TELLING THE RIGHT STORY
A new agreed narrative that unites all parts of Lancaster and Morecambe is needed to help sell the district, attract inward investment and retain young talent.
That’s the view of Ruth Wilkinson, who chairs the Morecambe BID and also owns the Consult Centre business which is based in the town.
She explains her thinking: “From my point of view we are a district of collaboration. It is also about the narrative that sits around Lancaster and Morecambe.
“It shouldn’t be one place or the other, it should be a destination with many venues to be exploited and explored at any one time.”
Ruth says historically Morecambe has been seen only as a tourist destination and that is a “huge misconception”, because it and other areas of the district outside Lancaster have a large number of entrepreneurs and long- established businesses.
She believes there is a danger that young people looking for a career feel they have to leave because they wrongly believe the jobs and opportunities they want don’t exist locally.
And that is one of the reasons she wants to change the narrative around the two communities, which she believes define Morecambe as a place for play and Lancaster as a place to do business.
Ruth says: “Collectively there’s a responsibility that when Lancaster is mentioned it can’t be mentioned without Morecambe, and it can’t be mentioned without that wider district implication.
“That is because our job is to make sure that a 15-year-old who’s got bags of talent thinks this is the best place to be.”
She urges the district to come together to create this new narrative, with agreed reasons why people should come and invest and set up business in the north of the county.
And she adds: “When you look at other areas in the country, they’ll have that plan agreed. ‘Here is what we go out to the rest of the world with, and we tell them all these things’. We need to define our shop window.”
Tarnia Elsworth, from the Lancaster and Morecambe Chamber, agrees the need to sell the whole district rather than “competing individual parts”.
She also believes people should come together in a more united way to discuss the issues facing them and the district and says: “We’re all sitting around different tables.”
She adds: “We need to agree one umbrella that we’re all coming under to discuss the issues that we’ve all got and agreeing together how we’re going to tackle those issues.
“There are very rarely times when all key stakeholders are around the table, and that’s key to our district being marketed as a district.”
Marketing is a topic taken up by Jody Lauder of Richard P Taylor Chartered Surveyors. He says: “The benefits to living here and working here are not highlighted sufficiently.
“Certainly when we’re promoting sites to developers people say, ‘I kind of know where it is, but I’m always on the way to the Lake District’. And actually, when you give developers the insight as to what is here, there is a real excitement about what can be delivered.”
Lucy Arthurs of Leighton Hall, a major visitor attraction, says the district’s ‘brand’ is simply not strong enough when compared to the Lake
District, North Yorkshire and even Manchester.
She says: “I get fed up when I drive up the M6 and there is a mobile sign on the side of the carriageway that says, ‘25 minutes to Junction 36’.
“It’s saying your end destination is the Lake District, and you can look to the left, but don’t bother pulling off the motorway, and that’s the message that’s being given to everyone.”
She adds: “I don’t think our county geography is helping us, we’re not working collaboratively enough. We need to make ourselves stronger and more visual.”
City council cabinet member Gina Dowding says one of the big challenges is the name of the council. She points out it has ‘Lancaster’ in it when people are talking about the city, Morecambe and all the district’s rural towns and villages.
Darren Chaisty at North Star Projects agrees about the need for better PR however he adds: “Before that we need to know what we are talking about, what it is about us we are selling. And we need an economic policy or an industrial strategy, whatever you want to call it.”
When it comes to that narrative, Jenny Pape of accountancy firm Azets says the district has a distinct quality about it and describes it as almost self-sufficient.
She highlights the loyalty people have to the area and the collaborative nature of its local government.
And although she lives outside the district, she says: “I have a sense of pride about here. It definitely has something that I’ve not seen anywhere else I’ve been.”
PRESENT:
Lucy Arthurs - Leighton Hall Darren Chaisty - North Star Projects Sarah Cooper - Marketing Director, Strongdor Councillor Gina Dowding - Lancaster City Council Tarnia Elsworth - Lancaster and Morecambe Chamber Dan Knowles - Electech Innovation Cluster Jody Lauder - Richard P Taylor Chartered Surveyors
Jenny Pape - Azets Ian Steel - Keeper of the Flame at Atkinsons Coffee Roasters Ruth Wilkinson - Morecambe BID Richard Wooldridge - HPA Architects Matt Wright - Lancaster University Not pictured: Paul Aisthorpe - Scale-Ability
LANCASHIREBUSINES SV
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