Sometimes it is good to recap on progress as if one lives in a city…this passes one by. I remember visiting my home town of Nottingham for many years after I left and I used to judge the pace of change by how many new shops had opened on Mansfield Road (an inner city road […]
Birmingham’s Frankfurt Christmas Market taken by Birmingham Culture It was rather shocking to hear on Radio 4 recently a You and Yours item on the rise of Christmas Markets in the UK where they did a special feature on the Frankfurt Christmas market, a market that attracts 3 million visitor, bringing in upwards of £100m […]
Tomorrow an important summit with national and international speakers kicks off on the role of the Arts and the Cultural sector in Birmingham’s economy. During the 1990’s Birmingham invested heavily in this sector with the BRB, the Hippodrome and Symphony Hall being some of the investments but the pace of this investment has slackened in […]
Now this is blog post is not about when an Innovator gets angry and how it stimulates innovation; it is rather how working across sectors in the economy can lead to innovation. The concept of Cross Innovation is a major talking point now in Europe. Europe has deep rooted economic problems and is looking to […]
I have been wondering for a while if anyone has done any research on the possible relative effects of the devolution programme in the UK on the English Core Cities. This would be through the positive investment engendered in the capital cities in the devolved territories and the behaviour of the UK Govt towards cities […]
The recent announcement by Marketing Birmingham of increased visitor numbers in 2011 is fantastic news but as a resident of Birmingham and a visitor to many other cities I instinctively feel that Birmingham has not quite got it right yet. I often struggle to find something to offer to visitors on a wet Sunday afternoon […]
I am soon to be leaving Birmingham City Council and am looking for new opportunities, new areas of work and exploration. My linkedin profile gives a good summary of my experience. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/patrick-willcocks/14/18/7b6
This graph shows figures from the international passenger survey; comparing Birmingham to Manchester. The figures are four year averages as individual years are not sufficiently reliable. What they show is that Manchester move ahead of Birmingham in the noughties. Why is this. It would be useful to look at the investments in cultural facilities and […]
UrbanPivot 