Donna Cooney

Donna Cooney deltar på Kollektivkonferansen 2023 med innlegget

Bicycle Heroes; Engaging Youth Voices in Promoting Active Mobility and Safe City Design

i fellessesjon3. «Diversity in motion: Meeting the current and future needs of passengers/Hvordan sikre mindre ulikhet i mobiliteten?»

In 2022, with support from EIT Urban Mobility, BYCS, an Amsterdam-based NGO, was able to test these concepts in 3 cities (Dublin, Lisbon, and Rome) through Bicycles Heroes, an engagement program for children to raise their voices for active mobility. During the course of a year, the project partners in Dublin, Trinity College and Dublin City Council engaged with key stakeholders, the general public, and children to communicate the need for active mobility.

In this presentation we will discuss the Bicycle Heroes programme in Dublin. We worked with 120 students aged eleven to fifteen in schools engaged with the Trinity Access Program. Surveys were conducted by the youths around their schools. They travelled into Trinity College to participate in workshops and were asked within teams for ways to make their cycle into Trinity College a safe and enjoyable experience. Using a process of ideation, selection and modelling prototypes, mapping routes from their homes, or train station to Trinity college.

The Bicycle Heroes then presented their team ideas in Trinity College during Engineers week and then in October 2022 to the Lord Mayor of Dublin Caroline Conroy, Minister Roderic O’Gorman, NTA, Dublin City Officials, Councillors, Healthy Ireland and others in Dublin City Hall.

Donna Cooney is the BYCS Dublin Bicycle Mayor since 2019 and project manager of Bicycle Heroes project in Dublin working with partners Dublin City Council and Trinity College and other stakeholders. She is a Dublin City Councillor elected in June 2019.

Donna  introduced Bicycle Buses in primary schools in Dublin in 2020 and is part of the national cycle bus network.

Donna is passionate about getting more people cycling in Dublin City and works with various stakeholders to increase numbers cycling, focusing especially on increasing the numbers of children and women cycling and improving infrastructure with design that suits their needs. She is also an artist whose practice involves participation and increasing positive public perception of cycling; She developed the Freedom Machine and Joyce-Cycle which both featured in Velo City in Dublin 2019.  She coordinates the cycling pageant in the Dublin City St. Patrick’s Day parade since 2018.