Students at Aughton St Michael’s Church of England Primary School recently got the ball rolling on a restoration project for their local train station at Town Green. In partnership with West Lancashire Borough Council Arts Development Service, they developed a project that received a Grants For Arts Lottery Award of £15,000; in-kind support was provided by all partners including £25,000 from Merseyrail.

The students who completed the Archie Bishop Young Leaders Award, developed by the Archbishop of York’s Youth Trust were asked to go out and ‘be the change they wanted to see’ in their community.

Part of completing the student award is to go out in local communities and identify places in need of change. The students chose to develop the piece of derelict land next to the train station and wanted to add their artwork within the station itself.

This funding helped them secure the professional arts organisation, ‘We Make That’, who planned the artistic programme and facilitated community engagement workshops. These workshops enabled St Michael’s Church, the local Pavilion Nursery, Dimples Childminders and Springfield Nursing Home to contribute to the creative vision for the station.

Class Teacher, Miss Stone said: “We got in touch with WLBC Arts Development Service and Merseyrail who were delighted with the children’s idea and they gave us their support.  The Arts Service gave us their expert advice and became key partners in the project also bringing on board the arts organisation We Make That, Jack Doyle and Caroline Barker. It has been a fantastic community effort and I’d like to thank everyone for their support. ”

Councillor Yvonne Gagen, portfolio holder for Leisure at West Lancashire Borough Council, said:

“The Council has been very pleased to support this project which will be of great benefit to the local community.”

Sally Ralston, Corporate Social Responsibility Manager,at Merseyrail said

“We are delighted with the progress of this project.  It is the type of initiative that we love being involved in. We are committed to working closer with the communities our network serves.  It has been great to see people from all areas of the community around Town Green be so enthusiastic about their own local area.  We are excited to see the garden on launch day and all involved should be very proud of what they have achieved.”

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