The role of the City Development Team can be quite diverse, getting involved in lots of different activities and projects. Whilst there are many things that we could do, we are a small team of just one full-time and one part-time person, and therefore one of the biggest challenges that we face is prioritising and making sure that we continue to focus and maximise the impact that we can have with our capacity and resources.
Recent weeks have demonstrated the diversity of our role. In this period we have necessarily focused on two main projects: the preliminary draft City Plan consultation and the Christmas seasonal programme. So, on one hand we have been working with our volunteers, thinking strategically about the future development of the city over the next 15 years, whilst on the other thinking just a few weeks ahead and working on various aspects of Christmas in Ripon.
The City Plan is an integral part of the day-to-day work of the City Development Team. However, with the consultation, which began in September, it became a major project from the end of August until early November, when the consultation closed. In advance of the consultation our role was to produce all of the materials, including the summary plan, questionnaires, fliers, posters and the exhibition materials. Then as the consultation began our role was to co-ordinate the delivery of information to 7,500 households in Ripon, and also to ensure that key statutory organisations such as English Heritage, English Nature, Sport England and others, all have the opportunity to comment too.
Added to that, we’ve also been managing the City Plan website, twitter and facebook pages and, together with the volunteer members of the working group, we’ve also been attending meetings and presentations and manning the exhibition within the Town Hall. Now the consultation is closed, our role continues as we begin to collate and analyse all of the comments received and work with the City Plan team to address the issues raised.
At the same time as this, week by week, we have also been giving more attention to our Christmas programme. Following the success of last year, we have collated the information to enable us to produce a Christmas brochure, promoting all of the festive events in and around the city. This has included spending time securing advertisements from a number of businesses to help to fund the costs of the brochure. These are now in the process of being distributed to households in the city but if you haven’t received yours yet, they can also be collected from the Tourism Information Centre in the Town Hall and from a number of businesses across the city centre.
The countdown to Christmas begins on Saturday 22nd November, with the Christmas lights switch-on event taking place in the Market Place and the Food and Gift Fair at the Cathedral. There is also free entry to Ripon Museums and a Scuba Diving for All event with Santa and Mrs Claus in the Town Hall, so there is a lot for visitors to do in the City. Having a number of events on the same day worked really well last year and provides us with an opportunity to work with the media to promote all of the events, to encourage visitors to the city to go to the events and to stay to shop or eat.
The City Development Team, supported by Ripon Festivals, have organised this year’s Christmas lights switch-on event and will be responsible for managing the event on the day. Hosted by Stray FM’s Alex Cann and James Stanley, there will be music and entertainment from 16:00 including performances by the Dishforth Military Wives Choir, St Wilfrid’s Catholic School Choir and Holy Trinity Junior School Choir as well as the traditional arrival of Santa, competition winner Florence Maylor and the Mayor to help switch on the tree lights at 18:00. This year, also sees a very special appearance by Elsa, Anna, Olaf and Hans who will entertain the crowd and we are also encouraging children to get dressed up in their favourite costumes. We hope you are able to come down and enjoy the event and celebrate the start of the festive period
As part of the Christmas programme, it is also the role of the City Development Team to liaise with Harrogate Borough Council and the contractor to arrange the installation of the Christmas lights around the City. This year we again promoted a crowd-funding approach to improve the Christmas lights, and we were delighted to achieve our target which has enabled us to replace lights on Westgate, Kirkgate, Fishergate and Old Market Place, all of which were life-expired and I must say a huge thank you to those people and businesses that pledged to our campaign to make this possible.
I know that the location of the new lights has attracted some comment from people, but necessarily our priority over the last 2 years has had to be a phased programme of replacement of the existing lights around the city. Once the replacement programme has been completed, which we expect to be able to do for Christmas 2015, we can will also be seeking to raise funds and working to try to expand the coverage of lights across the city centre. Christmas is an important time of the year and all of our efforts are designed to try to ensure that the businesses of the city benefit during an important trading time of the year and that the community are proud of the city they call home.
Whilst this has been our focus, we’ve still been working on a number of other day-to-day tasks including our continued management of the Discover Ripon website, facebook page and twitter feed.
Next week, the vast majority of our work for Christmas will be over and whilst our City Plan work will continue we will be evaluating and debriefing from this year’s Christmas lights switch-on event and then we will be re-focusing and re-prioritising again and start planning for our Spring 2015 promotion, marketing and events campaign.
City Development Initiative 