To help celebrate this year’s Bourne Free festival (12-14 July) and the 50th anniversary of the modern LGBT+ rights movement, Siemens Mobility Limited has replaced a number of green traffic lights with diversity symbols along the parade route in Bournemouth. The company has also installed red, amber and green traffic lights cycling through a range of diversity symbols on a special float that will join the parade on Saturday, 13 July.
Four special designs have been created to represent different and diverse relationships, using the widely recognised gender symbols. Siemens Mobility has changed 20 of the traditional green signals to different diversity symbols, with these remaining in place for the duration of the three-day festival. The signals being changed are on the junctions of Poole Hill and Avenue Road, Gervis Place and Westover Road and Exeter Road and Terrace Road. The specially designed signals can be viewed on the Siemens Mobility parade float as it passes along the route (starting on East Cliff and finishing at The Triangle). Some 40 employees from the company’s Poole office will walk alongside the vehicle.
Kelvin Hastings-Gordon, from Bourne Free, said: “We are thrilled to be working again with Siemens Mobility on this clever and exciting venture, which will be so visible during our colourful event and along our parade route, amongst other areas in Bournemouth. We appreciate the company’s continued support of Bourne Free, both in the parade and with their diversity lenses. We hope this enlightens other companies and communities to engage in such a proud way.”
Gary Powell, Head of Traffic Management, BCP Council, added: “BCP Council proudly supports the Bourne Free festival and this imaginative addition to the pedestrian signals is a great way of making both residents and visitors feel welcome.
“This year’s event will once again see the streets of Bournemouth full of colour, so these adaptations will be a very welcome addition.”
Wilke Reints, Managing Director of Siemens Mobility’s Intelligent Traffic Systems (ITS) business in the UK said: “Diversity and inclusion is very important to us and our employees, and this is a great example of a simple idea having a major impact. It is one that was first introduced in London in 2016 and since then has gone from strength to strength. For the 2019 celebrations we’ve worked with local authorities in six cities UK-wide to ensure more diversity symbols are on display than ever before to help raise awareness of LGBT+ issues.”
Wilke concluded: “I’d like to pass my thanks to BCP Council for engaging and working with us to use the new symbols on traffic controls in Bournemouth.”
