On November 12th 2024 in Chesterfield I think I can safely say that over 100 of us put the pizzazz into place! The feedback said it all; inspiring, insightful, enlightening, thought provoking, energising, encouraging and provocative. This is a tribute to the amazing speakers who gave up their time to sprinkle their own particular brand of place magic across the conference.
The day started with Dr Martin Reeves, CEO of Oxfordshire County Council who delivered a tour de force which covered ‘disconnection’ which is acknowledging people feel detached from politics and power to change their lives, what does that mean for place narrative creation; defining the role for local government which means they stop putting things in boxes and recognise the fuzziness of place whilst driving from the back seat; bin some myths about place narratives/brands namely logos, marketing and focus on the deep DNA of place.
We then had a great session looking at town centres, are they doomed and how to ensure they are vibrant. Professor Steve Millington of Manchester Metropolitan University, Anne Wright Chair of Ashbourne Town Team and owner of Young Ideas along with Jean Ball from Eventful Places articulated how high streets and town centres are actually evolving and always have done. This means increased importance of the place experience, different ways of driving footfall with events and pop up activity and the rise of re-use as seen by the growth of vintage shops. Successful places are based around strong leadership and excellent collaboration.
The final panel of the morning with Anne-Marie Bond, CEO of Torbay Council looked at the increasing trend of larger place geographies such as Counties, Combined Authorities, created economic places and even sizeable Council areas and what branding these meant for the places within them. It’s important to think of place as a ‘layer cake’ with overlapping histories and scales of activity; everyone lives and works in more than one place at once, neighbourhood, town, county, country etc. What’s critical is your target audience and if larger geographies are trying to attract private sector investment or government funding scale is vital. Not forgetting to associate with nearby places and assets such as universities.
Attendee’s then enjoyed a series of engaging and discussive breakout sessions covering the importance of culture, the role of young people in place shaping, why the visitor economy is more than tourists, how to visually bring your place story to life, the long standing case study of Chesterfield with the very recent one of Bolsover and how to harness your organisation to create a place led approach.
The final plenary was led by the former Leader of Barking and Dagenham Council and now Senior Associate at Cratus, Darren Rodwell who considered the impact of a Labour Government on place with a focus on housing as a foundation for successful communities. This will involve new initiatives and a different approach to the provision of affordable housing. He called for community empowerment and that reforms to right to buy were needed along with reform of social rent. There was hope that competitive bidding would become a thing of the past and that local government would have the stability to plan ahead.
All this and so much more meant we were properly pizzazzed by the end of the day! A massive thanks to our sponsor partners Chesterfield Borough Council, the Bolsover Place Programme and Chesterfield based IT company Addooco. We were delighted that students from Chesterfield College were our photographers for the day, and what a fab job they did! So many old friends, so many new ones, so much social media comment, so many relationships formed. A great day!
thinkingplace Founding Director – John Till
