The coastal town that took the plunge – and went digital
Jonathan Margolis discovers how a sleepy retirement town is shedding its quaint image to become the UK’S fastest growing digital economy
It’s a sparkling August day in the most traditional of English resorts. Holidaymakers are guzzling unfeasible amounts of confectionery, children are squealing, and the atmosphere, magnified by 18 months of cooped-up misery, is delightful.
Like most towns, seaside resorts especially, Bournemouth’s centre, a stroll from the sea, is looking sad in parts. Three department stores have closed and shops are boarded up. But in the carcass of a defunct Debenhams, on the former ladieswear floor, there’s a big new contemporary art gallery that’s already attracting art-world attention.
Curious tourists meander up there, although the offerings from some world-renowned artists make for slightly eccentric holiday fare. There’s a giant homeless man. Pictures of women with penises for noses. Framed LSD tablets. Oh, and a series of suicide vests cast in bronze, which are causing some awkward questions from children.
The gallery’s curator, Stuart Semple, a 40-year-old local boy who made it as an artist in London, has now brought his 30-assistant studio back to the seaside. And he is relieved to say, after a few days open, the new gallery is working.
“I’m really surprised how people get it,” he says. “I was worried that I was going to get it in the neck, that people were going to complain, that Bournemouth’s not ready for this. But people seem to understand the potency of the art and are quite reverent.” Semple and the new owner of the dead Debenhams are intent on making Bournemouth an arts hub.
However, Semple’s gallery is just one element of a Bournemouth revival that goes beyond culture. The marriage of seaside Britain and avant garde art, after all, is not quite a new story. Damien Hirst has a big presence in Ilfracombe and Tracey Emin in Margate.
But this one-time retirement town, cruelly labelled as God’s waiting room, is showing a range of signs that it is becoming a sophisticated, youthful metropolis by the sea. Some are even calling it Silicon Beach.
On the up, often just back from the bucket-and-spade prom, are myriad technology start-ups – the area has been named Britain’s fastest growing digital economy – as well as creative media companies servicing clients that include Hollywood studios.
There’s also a huge student milieu with two universities, co-working spaces, exotic restaurants, pop-up bars, artisan coffee shops, surfing and cycling cultures, a growing music scene and quirky, independent high-street shops, which gained the attention of The New York Times in June as the way forward for Britain’s version of America’s ailing Main Street.
Add what has been voted by Tripadvisor one of Europe’s top five beaches, and a solid backbone of financial companies that have set up here, a renowned symphony orchestra and a football team that’s been in the Premiership until recently, and you have quite the mix.
The area’s demographics have shifted radically. It still has among the UK’S highest proportion of elderly people; taxi drivers complain about the multitude of small cars on the crowded roads being driven slowly but erratically. At the same time, though, while towns across the country are ageing, Bournemouth is one of a handful that the statistics show is getting younger.
Of course, Bournemouth is not just one place but a string of connected towns – some old, some poor but bohemian, some plain rich – splurged across a wide bay with its famous seven miles of beach and a deep hinterland. In that sense, it’s almost like Los Angeles, minus the freeways and the crime. Which may be why people talk about it having “a Santa Monica vibe” – a phrase that Semple claims to have traced back to source.
“I got it from my friend Dhani Harrison, George’s son,” he says. “He came here to buy some of my work for his recording studio in LA and said it’s like Santa Monica. And when I went there, I realised it actually is – especially now that we have more tech companies than there.”
So how has Bournemouth and its surrounds arrived at such glamour in a way that, say, Scarborough or Blackpool signally haven’t? It’s not even that it’s a London-on-sea, like the more boho Brighton – it’s considerably further out. You can sometimes get from London to Sheffield quicker.
“It’s become primarily a young person’s place,” says former footballer Peter Tisdale, who partnered the Ted Baker founder Ray Kelvin in investing £80million to improve the town’s game. Both men, and a third partner, used to holiday in the resort as children.
“Even the retired people here aren’t all quite what you’d think,” Tisdale explains. He is speaking in a coffee bar in the old Bournemouth Echo newspaper office, a listed art deco hulk that Kelvin bankrolled and interior designed as a trendy 500-person tech start-up hub. The former fashion guru is also behind a glitzy new Hilton hotel overlooking the sea – the first luxury hotel built here in a century.
“We have what we call the young retired,” Tisdale says, “vigorous, fit people you see running on the beach, who’ve made their money and come down here for the lifestyle – but still have fingers in business pies.
“But the companies we deal with are parachuting in because there’s a huge number of talented graduates coming out of the universities who want to stay in the area. CEOS are competing to recruit them.
“So if they want pool tables and doughnuts delivered every morning, they get it. These graduates are looking for quality of life. You can walk out the door here at 5.30 and be on your surfboard at 5.45. And they can afford to live a good life. That’s why people like it. It’s a playground, but you’re working in a serious business with a national and international audience.”
A few metres up the street is Outpost VFX, one of the biggest visual effects companies, with up to 300 people working on films for Netflix, Amazon, Universal, HBO and Apple. What is striking about Outpost is that Bournemouth is its HQ; London, LA and Montreal are satellite offices.
Next is a small film company in a suburb, Winton. It’s where Georgina Hurcombe, a charismatic 37-year-old, set up Lovelove Films, now making 52 editions of its own new pre-school animation series. Aside from being an experienced TV producer, Hurcombe has become an advocate for the area, having been raised in rather different Dubai. She is a former Dorset Businesswoman of the Year, no less.
“It’s a lot like Australia here – beach barbies, nice dinners, boating, adventures, and being in touch with nature,” she says. “I’m told by young people it’s also a great nightclub scene.
“For some of our work, we’ve had people flying in from New York and San Francisco to film here. We take them to the beach for fish and chips and they love it.”
Close by is Podcast Labs, producing podcasts for clients around the world. Founders Kelly Butler and Andy James saw business explode during Covid; they are now upsizing for a second time in two years.
“There’s still a frontier spirit,” says Butler. “We’ve often met up on the beach with competitors we’ve been pitching against during the day and are paddleboarding together after work. I don’t think that happens a lot in London or LA.”
They’ll be sharing the building they’re moving into with exfootballer Jamie Redknapp’s recycled fashion brand, Sandbanks, and a celebrity photographer. “We’re always coming across companies in the creative field and being surprised they’re in Bournemouth,” Butler says.
“There’s a spirit here among the younger people that if something doesn’t exist in Bournemouth, they’ll go and make it,” adds James. “It could be a business or a beach event. So while I still think we’re lacking quite a bit here, new things are starting.”
Last stop is yet another expanding Bournemouth media business. This one, Treehouse Digital, is moving into a hangar-sized studio on an industrial estate in nearby Poole. It doesn’t look glamorous next to a company dealing in “human waste disposal solutions”, but the serious end of the film business is often done in humdrum surroundings.
It’s run by three local young men who used to play as children in a treehouse and dream of working in films. They now specialise in a field called virtual production.
“We grew up watching behindthe-scenes documentaries about Hollywood and thinking: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we had a company like that one day?’ Now we do, and we haven’t had to leave our home town,” says partner Peter Stanley-ward. “It’s great to bring clients like Netflix and Amazon Studios here. These days, when we speak to people in other big production centres like LA and Montreal, they immediately know Bournemouth and relate it to quality work in film.”
To think that bored teenagers used to wear T-shirts that proclaimed their town “the penultimate destination”.
Now it’s Bournemouth 2.0.
‘As other UK towns are ageing, this is one of a handful that is getting younger’
‘People fly in from San Francisco. We take them to the beach for fish and chips’