The Deloitte Consumer Review "Reinventing the
role of the high street" just released states that "while many have
proclaimed the ‘end of the high street’, the high
street will continue to be an important place where innovative,
consumer-focused businesses will grow and thrive."
BUT make no mistake the High Street is
changing – and its changing reality will need to be announced with some skill
to townsfolk across the UK. What they
have previously experienced will transform inexorably from the retail focussed
day-time only space to an increasingly 24/7 environment, where health,
education, leisure, and public service delivery will nestle alongside the downsized
commercial premises of retail. A substantial change is coming to towns and
cities across the UK – an unprecedented change for over five hundred years.
A crucial part of seeing growth rather than
decline in the high street will be an innovative approach to building community
and consumer commitment in the centre of our towns. With the high street moving ‘Beyond
Retail’, high streets will have to
develop new strategies and new 'branding' methods to enhance social interaction, develop new narratives connecting community
history with cultural and commercial opportunity, whilst thinking hard about how services old and new can be announced to and efficiently accessed
by residents, visitors and an increasingly diverse local population. There is an unprecedented
opportunity to dust down forgotten treasures, establish some new narratives
around community identities and build foot-fall beyond the traditional confines
of fresh fruit and vegetables.
This is where there is a wonderful
opportunity for local councils, town centre managers and local businesses to
employ the services of film makers and story tellers with dvd, apps, and pod
casts. This is what is so exciting
about the work which we are part of at Ibixproductions assisting the
imaginative repositioning of the high street and a town’s unique take on its
history and future possibilities. Whether it be helping towns think through how
they can develop commercial potential through the Arts, with festivals, dance, music, history, sculpture, or
increased public access to forgotten legacies, our work at Ibixproductions is
never short of challenge but always full of a wonderful sense of community
pride when the work is done and the people come.
The work of rebuilding the high street is a
genuinely public task. At
IbixProductions we are privileged to be at the creative end of delivering the
stuff of dreams and turning them into reality.
Our film making is steeped with local reality, talent and an appreciation
of the rich legacy of the community in people, building and stories. See some of the work which we have already
undertaken in this area on www.ibixproductions.co.uk. It is the imaginative space which is built
for people to celebrate their high street and their town as a vital, dynamic
place – which is every bit as important as the bricks and mortar but so often
neglected. It is the stories which we
tell ourselves which encourage us to be proud to call our town home, a place where we
are delighted to spend our time and pleased to build enduring supportive
relationships. It is this space which is
an essential component of a thriving town and a vibrant high street, and which
is a real privilege to be part of building.
