SPOTLIGHT

Sophia navigates the
road ahead with
Bus to the Future 2020

Sophia is a college student in Leeds

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Our Business teacher told us about the Bus to the Future challenge via email and in one of our lessons and I was really excited to take part. Business people from West Yorkshire Bus Alliance came to our college for the launch day and helped us take part in a workshop to find out about the future of bus travel in the region and how we could help promote that to young people. That was the brief we were set and my team worked really well together to create a marketing campaign to do that.

Our initial idea was to create an animation advertising and encouraging bus usage by showing a few positive statistics surrounding buses but also by introducing a loyalty card scheme. The brief was to encourage bus use to Year 7/8 students and so we thought an animated advertisement would be better for this age group because it would be more engaging and they wouldn’t have to try to relate to people a few years older than them.

Part of our campaign was to speak to students in an assembly about it and show our film. I was quite nervous about taking part in that in particular because I’m normally very quiet in class. I’ve taken part in NCS before where I did a public speaking course and so this was a really good opportunity to put it into practice, even if it was a bit scary!

I’m currently studying Photography as well as Business and so this challenge really appealed to me and made me think about how I can apply those skills to work. I think the best bits for me were learning to work as a team on a real brief and learning how to speak up about my ideas because I have found that hard in the past.

I think this challenge influenced my decision to own my own business instead of working for someone else because I gained confidence in my own ideas and I now know a process I could use for advertising for a client as well as having the confidence to pitch my ideas to a team.

I would definitely recommend taking part to any young people. If you’re shy like me then it’s an excellent way to boost your confidence because you have the support of your team and the business volunteers. It also helps you to practice working in a team which is a really important life skill that you might not think about before leaving school or college.

I was delighted to see so many students like Sophia really engaging with the programme, as making bus travel more attractive, accessible and affordable for young people across West Yorkshire is one of the key aims of the West Yorkshire Bus Alliance. By forging relationships with Ahead Partnership and other groups across West Yorkshire, the Bus Alliance is in a strong position to encourage young people to think about the important role public transport plays in their communities as well as their futures.

Cllr Kim Groves, Chair of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority Transport committee