‘City tourism needs to find its Gruffalo!’
WHAT’S your Gruffalo? When asked to provide an overview of tourism in Stoke-on-trent ahead of the Midlands Engine All-party Parliamentary Group’s meeting on the region’s visitor economy and subsequently contributing to the government’s independent review of Destination Management Organisations, I found myself reflecting on the fictional beast with knobbly knees we all love.
As many will know, The Gruffalo is a bestselling giant of modern children’s literature; a picture book that shows how bravery and a little inventiveness can be helpful attributes in overcoming fairly challenging obstacles.
Having often read the fictional adventure that teaches readers to respect imagination, it was hearing a presentation by the chief executive of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions back in 2018 when I first started to think about how tourism in the city needed to ‘find its Gruffalo’.
Given that the success of tourism marketing lies in effective storytelling, this meant exploring how we might use the ‘Gruffalo formula’ to make cultural tourism more accessible by unusual partnerships.
Because the impetus for cultural tourism can sometimes come from unexpected sources, aligning with unusual partners to harness the Potteries’ many cultural assets, heritage attractions and curated arts programmes was considered key to unlocking potential.
Culture and tourism have enjoyed a love-hate relationship over many years. Notwithstanding that cultural organisations are often happy to receive visitors’ spending, they tend to be less enthusiastic about marketing themselves as attractions.
Similarly, it’s claimed the tourism industry has been slow to respond to the needs of the cultural sector as they come to terms with the changing landscape.
And yet it’s well known that resident audiences and visitors do not differentiate between cultural activities and the broader tourism offer, which is why the worlds of culture and tourism must cultivate productive relationships.
A key feature of the city’s Cultural Destinations ‘connecting culture and the visitor economy’ programme has been its ability to bring together partners, provide leadership and strategic direction, embed new ways of working together, coordinate skills development and training, grow digital capacity, increase networking and promote collaborative engagement within and between arts, culture, tourism and destination management organisations.
By investing in new products, targeted campaigns and telling fresh stories, Cultural Destinations has increased the diversification of audiences and those experiencing arts and culture, boosted the local visitor economy, and helped culture and tourism organisations to become more resilient, sustainable and future-proofed.
The Arts Council’s director of strategic partnerships highlights the importance of culture’s ‘shapeshifting’ role in helping to change, transform and disrupt places like Stoke-on-trent while simultaneously growing tourism and improving place perceptions.
When launching the Cultural Destinations national evaluation report, the Arts Council reiterated the benefits of nurturing crosssector networks and in turn working with local strategic decision-makers to keep cultural tourism partnerships going beyond the life of the programme.
Considered to be a real testament to the contribution that culture can play in making a destination somewhere that people want to visit, this is also considered important in ensuring that great cultural opportunities continue to be made more accessible to more people.
Although cultural tourism businesses are part of a wider ecosystem that collectively make up a destination, I appreciate that culture is about so much more than tourism.
The Local Government Association’s view is that culture is who we are. It is our heritage and future, it is how we live our lives and express our identities.
It is art, music, film, dance, literature, fashion, exhibitions, festivals, the built environment, design, even gaming.
In the Potteries, it’s also the globally recognised art form we call ceramics.
But there’s no escaping the fact that as well as helping to position Stoke-on-trent as a welcoming, distinctive and attractive ‘liveable’ place, it provides the inspiration to drive the creative and visitor economy.
Rather than tinkering around the edges as we look to powerup the city, it’s imperative that culture and tourism remain enduring partners rather than being left to become reluctant bedfellows again.
A refresh of existing strategies should be carefully curated, coherently aligned with broader place ambitions and underpinned with appropriate investment to ensure that ‘potential unfulfilled’ is not the defining place story for the small but mighty Stoke-on-trent.