As part of a team of consultants led by Tom Buncle of Yellow Railroad Consultancy, we are starting work on a new culturally focused Destination Management Plan for Woolwich in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. Woolwich was successful in securing Arts Council England Cultural Destinations funding and is embarking on its three-year programme, which includes a series of major events and cultural investment. The Royal Arsenal Woolwich (once the home of Arsenal ‘the gunners’ football club) is due to undergo significant change in the next few years with Crossrail services beginning next year, plans for new indoor and outdoor performance spaces and resident cultural companies moving in.

10 days in September featuring artwork in 30 locations;  an art-trail around this historic town; daily events and live experiences.

Altrincham is thoroughly enjoying its new reputation as a dynamic foodie town. The award-winning Altrincham Market House is packed to the rafters and ‘doing an Altrincham’ has become a NW region byword for food-led regeneration.

This historic charter market town is becoming a great place to live again – but there remain gaps. Sited on the fringes of Manchester, with a tram service every 6 minutes to cultural attractions in the city just 30 minutes away, arts and culture is a bit low key. That needs to change. The exciting food scene is attracting new, younger residents and visitors and the time is right to capitalise on this.

Open Studios Altrincham is doing just that. Building on its inaugural event last year, Hidden Altrincham 2017 (14-24 September) will shine a spotlight on the town’s less familiar gems, creating and showing art in places that celebrate and appreciate the space it is in.

We are helping this small organisation plan its marketing and stakeholder engagement and to set a route to 2020 when the aim is for Hidden Altrincham to be a well-established event in the town’s calendar.

There are some major stirrings in Yorkshire’s East Riding. Hull 2017 is the biggest cultural event in the country this year, but as the UK City of Culture the fun doesn’t stop at the Humber Bridge. In the context of Northern Powerhouse and the forthcoming Great Exhibition of the North…well you can see where this is going. The destination management organisation Visit Hull & East Yorkshire was successful in securing first round Visit Britain Discover England funding, in partnership with its opposite numbers in Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. We were brought in to develop a series of cultural itineraries linking these four Trans-Pennine cities with highlights including Hull 2017 events, Leeds West Indian Carnival 50^th anniversary celebrations, Manchester International Festival and Liverpool’s 50 Summers of Love programme. These new cultural itineraries are specifically targeting visitors from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. First Transpennine has created a new Cities of North England rover rail ticket to encourage visitors to hop on a train and travel cross-country. We also developed bespoke cultural itineraries for travel trade operators and travel journalists from all three countries who visited all four cities using the new rail ticket in March. The itineraries are listed on www.citiesofnorthengland.com.

Have a look at this article announcing the new North of England Rover Ticket.

We like the definition of mentoring that says ‘a mentor is a person who has a sincere desire to enhance the success of others.’ Over the course of two years Helen worked closely with the Project Coordinator and partners of the Bristol and Bath Cultural Destinations First Round programme in a mentoring capacity, sharing learnings, providing advice and generally supporting the development of the consortia. Helen spent time in both cities getting to know the people and places to help in shaping the work programme, deliver training on cultural tourism and support wider advocacy with public and private sector partners.