Collaborating with a professional comedian, we established the Listen Up! Academy.

It’s aim: to teach South West Trains’ staff improvisation, timing and voice projection skills.

And by coaching them to create situation relevant, topical and witty safety messages, we ensured these train guards and platform staff would deliver new-style announcements that passengers would listen out for.

After some intensive training, our now qualified graduates got back into their uniforms and back to work.

Armed with their new talents and new-style announcement scripts, our Listen Up! team began to confidently broadcast safety messages – over train and platform public address systems.

And the public responded…

With over 200 stations and 600,000 passengers everyday, Listen up will become the standard programme for South West Trains staff, to learn how to deliver engaging safety messages that get passengers to take notice across our whole network.