Work

• Sense of Place Toolkit

  May 2010 | Filed under: Business Plans

  Our Sense of Place Toolkit for the Northern Uplands, which provides guidance to community groups planning and delivering heritage based regeneration projects, was funded by three LEADER+ Groups.  To ensure that it met the needs of the intended users, we arranged a programme of reciprocal visits for community representatives to  learn from the experiences of existing project groups in Northumberland, the North Pennines and the Cumbria Fells and Dales LEADER+ areas.

  The findings were used to structure the toolkit and to develop case studies to illustrate particular approaches, lessons, etc.

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• Hodder Valley Development Plan

  May 2010 | Filed under: Tourism Strategies & Plans

  We were asked to help three communities of the Hodder Valley in the Forest of Bowland to agree a development plan.  We quickly ascertained that there was a need for better communication between land managing organisations (Forestry Commission, United Utilities, Duchy of Lancaster and RSPB) and local people and that this was constraining progress.

  We developed a programme of consultation between the land managers and communities which facilitated mutual understanding and helped to formulate a development plan which was owned by all parties.  This took some time and perseverance by all sides but has resulted in the current delivery of an effective plan to benefit all partners.

• North Pennines Geo-Park Marketing Strategy and Action Plan

  May 2010 | Filed under: Marketing & Promotion

  This marketing plan for geology, landscape heritage and wildlife is guiding the promotion of the North Pennines UNESCO Geo-park.  The work involved a review of geological sites, identifying places to enjoy nature and a review of available market research.  We then undertook consultation with local tourism businesses and held 6 focus groups with existing and potential visitors to the Geo-park to test visitor response to aspects of the heritage, marketing images and themes and a range of interpretation methods.

• Countryside Mapping: Wales, Scotland & England

  May 2010 | Filed under: Interpretation

  For this project we worked with Dr Tom Hartley, a cognitive psychologist based at York University.  Desk research into how the human brain processes mapped information was combined with the results of a survey of countryside managers who have produced maps for wayfinding and interpretation.  From this we identified current good practice, produced guidance on the best methods for different users, identified gaps in current knowledge and produced briefs for future research

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• Bishop Auckland Renaissance Programme

  May 2010 | Filed under: Research & Evaluation

  Our work to evaluate the six projects of the Urban Renaissance Plan consisted of three stages of work: making an economic impact assessment for each project; developing an evaluation framework, which reflected the needs of funders and; undertaking interim and final evaluations for each of the projects.  The work involved identifying baseline data and agreeing baselines for each project, researching impacts for similar projects and estimating economic and other impacts, consultation with stakeholders including developers and funders to undertake economic impact assessments for each project, to agree the evaluation framework and then undertaking the evaluations themselves.