Our northern cities are excelling! In case you hadn’t noticed, 2017 marks Hull’s year as the UK City of Culture. We’ve been commissioned by Visit Hull and East Yorkshire to look at creating a series of cultural itineraries along the Transpennine route starting in Hull and taking in Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool to test with international tour operators.

As well as Hull’s bumper cultural year. Manchester hosts the 6th Manchester International Festival, Liverpool celebrates the 50th anniversary of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album as part of the 50 Summers of Love cultural programme and Leeds celebrates 50 years of the West Indian Carnival, to name a few highlights. Focusing specifically on the Dutch and German markets, the cultural itineraries will encourage visitors to move from city to city along the Transpennine corridor.

View CTConsults case study – Northern cities assemble

We’re working with Manchester’s three orchestras and major music venues to recommend ways to raise the profile of this significant sector with stakeholders, media and audiences.

Manchester is an extraordinary place to be a music scholar, a musician or audience member – offering Chetham’s School of Music and its new Stoller Hall concert venue opening next year; the Royal Northern College of Music conservatoire and performance venue; The Bridgewater Hall, Hallé St Peters & St Michaels, plus other music venues across the city, and of course three outstanding orchestras performing at the top of their game: the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic – also regularly broadcasting on BBC Radio 3 – and Manchester Camerata. So why is this not more recognised and celebrated? It’s all about partnerships and collaboration and we’re recommending new ways of thinking and working together.

Image: Stoller Hall

There are many fantastic national initiatives, but how much do you know about The National Forest? If you don’t live in its 200+sqm in the Midlands, perhaps not too much. So we were invited to help to shape a new event to carry their environmental and regeneration messages to a wider audience.

That’s a big brief, made bigger by wanting to boost visitors, profile, revenues and partnerships. The National Forest Company is rightly ambitious – they’ve planted over 2m trees in the last 25 years after all. Our options appraisal explored how a potential new festival could celebrate the area’s landscape, culture and special qualities, while also supporting The National Forest’s thriving tourism, creative and woodland economy communities through promotion of and participation in its work.

In collaboration with 14-18 NOW and Manchester Art Gallery we worked together to target younger audiences to view this new fashion and films exhibition, Fashion and Freedom. We created an innovative marketing campaign which both raised the profile of the exhibition in Manchester’s cultural calendar and worked hard to reach those younger audiences. Working closely with Manchester Art Gallery’s staff, maximising their existing communications strengths and identify opportunities to try new things.

We also worked with a range of partners across the city to bring in younger, non-traditional audiences to this new exhibition inspired by women during the First World War as part of the World War 1 Centenary Commissions.  The exhibition featured contemporary fashion by some of the UK’s leading female designers including Dame Vivienne Westwood and Roksana, and a series of short films, some of which we screened outdoors and at Selfridges during the Student Big Night Out.

View CTConsults’ case study – A contemporary take on war-time stories

This Spring we are going to be working in Torbay helping to unlock the power of cultural tourism in this stunning UNESCO Global GeoPark, also home of Agatha Christie and the distinctive maritime festival Fishstock run by the local Fisherman’s Mission.

Tourism is already the area’s dominant industry, with 9 million bednights each year and approximately 15,000 people employed both directly and indirectly. Cultural tourism isn’t a major feature of the offer at the moment however, and our challenge is to look at how to make the most of existing assets and where to target investment to help Torbay appeal to new markets, especially outside the traditional summer season.

View CTConsults’ case study – Turning from rare highlights to ongoing appeal