Winners of the Smarter Travel Student Multimedia Awards Kate Healy and Laura Meaney LIT

Students get Creative at Smarter Travel Student Multimedia Awards 2016

Hooch the Dog has helped Kate Healy & Laura Meaney from Limerick Institute of Technology win the National Transport Authority’s annual Smarter Travel Campus Multimedia Awards for their fantastic video “Walking isn’t that ruff”. In the short film, Hooch roams through several iconic places in Limerick city, including the People’s Park and St John’s Castle, and he also goes to places only accessible on foot, such as Little Catherine’s Street. Hooch shows the possibilities open to people who walk the area, the beautiful sights to see and the amenities to enjoy.
Lisa Lorraine Hester from Limerick College of Further Education also won for her magnificent artistic illustration.
The awards were held in the Bell Table Theatre in Limerick yesterday. The entries produced by students encourage others to choose ‘smarter’ modes of transport, particularly walking, cycling, public transport and car sharing. A few entries even included skateboarding!
“We are delighted with the quality of entries that we received and our judges were equally impressed. The students’ multimedia entries were both entertaining and captured the positive aspects of making smart transport choices for the journey to college,” said Anne Graham, Chief Executive Officer, National Transport Authority.
Miriam O’Donoghue, Project Manager with Limerick Smarter Travel, highlighted the importance of such awards. “The National Transport Authority’s Multimedia Awards not only showcase the smarter travel options that Limerick has to offer but they provide us with some amazing imagery of our city – produced by extremely talented students from our local campuses.”
“The awards offered us a great opportunity to put into practice what we study during our course at LIT. The concept for our video was to explore the historic streets and forgotten beautiful locations in and around Limerick from the perspective of our wonderful actor Hooch, the dog. We are just over the moon at winning the award and representing Limerick in the Smarter Travel Multimedia Awards”, said winners Kate Healy and Laura Meaney.
“The Smarter Travel Multimedia Awards offer the students an excellent environment to show their creative and digital story telling skills within a real world scenario. We were delighted to win the award in 2015, and to win again this year demonstrates the high calibre of both our students and our programme”, said Denise McEvoy, Lecturer BSc in Multimedia Programming & Design.
In second place were Michael Boyle from the University of Limerick and Rebecca Walsh from Limerick College of Further Education who produced a brilliant video and poster respectively. A special prize was also awarded to a group of students from the University of Limerick who wrote a musical rap promoting the benefits of walking and cycling.
The Smarter Travel Campus Multimedia Awards are organised by the National Transport Authority. This was the second year this competition was held. It is open to third level institutions who are partners of the Smarter Travel Campus programme.

Pictured above are Winners of the Smarter Travel Student Multimedia Awards Kate Healy and Laura Meaney LIT

ENDS//
Editor’s Notes:
The Smarter Travel Campus Programme is implemented by the National Transport Authority with funding from the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. The programme is aimed at Third Level Campuses in Ireland seeking to develop Workplace Travel Plans. Workplace Travel Plans have been shown internationally to reduce single occupancy car use on the commute by between 10% and 24%. Workplace Travel Plans also reduce costs associated with parking, business travel, fleet, CO2 emissions, absenteeism, and access issues. Further information on the programme and Partners can be found at www.smartertravelcampus.ie

Further information on the programme can be found here –
Website: www.smartertravelcampus.ie
Facebook: www.facebook.com/smartertravelcampus
Twitter: @STcampus