A very welcome new shop, a popular eatery, maybe something creative or community…
What’s making the news on your town or city centre social media channels…?
It could be a #retail or #hospitality business opening, brand or indie – and it’d be great to hear examples from your place…
For many a #highstreet those two use types may be enough together with services to take up a good number of the empty units you’re working on as a tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnership’.
Where it’s not, we encourage the local teams we’re working alongside to explore other ‘alternative’ or additional options: arts & crafts, creative, culture, community, history & heritage, leisure, education, health, health & wellbeing, and we’re seeing an encouraging number of those opening and in the pipeline too.
Which explains the other feature of those ‘promote’ channels right now, if my timelines are anything to go by. Among those I’ve seen this week…
- a dementia community group – CreweCreates
- a toolkit for creating play spaces – Play:Disrupt
- a family-friendly panto in a stories pop up shop – Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books
As Laura Harris always emphasises in her brilliant HighStreetPositives campaign posts, our town and city centres are (and in reality long have been) about much more than shopping. It’s important still but in 2025 and going forward we’re asking for more and many of our places are starting to deliver.
So what kinds of positives are making the news where you are…? Do please share.
