Thursday 12 July 2012

Falmouth BID Updates


Events activity and the BID’s involvement
As I’ve mentioned before, the BID is involved in funded or extensively supporting all Falmouth’s main festivals:

Pendennis Cup – BID provided PR support, working with Pendennis to gain further national coverage for the event and Falmouth. Several national journalists were down as a result, with good national coverage to follow.

SPLASH 2012 – the new BID organised and funded creative festival is really taking shape. Over 12 authors including several national award winners supporting the Book Festival, award winning plays across the town, leading south west artists creating light and sound installations and nationally important exhibitions. Look out for colourful bus shelter adverts, 20,000 A5 flyers to follow early Aug, A4 window posters for businesses first week Aug and a 16 page guide nearer the event. All this backed up by extensive PR effort to promote the Festival and of course Falmouth. So far local coverage in the Packet and West Briton with more to follow over the next few week. You can listen to a Radio Cornwall interview here and view the schedule here

Fal Week – BID is giving extensive support to enable this key Festival to develop further. Liaising with Pubs United, BID will be supporting a comprehensive Music on the Moor event.

Oyster Festival –BID will be giving PR support which will ensure maximum national and regional coverage. In addition we are currently looking at ways to support via new activities in other parts of the town

Website
An update on Falmouth.co.uk, the BID funded and managed website for Falmouth of course. The official destination website for the town with consistently over 25,000 unique hits per month. As a BID business, you are eligible for a FREE page, another benefit which if you had to pay would be £200 per year. So if you haven’t take up this offer I would encourage you to do so as it is an excellent way to further promote your business. We have meetings later this week to map out future development to further secure its position over the next three years. The website is a huge marketing asset for the town so I would urge you to take advantage of it!

Sarah Newton meeting
Another reminder that we have been co-ordinating with Sarah Newton’s office to arrange another session with Sarah to discuss issues such as business rates. This session will be taking place on Thursday 19th July 3.30pm in the Council Chambers on The Moor

Car parking
To reiterate Richard Gates’s comments thank you for your responses. We will be reviewing all the feedback and taking this to meetings with Cornwall Council in the near future.

Wednesday 4 July 2012

Falmouth BID Updates


Independents Day
Today is retail Independents Day, which was set up by Skillsmart Retail and the National Skills Academy for Retail in 2011 to highlight and promote the diversity and quality of independent retailing in our town centres. A promotional campaign encourages people to buy at least one item from an independent outlet today and ties in of course with some of themes and ethos of the Mary Portas High St Review that Richard Gates and I have had discussions on and been involved in.

Falmouth, Mary Portas and Town Management
Many of you will have seen coverage on ITV Westcountry, local press and radio of Richard Gate’s very productive trip to Westminster last week to represent Falmouth in further national high street discussions. This was followed up yesterday on BBC Spotlight with a different angle, focussing on the fact that Falmouth also has a BID. The story is here:


FAL Week
Richard Gates is driving forward with Fal Week preparations and the BID will be offering substantive support. Funding will support promotion, an exciting Music on the Moor event and PR.

SPLASH 2012
The latest BID funded and organised festival is now gathering pace and you may have seen some early media coverage. Bus shelter posters, flyers, window posters for businesses and a guide will shortly follow. PR will be developed to ensure as much coverage locally and regionally as possible to push Falmouth and encourage people into the town. The schedule is here – SPLASH 2012
J Class Regatta
Despite less than the best weather, this proved to be a wonderful event and a superb sight on the water. Four of the most impressive yachts in the world under full sail right here in Falmouth.  We’ve had good feedback from the crews who had a very good experience in Falmouth. For those who haven’t seen them, some images are here: J Class Regatta images