Shane Andrews MBE

Said the following about Archway at Network Rail:

“All within the Archway leadership are volunteers in addition to their paid day jobs. There is nobody within their team as a full-time paid role. They do this during a period of extreme uncertainty for both Network Rail and the wider rail industry.

The Archway team provide confidential support to members and other colleagues, completing policy reviews and Diversity Impact Assessments. Archway organises many events throughout the year – from networking for all members, to picnics in parks and to hosting awareness-raising sessions marking events such as World AIDS Day, LGBT History Month, Lesbian visibility day, Bi visibility day, Trans Day of Visibility and also Trans Day of Remembrance which is run as a community event, supporting the trans community of Milton Keynes as they had nowhere to host their event (it's where our national centre is based).

Archway has strived to remain visible throughout the pandemic and to really champion the feeling of community amongst LGBT+ colleagues and allies, as they recognised the increased risk of isolation that the pandemic brought.

Examples of this include:

- creating a Covid19 fact sheet published to the business specifically promoting LGBT+ issues/concerns and signposting to LGBT+ support organisations such as Gendered Intelligence, Switchboard and Stonewall website

- communicating with members more frequently (at least once a week)

- promoting pronouns usage in digital communications and visibly via our frontline colleagues in some London stations

- working with all of our employee networks collaboratively, recognising intersectionality and promoting that such as during black history month. This included our first-ever joint event with our Multi-Faith network, where we talked through what unites us.

- creating 'InclusiviTea' - a weekly virtual coffee shop created for members to be able to not feel isolated. This was created as a 4 week trial and still exists over 18 months later.

- created 'Rail Industry presents: Virtual Pride' which brought together a host of railway organisations as one, to deliver Pride for their employees whether LGBT+ or an ally. Each year of the pandemic we've delivered this festival over a 2 week period with at least one event daily. Year one had 17 organisations involved, year 2 in 2021 had 33 organisations involved.

- organised a GB rail industry conference for LGBT+ colleagues and allies with over 200 in attendance virtually, with key note speakers Lord Cashman, co-founder of Stonewall and Lady Phyll, Leader of UK Black Pride

- created a huge Pride month campaign for Pride Month, with video's under the bold statement of "Do I offend you?", this showcases a variety of colleagues including BAME, trans, bi, queer, gay and lesbian sharing a bit of a fun side as well as the fact they were proud to be open in the work place. Each cast member volunteered from various areas of the organisation and also had a mini-interview published individually.

- collaborating long-term with KPMG to deliver a number of events to raise both awareness and funds for THT and the work they do for HIV/AIDS education and prevention. This included an 'It's a sin' reflection event and a talk from Gareth Thomas CBE.

- organised a smaller conference for leaders of LGBT+ networks across Great Britain and Europe to come together to share best practice and ideas over a 2 day event“