Community » Case study

Raising awareness of victim support

Carriages for creativity

Six old Jubilee line carriages are enjoying a new lease of life after being given to Village Underground, a social enterprise organisation that provides low-cost accommodation for creative start-up companies. Tube Lines removed them from sidings to a site in Essex where they were decontaminated and had their compressors removed, before craning them into their new home in Shoreditch in August 2006. Employees from across the business then volunteered their time and skills to help transform the carriages into creative studios, ready for local artists to move in.

Since donating £150,000 towards its continued support for those affected by the July 7 2005 bombings, Tube Lines has stayed in close contact with the charity Victim Support London (VSL). When they needed help to publicise some troubling research findings on gun crime in the capital in 2006, Sarah Baranowski, who works in Tube Lines’ External Affairs department, stepped in.

“Their research identified that most victims of gun crime and other serious crimes in London are not receiving adequate support to cope with their ordeal,” Sarah explains. “A quarter of the victims of gun crime and 85 per cent of murder victims are from London’s African and Caribbean communities. These communities are the least aware of victim support services and are least likely to request help.”

The charity decided to launch a campaign to publicise the survey findings and raise awareness of the support available to crime victims in London. Creative design agencies had already volunteered to redesign their website and devise a poster campaign free of charge. As VSL does not have an in-house PR team, Sarah offered to provide media relations support.

"We helped them stage a media event in October 2006 to promote the launch of a poster campaign on London’s transport with Tim Godwin, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and Anne Coughlan, VSL’s Chief Executive, as speakers,” she explains.

“We targeted the home affairs and crime reporters of the London media and managed to generate positive coverage in the Evening Standard, the London Paper, BBC online, BBC London radio, ITV London and all the relevant local London papers. This was a huge success for VSL.”