Children Travelling Responsibly

A screenshot from the Children Travelling Responsibly Minecraft Game.
Need

Transport for London (TfL) Lane Rental Funded Project in collaboration with Cadent Gas and Skewb Climate was initiated to raise awareness and teach children about active travel and road safety through gaming.

A Minecraft-based awareness game has been innovatively developed to involve children, educating them about potential hazards and best practices in roadworks. This innovative project prioritised children’s involvement, promoting active travel and adherence to the highway code. The game educates children about roadwork hazards, prioritising safety for pedestrians and cyclists while highlighting women in engineering for inclusivity and diversity. This multidimensional initiative creatively merges education, safety, and inclusivity to positively impact communities and children’s lives.

Approach

Through an interactive Minecraft-based game, kids actively shaped its design to learn about roadwork hazards and safety, avoiding the risks of traditional training in real traffic environments.

The project involved two phases: direct engagement with children to gather insights and preferences, followed by collaboration with TfL, Cadent Gas, and Skewb Climate stakeholders to refine the game’s design and scripts.

The game covers essential topics such as active travel, street works signage, site safety, engineer roles, and road obstructions. It aims to be integrated into a broader engagement strategy targeting London boroughs with planned works near schools, with the potential for a nationwide rollout.

Deliverables

The success of this initiative is based on immersive scenarios within the game that foster practical skills and critical thinking. Beyond road safety, the project aims to ignite excitement about the utility industry, inspiring future generations to contribute to a sustainable world. Collaboration between TfL, Cadent, and Skewb Climate has been instrumental in achieving the project’s objectives.

Benefits expected:

    • Increased awareness around Street works/Highways works in regard to Safety, which dovetails with TFLs drive to reduce the number of incidents arriving from Street works/Highway works.
    • Better understanding of why utilities undertake work and the importance of stakeholder collaboration. Safety across multiple workers from different companies. Engagement with the next generation of engineers, thus increasing the level of engagement and recruitment within this sector, as there is an inherent risk around age profile.

Benefit measurement tool within power BI has been designed to gather evidence of impact. We undertake survey before and after the game to cover agreed set of parameters to understand children learning.

Benefits
The engagement and enthusiasm from the children and adult subject matter experts have been excellent! We believe the design we have created has the right mixture of educational focus and creativity, where children will be learning whilst having fun.  
The client has seen enormous success in taking this product to schools and measuring the learning which will have a huge impact on safety awareness and future industry.  
The project’s visionary approach creatively met TfL’s funding requirements and exceeded initial goals. Recommendations include taking the product to schools, measuring learning impact, and considering wider adoption across London and beyond. Plans involve further engagement with local councils, MPs, and eventual adaptation across other stakeholders and training providers.