As they gear up for a second-round of Cultural Destinations funding, Lakes Culture held a workshop to raise ambition and encourage bold thinking with culture and tourism partners from across the Lake District. In the lovely surroundings of the Daffodil Hotel & Spa in Grasmere, Alex and Helen delivered a hands-on session. Delegates were guided through practical activities designed to get the best out of cross-sector collaborative working and identify and overcome some of the regular misunderstandings that occur between different sectors.  Drawing on direct experience from Creative Tourist’s Culture Hosts programme in Manchester, the session compared the city-centre experience with the rural and it was fascinating and reassuring to see that the challenges (and solutions) are the same.

The 2017 edition of Wonder Women, produced by Creative Tourist, takes place between 2-12 March. A 10-day celebration of creative-feminist-activism will animate the city of Manchester, with over 35 individual events making up this year’s diverse lineup.

The festival’s official launch event was Making The Strange Familiar with Instigate Arts at Manchester Art Gallery. Other highlights across the ten days include Dolly Mixtures – a day of feminist theatre performance at The Royal Exchange; a screening of Rebel Dykes at HOME; an in-conversation at Working Class Movement Library about the experiences of black women; a focus on well-being in partnership with SICK! Festival and The Lowry, and a script-in-hand reading of a new play at People’s History Museum that will be researched and written during the festival week.

For the latest information on Wonder Women you can follow on Facebook and Twitter. You can find the full line-up here.

Having researched and written the successful award application, we are delighted to be starting work with Stoke-on-Trent’s Cultural Destinations team on their 3-year journey. We’ll be focusing on building partnerships and capacity for cultural tourism at an exciting time for the city, not least because Stoke-on-Trent is bidding for the designation of UK City of Culture 2021.

The project work with cultural and tourism partners from across the city region will map the cultural tourism, digital and network assets to identify training needs, development opportunities and where the overarching strategy needs to be directed. From there we will help to inform a number of priority areas, including securing the right investment, effective marketing communications, skills development, and content and information provision.

Image credit: World of Wedgwood