Safety first, then sun. Community teams up to champion summer messages

There’s going to be a new superhero coming to Northampton this month – one borne from the imagination of the town’s local primary school children – and charged with the mission of helping keep the community safe this summer.

And that new face of the 2019 Summer Safety campaign, created and championed by Northamptonshire Police and Northamptonshire Office of the Police, Fire & Crime Commissioner, will be revealed to the community at a Summer Safety event at Grosvenor Shopping Northampton on Saturday 13 July.

As part of the tour of eight local primary schools last month, the Northampton bodies, supported by Embrace CVoC and RNLI, promoted the importance of keeping safe.

To showcase what they had learned, pupils were then invited to create their own superhero that embodied those safety messages and enter it to be the new lead of Northamptonshire Police’s campaign.

The eight local primary schools that took part were: Abington Vale Stirling Campus, Abington Vale Park Campus, Barry Primary, Stimpson Avenue Academy, Kings Heath Primary School, Earl Spencer Primary School, St Mary’s Catholic Primary School and St James C of E Primary School.

Following an intense judging process, which involved Northamptonshire Police, Northamptonshire Office of the Police, Fire & Crime Commissioner and Grosvenor Shopping Northampton, a winning superhero design has been selected and will be presented at the official Summer Safety campaign event at the retail complex later this coming weekend.

The winning sketch will feature across of Northamptonshire Police’s summer promotional material, while the pupil behind the new face of safety will also receive £100 worth of vouchers to spend at The Entertainer store based at Grosvenor Shopping Northampton.

PCSO Naomi Coote of the Northampton Neighbourhood Policing Team, said: “We have been holding assemblies at a number of primary schools in the town over the last couple of weeks with our supporting partner agencies, to help give children summer safety tips, which will hopefully help them have a fun and enjoyable time during the holidays.

“We have also run a poster competition which is being supported by Grosvenor Shopping Northampton and the Office of the Northamptonshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, asking children to design their own summer safety superhero. This is to help encourage them to think about the messages we have delivered and hopefully help other people stay safe ahead of the summer holidays."

James Roberts, centre manager at Grosvenor Northampton Shopping, said: “The Summer Safety campaign that Northamptonshire Police and Northamptonshire Office of the Police, Fire & Crime Commissioner run is an important scheme and we’re pleased to be holding their event this year to help spread those key messages to the local community.

“The school break is just around the corner and while we’re all hoping for another year of fantastic weather and sunshine, it’s imperative that we’re prepared for it and know the measures that need to be taken to stay safe.

“The superheroes that were submitted by eight of our local primary schools as part of this scheme show that children have taken on board those messages and expressed them in a creative and eye-catching way. Picking a winner was really tough – we had a number of fantastic entries – and we can’t wait to show them off on Saturday.”

The Summer Safety campaign event will also see several local stakeholders present at Grosvenor Shopping Northampton to make the local community aware of their own wellbeing messages.

Among them are: the British Transport Police, Network Rail, Northampton Street Pastors, Embrace, Northamptonshire Highways, Trilogy Health & Fitness, Northampton Community Safety Partnership and NHS Northampton.