This is the slideshow I gave at the Sheriff’s Commission yesterday. The 17 words show what I thought were the differentiation in a world class attraction – and this is explored in photographs. The show finishes with some ideas about how we might transfer some of the ideas to Nottingham We are welcoming comments!
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About Tim GARRATT
Chartered Surveyor based in Nottingham UK. Shareholding Director of Innes England - commercial property consultants. Co-Chairman of Abel Collins Almshouses in Nottingham. Board member of Nottingham Regeneration Limited. Member of the Sheriffs Commission Advisory Panel. Director of Aspley Hall Estates Ltd.
View all posts by Tim GARRATT
October 19th, 2009 at 09:22
I’ve been mulling things over since Friday, and therefore it was really good to have another look at your presentation.
The 17 words are powerful and are an excellent starting point. I think that we should bear these in mind as we look at attractions closer to home. Our Robin Hood experience is to be castle centric and so I wonder what is on offer from the current UK castle experiences. A mixed bag, probably. However, friends from Kent tell me that the Henry II focus at the recently refurbished Dover Castle is stunning. We can compare this with castles such as Warwick, Edinburgh and Cardiff where there’s been significant investment to create experiences where myth and legend share centre stage with evidenced historical facts. I think it will be necessary to broaden the Robin Hood story so that we can include historical facts – Ted’s initial thoughts on Rebellion (Chartist movement, Civil War, Corn Act riots etc) – is one example that would give our experience more facts and substance and the uniqueness that we’re looking for.
This summer I visited the Tower of London to view the Henry VIII armoury, which was stunning. I was reminded again elsewhere on the Tower site how interpretation boards can get round having little evidence for well-known stories (eg the young Princes killed in the Tower). Personally, I found this very disappointing, but it doesn’t seem to put people off. Later in the summer I visited the British Library to see the Richard Starkey curated exhibition about Henry VIII. The ‘connectivity’ between the Tower of London, the British Library and Hampton Court was very strong and heavily promoted at each venue and elsewhere with joint tickets and offers. I have no doubt that if something can be connected right across London and the south east, then we can link something similar with Robin Hood/Rebellion throughout the city and county.
Finally your comment about volunteers. We had absolutely no problem in getting volunteers to turn up to help at the cricket matches at Trent Bridge this summer. If we offer something that people are excited and proud about, then they turn up.
November 21st, 2009 at 20:40
[...] The wave looks like this will address this issue with threads and multi-media. It will act as ‘normal email’ but relies more on a collaborative working style. I have to say that at the launch I thought the presentation given by the Google team was fairly dire! Ignoring the fact that it is 80 minutes loooooong! I guess I have become accustomed to the master of launches – Steve Jobs. Tips from his presentation have been recently published here – and are absolutely spot on. (I have tried to use his style in my own work – including in my presentation to the Sheriffs Commission here) [...]
November 30th, 2009 at 08:27
[...] I was in the USA with the Sheriff of Nottingham looking at world class attractions we found that a food offer was a really important element of the attraction – good and bad [...]
December 8th, 2009 at 20:05
[...] of the ideas seen in the USA on our tour was how volunteers helped run places (The Getty Museum in LA has 600!). We should think about this [...]
December 23rd, 2009 at 23:47
[...] celebrate the capture of Robin Hood! I must confess to not knowing that! But another connection to Robin Hood for the [...]
December 24th, 2009 at 14:52
[...] findings of our trip to the USA when I attempted to distill what made a world class attraction into 17 words. I chose the theme on the back of a Daniel Libeskind talk. This was always going to be a challenge [...]
February 9th, 2010 at 08:33
[...] I actually visited the walk of Fame when I was in the USA with the Sheriff of Nottingham last September. You might have seen previous blogs about the trip. The summary is here. [...]
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:03
[...] So the pressure is on to get a presentation together. Some of the work I have done before about the lessons we learned from the USA trip is really [...]
April 10th, 2010 at 08:44
[...] also think that there is a clever attraction here. When we looked at world class attractions in the USA with the Sheriff of Nottingham, one of the the features we found was ‘views’. These [...]
April 11th, 2010 at 13:35
[...] I was in San Francisco with the Sheriff of Nottingham last year we hired Segways for three hours and went on an amazing [...]
May 10th, 2010 at 09:24
[...] went to America with Leon last year in search of world class attractions as I blogged about. I think my lasting memory was of Leon’s ability to talk to people – everywhere [...]
July 5th, 2010 at 08:41
[...] used 17 words to describe out USA trip, but for Alton Towers I need just [...]
July 27th, 2010 at 08:38
[...] was back in ‘world class visitor‘ mode – and my initial impressions were good. The coffee shop was quite reasonable [...]