Brimbank City Council, Melton City Council, Sunshine Business Association, Djerriwarrh Health Services) join to bring this project to life.
This project was conceptualised at a TrackSAFE innovation workshop, held in Brisbane in 2013. A total 16 different rail organisations from all over Australia and New Zealand, including the unions, worked with innovation specialists to consider what else can be done in relation to suicide prevention?
Among a broad range of ideas workshopped, there was one particular vision: puppies at stations.
Why?…..well why not?
We all know Puppies make us feel warm and comforted, and the idea was, that if people feel happy and connected at stations, it might make these places less attractive for those wanting to undertake self-harm or suicide. We then consulted the experts – Lifeline, police and academics from the suicide prevention sector. Puppies seemed like good idea…really who can say no to puppies?
So we put it in action along with other activities, and vitally, we secured the support from PTV to make the vision a reality.
The result is wonderful community engagement activities being carried out— based around culture and the arts, music, the promotion of mental health and support services, and coffee and food!
A community requires a psychological connection, an increased propensity to share quality human interactions and to form new connections. We want this propensity to be measured so we know our groups actually feel a part of something.
So we have brought in the experts from the University of Melbourne – Professor Jane Pirkis and team, who will evaluate how effective this project is in building this sense of engagement and community. And if it’s successful, we will be rolling it out nationally.
We hope our Community Stations projects will breathe life into our train stations, and our community activities will dissolve feelings of loneliness and isolation, to be replaced with feelings of “urban warmth” and connectedness, as well as that feeling that you’re part of something, something unique.
Naomi Frauenfelder is the Executive Director of the TrackSAFE Foundation.
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