to add an item to your Itinerary basket.
As of Friday 1st November, Stoke-on-Trent City Centre BID turned 1 year old, and what a first year it has been!
A major focus in the year has been to build important foundational blocks. Firstly to appoint an exceptionally experienced and capable board of 7 directors. Followed soon after by an extensive interviewing process resulting in the employment of Richard Buxton as the BID Manager who has brought with him existing BID experience, knowledge and ideas; Alex Poole as the Marketing Manager, responsible for establishing the BIDs marketing, promotions and communication systems; and three superb Street Ambassadors – April, Qamar and Richard – who have each effectively established themselves as the go-to information points for both businesses and visitors.
The early part of this year also involved setting up of the BID office in the city centre along with negotiating operational agreements with the local authority, employing Savills BID consultants who have provided vital administration support along with the sharing of expertise and best practice from successful BIDs across the country; and building good partnerships with local organisations and groups like Entrepreneurs Network, Appetite, British Ceramics Biennial, Your City, the Police, PABCIS and Stoke-on-Trent City Council.
As set out in the Stoke-on-Trent City Centre BID Business Plan, with the agreement of local businesses, we are working to three key priorities: Place Management (improving the city centre environment), Place Marketing (increasing and improving the variety of events and the promotion of the city centre), and Business Community Support (providing business tools, networking, ideas to help support your business).
Place Management
The primary highlight of our work pertaining to the Place Management priority is of course the work of our Street Ambassadors who are on hand to welcome visitors into the city centre and provide information, directions and recommendations. The trio have taken on various courses including First Aid, Drug & Alcohol Awareness and ScaN training (which addresses terrorism). This has proved infinitely useful as no fewer than 20 incidents requiring first aid have occurred in the city centre. Additionally, Ambassadors have a strong knowledge of prolific shoplifters and those with ASB tendencies and can alert store security as to suspicious behaviour – resulting in recovered goods and protecting businesses profits.
The feedback from businesses has been very positive as the Ambassadors have responded to queries or issues, reported 353 ASB incidents, 180 rough sleeper incidents, and kept you up to date with BID plans; making around 15,000 business visits. Visitors have commented that they are glad to see the Ambassadors presence, and have thanked them for work undertaken, like planting flowers, removing graffiti, cleaning up grot spots and improving the look and feel of the area. Our Ambassadors have engaged in more than 8000 visitor interactions.
To manage the extensive activity we implemented a piece of software called BIDbase which accurately and effectively logs all interactions and street issues, allowing for a precise review of all tasks undertaken by the Ambassadors and tracking of all issue resolution statuses.
Business Community Support
Moving to our second priority, Business Community Support, we’ve recognised the importance of making small changes to protect the environment and so the BID championed the Refill scheme in the city centre, signing up over 50 businesses who have agreed to provide free drinking water, eliminating excessive and needless consumption of single-use plastics.
Following the success of the campaign on high streets up and down the country, the BID decided to bring Fiver Fest to the city centre where 41 businesses, offering 76 deals, signed up in order to showcase the offering of small and independent businesses and reinforce the important message of shopping locally.
Since December last year BID levy-payers have also received a monthly round-up email newsletter of BID updates in their inboxes, and since June, have received hard copies too. These will continue and we do encourage you all to read them to remain updated, and to let us know if there are other email addresses to add onto the circulation list. You’ll also find opportunities for involvement and engagement to boost your business’s profile, so do read carefully.
Place Marketing
Thirdly, activities undertaken under our Place Marketing priority have included the creation and distribution of 4,000 copies of a 40-page magazine which acts as a city centre guide for young people and students. By attending local university events and Welcome Fairs, we engaged with thousands of students to promote the entertainment offering within the city centre.
The BID team has also set up a presence at The Potter’s Arf, The Big Feast, Beats & Eats & The Big Community Clean-Up and since March, local radio and print platforms have run extensive coverage of our events and initiatives, including Friday Night Socials, launched in August to start to help develop our twilight economy, and our series of Halloween events.
In addition we’ve got behind and helped to expand the effectiveness of 5 events this year: Your City Music Festival which took place in 8 city centre venues; Appetite’s The Big Feast Festival; the British Ceramics Biennial which this year brought a series of workshops to city centre venues; Beats & Eats Festival; and Frontline Dance Arts Festival, a city-wide initiative celebrating accessibility and diversity in the arts, with the majority of the programme taking place in city centre venues including intu Potteries.
The #OurFrontDoor project saw 23 wonderfully painted doors make the city centre a brighter and more colourful place, providing a great platform for local talent to showcase their talents, whilst instilling pride in the city centre. We’ve received fantastic positive feedback and media coverage on our artwork projects, locally, nationally and online, and as a key part of the BBC’s #WeAreStokeonTrent reports.
Building our social media profiles has been a priority and we have also gone through a lengthy process to select a suitable website provider to accurately promote the city centre as a destination of choice. We expect this to be launched before Christmas.
For further information please do read our Infographic summary sheet.
It’s been a successful 12 months and I and the board are proud of what’s been achieved. It also gives us a great foundation to build upon going into 2020 and the next 4 years of the BID term, to deliver even more benefits to our levy payers.
The team have worked tirelessly to improve perceptions of the city centre through helping to deliver a programme of outstanding events and activities, of which there are a number of exciting ideas in the pipeline for 2020.
Yours Sincerely,
Jonathan Bellamy, BID Chairman
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