‘Independence Street’ opens at QAC
Students at Queen Alexandra College (QAC) will benefit from a new and unique training facility named ‘Independence Street’. The travel training site is designed to assist students to safely negotiate the street environment, including road crossings, dropped kerbs, street light columns and other street furniture.
Independence Street was officially opened on Monday 6th October by Councillor Lisa Trickett, Cabinet Member for Green, Smart and Sustainable City, as well as ‘Blind Dave’ Heeley (former student and current Governor at QAC), along with representatives from Amey and our students.
This fantastic onsite facility, worth circa £50,000, was built at no cost to the college by employees from Amey, Birmingham City Council’s Highway partner, with all the materials donated by the company and their suppliers.
As well as being used to help students, the travel training site can be used to train guide dogs and may be of interest to other external groups. It marks the beginning of an on-going partnership between Amey and QAC.
The site was named following an internal competition at the college – with successful name, ‘Independence Street’ having been suggested by two of our students.
High Williams, Principal at QAC states; “We are extremely grateful to Amey and their suppliers for making this project come to life. We work with a large number of young people, many of whom need to be given a lot of time to practice such ‘real-life’ scenarios in a safe environment prior to navigating their way around the local streets. This will make a real difference to our students and will further enhance the mobility training that we offer here at QAC”.
