Greenlink Poetry Project: Moving Words, Moving People – A Campaign to Create Emotional Connections to the Lives of Local Bus Riders

Target Audience: According to the 2021 American Community Survey, only 0.3% of workers in Greenville County commute to work using public transportation. The Greenville Transit Authority, operating under the brand name Greenlink, understands that many of Greenville County's residents don't picture themselves using the bus on a regular basis, and therefore don't have a connection with those that do. Who are the people using the bus? How does transit impact their lives? And, in return, what impact are our bus riders able to have on our community? This project aims to pay tribute to seven of Greenlink's bus riders – telling their stories through poetry. We hope, that by reading and listening, leaders and the public will create a connection with them and develop an understanding of why public transit matters.

Strategy Objective:Poetry is an effective tool for creating emotional connections with the reader. Greenlink recruited local poets to tell the stories of bus riders centered around the theme "Why I Ride". The objective was to create an emotional connection between the reader the rider. A project webpage (RideGreenlink.com/Poetry) and printed collateral – rack cards, internal bus ads & bus shelter ads – were created with professional photos of the bus riders, allowing readers to put a face to the name. Performed poetry, such as spoken word poetry, gives the poet the ability to emphasize the words and phrases that drive that emotion home. Greenlink hosted a live reading of the poems at a local bookstore and filmed videos of the poets reading their poems to further emphasize emotions behind the written words.

Situation Challenge: Transit agencies use metrics - ridership, hours, mileage, etc. – to demonstrate successes and illustrate the impact services have on their community. But large data sets can diminish the impacts on individual lives. And the needs of individual passengers are unique, whether it's getting to work, to school or to visit family and friends. This project aims to remind local leaders and the public that decisions about transit funding will directly impact riders at an individual level. It will impact Jeremiah's ability to get to his college courses. It will impact Jan's ability to volunteer. It will impact Vanessa's ability to get to work. These Greenlink riders are someone's son, your neighbor's mother, the person helping you as you check out at your favorite store and transit matters to them.

Results Impact: The lineup of speakers at the live poetry reading event in September 2023 included a Greenville City Councilmember and the Greenville City Mayor. The event attracted local print and television media coverage. While most coverage occurred in September 2023, the project is still living on with another live reading being organized by the poets in November 2023. Additionally, the campaign content is evergreen. The agency will be able to use the riders' stories, photos, and videos of the readings for future campaign messaging to illustrate why access to reliable transit is important.

Why Submit: This is a creative initiative that instilled an emotion of passion for all those involved. The transit riders who participated in the project are now more dedicated to advocating for transit. The poets became public transit allies. The live reading event attendees are inspired to see transit access grow. The Poetry Project is also unique in that it partnered directly with the City of Greenville's Poet Laureate. This provided access to a network of other local poets. Working in partnership with a member of the arts community ensured professionalism for the final pieces. Not only will the photos, videos, and poems provide evergreen content for the future, but the project could inspire future storytelling workshops and poetry contests to generate fresh content.