Cut-outs of people to urge drivers to slow down

A community group has created life-size portraits of people in the area as part of a road safety project.

Cut-outs of 30 people and four dogs have been displayed along Meanwood Road in Leeds to encourage drivers to slow down.

Artist Lizzie Coombes, who is featured in the work, said she hoped it would transform the road into a "living art gallery".

She said they had got the idea from some motorways as "you often see things that say 'My dad works here or my mum works here'".

"That idea that people treat a space more carefully when they can see a person attached to it," she added.

Ms Coombes said her hope was that it made people take notice and feel there was "humour and joy" rather than "it's just people being grizzly and going 'slow down'".

The Meanwood Road Project is a community art project set up three years ago to explore how a commuter road "develops an identity, community, wellbeing, and sense of belonging by working with the people who live and work along it".

The cut-outs also aim to represent the range and diversity of those who live along the road.

The project will also monitor activity along the road using Leeds City Council traffic counters.

Resident Cluny Macpherson said two years ago the volunteers built bird boxes that looked like speed cameras, which they placed along the road to slow traffic.

"Road safety is really important for us because my daughter Rosie who is in a wheelchair can also walk if we're helping her, but she's very slow so we need a lot of time to cross the road," he said.

"If they're going too fast I have to put my hand out and say 'Woah, stop guys, slow down' and mostly people do, but sometimes you get beeps on the horn. So, it's a bit of a struggle."

The Meanwood Road Project cannot directly implement traffic-calming measures, but organisers said it aims to contribute "meaningful data and visibility to the community-led petition for a safer pedestrian crossing between Woodhouse Ridge and Meanwood Valley Urban Farm".

Volunteer Katy Hayley, whose partner and daughter are featured in the installation, said there was a need for more crossings along the road.

She said: "We don't have safe places to cross along the road and this is a way of highlighting it.

"We're trying to make people more aware that there needs to be more spaces for crossing and we don't want to wait until there's a fatality for that to happen."

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