Walk to School Week
Horsforth Climate Action joined forces with the Horsforth Primary Schools to celebrate Walk to School Week on the 19th-23rd May 2025. We aimed to reduce the number of short car journeys, reduce air pollution and heighten awareness of sustainable travel across Horsforth. We tried to get as many children as possible travelling actively to school: walking, cycling, scooting, skateboarding or in fact any method that did not include a vehicle and promoted a healthier lifestyle. 7 out of the 8 Horsforth Primaries agreed to take part, with St Mary’s being unable due to prior commitments, although they would, had they been able.
People signed up to take part in Walk to School Week by signing our Walk to School Pledge
Bike Fix
As part of activities we ran at bike fix / repair session in conjunction with Odd Bike Leeds at the farmers’ Market on 3rd May, 9:00 – 12:00. Dan had a steady stream of bikes coming in from families with children at the primary schools in Horsforth, and was able to get them all back into good working order ready for some active travel to as part of the week.
Open air lessons
To help the children understand about the effects pollution has on us all and our environment, a number of lessons took place in Hall Park and St George’s Field. If you happened to be in out and about during Walk to School Week, you may have come across a number of children who were: surveying the trees to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide that might be captured, discovering how biodiverse our green spaces are, analysing how the spaces are used or just sitting and listening for different levels of noise pollution. All this work has hopefully helped them to understand the necessity of maintaining our green spaces and the work needed to help create a carbon-neutral or net-zero outcome.
Pollution Monitoring
With support from the Leeds Together Fund, two pollution monitors were purchased, and monitoring took place outside our Primary Schools over a number of weeks. These monitors will also be made available to the schools for their own use and any other interested group once this event has finished.
We are in the process of analysing the data which we plan to share soon.
Walk to School Week Postbox Toppers
Walk to School themed Postbox toppers courtesy of the fabulous team at Horsforth Postbox Toppers appeared on some of the school routes. They had nature and Horsforth themes to try to keep the children and families entertained on thier active travel to school. How many did you spot?
All our activites must have made a bit of a splash as we even got a write up in the West Leeds Dispatch.
Competition Time!
We are also ran a competition amongst the school children to design a poster about the effects of vehicle pollution. The winning entries have been printed with MICE money from the council, and we hope that they will become permanent fixtures to remind ourselves about whether all our vehicle journeys are necessary.
The entries were judge by local town councillor Emmie Bromley and the winning entries came from West End and Newlaithes Primary Schools.
As well as the poster competition the schools involved were also challenged to design a Horsforth Walk to School Mascot and a Reward Badge for taking part in the week. Again these was judge by Emmie and the winning entry for the mascot, which took inspiration from the Horsforth Horse was from a Year 2 student at Featherbank School. The reward badge winner was from West End School.
You can see images of both the mascot design and completed mascots below. A huge thank you to saranna_art who made up a mascot for each school – complete with the school colours, from the original winning design.
The winning design for the reward badge is also displayed, we are in the process of getting the badges made up for the children who signed up to the walk to school pledge.
We would like to say a huge thank you to Etty our freelance support worker, kindly funded by Climate Action Leeds, who supported all the Walk to School Week work for HCA, all the schools, children and parents who took part in the week, and all our fantastic volunteers who helped out with the school activities and the pollution monitoring.