It’s been quite some week across places we’re working with on tackling highstreet vacancy.
And the list of updates shows a really important part of the story, that while the focus is on getting empty units back into play and improving the mix of uses, our ‘next steps’ suggestions for town and city centres moving forward is, sometimes as much as half, about what we call ‘look’ and wider placemaking things as well as vacancy itself.
That’s certainly the case with the top item in our week’s updates, given the impact wall art can have on ‘Pride in Place’, your town’s attractiveness and positivity in its social media groups.
The words in my opener are about the latest stunning addition to a towns-wide series by the team at Blaenau Gwent and the super-talented ‘Walls by Paul’.
Other updates include:
- an indie shop celebrating 3 years in Dunfermline chose the day to announce it’s opening another on Kirkcaldy High Street;
- the CreweCreates team behind its brilliant Platform gallery and community art space have announced a streetart festival;
- Poole is one of the locations to feature in Barclays very welcome announcement of new branches (with thanks to The Dolphin shopping centre for the image);
- an indie business that recently moved to a much bigger unit in Galashiels has revealed it’s planning to create an indoor market in part of the space;
- As reported earlier, two Forest of Dean towns – Cinderford & Coleford – have had the first encouraging meeting of their tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnership’ groups.
It’d be great to hear upbeat updates from your town or city centre…
