We were delighted to welcome almost 100 people to our Women in Transport Scotland hub launch on 25th March. For our very first event, we aimed to provide a taster session of some activities that Women in Transport Scotland will facilitate in the future, which made for a packed but engaging programme. In this blog article, we aim to share with you what happened during the evening.
A small team of volunteers, led by board member Mailys Garden, worked hard behind the scenes for a few months to bring the Scotland hub into being and it felt like such a joy to watch everything come together on the night.
We were privileged to have two wonderful speakers, Alison Irvine, Director of Transport Strategy and Analysis at Transport Scotland and Daisy Narayanan, Director of Urbanism of Sustrans, who gave a thought-provoking presentation on the role of transport in achieving net zero emissions and the importance of networking in their careers. Without any prompting from us Alison and Daisy chose to prepare a joint presentation, which felt to be very much indicative of the sense of camaraderie and collaboration throughout the evening.
Amongst many pertinent points, Alison and Daisy discussed the importance of requiring a whole system approach in order to bring about meaningful change and of rethinking public spaces for our general well-being. Alison highlighted how women need to be involved at the heart of the strategies and policies being developed, before Daisy closed the speaker session with the beautiful quote by Janette Sadik-Khan: "If you can change the street, you can change the world." So let's change the World!
We continued our whistle-stop tour with a round of networking in several lively and engaging break out rooms focussing on four themes: challenges in transport for the next year, the importance of professional networks, collaboration and transport integration in Scotland and the role of transport in achieving net zero. Attendees shared many diverse and interesting thoughts, including the observation that transport is first and foremost a facilitator, rather than a driver of change.
Overall, there was general consensus when we joined back together in the main room that creating spaces to safely share experience, to offer gentle challenge and to build relationships should be an essential part of the Scotland hub. It was noted that the online format has helped to bring together otherwise disparate entities and allowed many more people to engage with networks like this than would be possible in person (although the absence of wine and canapes was also bemoaned!).
There was a really supportive, collaborative feel to the evening and we're taking a huge amount of positive energy forward into our future planning. Thanks again to our speakers, and to our generous sponsors Transport Scotland, Network Rail and Momentum Transport Consultancy . Thanks also to the central Women in Transport team for their support and training. Lastly, thanks to all those who joined us live and supported us virtually via social media.
These are a few comments we received after the event:
‘The speakers in particular were really interesting. I also enjoyed the smaller groups for networking.’
‘I liked the friendly environment and how happy and inspired the members of the team were’
‘Great presentations and great networking conversations in the breakout rooms.’
‘The speakers were very inspirational’
If you weren’t able to join us on the night, you can catch the key moments of the launch via our Twitter feed. We also have a Scotland hub LinkedIn group where you can engage with other members, in addition to our dedicated webpage.
We are always delighted to welcome new Women in Transport members, volunteers and partners. If you’d like to become a member, you can sign up to the network via the website here or contact us at scotland@womenintransport.com.