NORTHUMBERLAND ATTRACTIONS ASSOCIATION

MINUTES from 20th April 2015 at Heighley Gate, Morpeth, NE61 3DA

Present Natalie Wood - Tourism Judith Draycroft – Bailiffgate Museum Rachel Williamson - Northumberland Tourism Adrian Drake – Heighley Gate Keith Merrin – Woodhorn Sarah Tait – Heighley Gate Elspeth Gilliland - Ford & Etal Estates Ellen Glover – Cragside Chris Calvert – Zoe Christoper – Sanderson Arcade Lynn Turner – and Forest Collin Galloway – Vindolanda Trust Nigel Walsh – Active Northumberland

Apologies Emily Till – Medi Parry – Sanderson Arcade Justine James – Seaton Delval Hall Jenny Ramsey – Kirkley Hall Zoo Christine Billany – Carriages Shane Harris – North Pennines AONB Julie Thomson – Wallington Karen Lovatt – Whitehouse Farm Centre James Fell – Active Northumberland Fiona Teasdale – Whitehouse Farm Centre Charlie Pears-Wallace – Northumberland Cheese

MINUTES ACTION Welcome & Introductions

Welcome to new and returning members, introductions from all.

Review of minutes from last minutes.

Going forward from this meeting onwards the agenda will be more structured – each meeting will now try to reflect what issues people wish to know more information about and more topics that individuals want to discuss.

Grants/Funding Opportunities

DEFRA European funding for rural businesses will soon be available. This will be for business development and strategic development. All of Northumberland is now classed as ‘rural’ with the exception of a small area in Cramlington. Meetings about this funding are due to happen. More information to follow at the next meeting.

Opportunities for Cross Promotion

Wild Northumberland is the current marketing campaign ongoing at Northumberland Tourism. Everyone is invited to get involved on social media using the hashtag #WildNland. Wild Northumberland covers a wide range of areas: life, landscape, history. Northumberland Tourism is always looking for new content and blogs so if you would like to submit one, or know someone who would, just get in touch with [email protected] . This campaign will continue throughout the summer. New marketing proposals will be ready soon for Autumn.

Tour of Britain

Natalie from Northumberland Tourism has all of the briefing documents, regarding route information, available for the Tour of Britain from Zoe at Culture Creative. These will go on the corporate website in due course. Potential ideas on how to celebrate the race are: red and yellow painted bicycles to decorate towns, widow decorations, bunting, artwork, flowers; all of which should have a red and yellow theme. If anyone has any other ideas please bring them up at the next meeting. Kielder preparations are still in the early stages. They plan to get businesses involved to do deals for holidays and encourage people to visit the Kielder area with their bikes whilst they are following TOB.

Ford and Etal are attending a briefing at the Cheviot Centre in Wooler for more information on TOB. Handles Bards theatre group will be at Ford and Etal in August, they may possibly be involved in celebrations.

Heighley Gate hope to do a competition relating to TOB, possibly to see how many bikes they can gather and decorate then spread across Northumberland.

James Fell from Active Northumberland and Zoe from Culture Creative will be organising and dressing the route. NCC will be organising the road closure. It may be an RRO (rolling road closure) where permission is granted where any road across the county can be shut. NCC will try and identify the best spots to view the race and issue a code of conduct for spectators. It may be like the torch relay where signs are put lampposts to advise spectators where the best viewing points are.

Email [email protected] for more information on all things Tour of Britain.

Northumberland Tourism and NCC/Active Northumberland Strategic Agenda External Speakers: Nigel Walsh

Various changes are ongoing at NCC. Staffing and services will be delivered differently around Culture, Heritage and Libraries.

Active Northumberland Council has had to review their non statutory services. 160 million has been saved since 2009. Going forward for 2015-2017 a further 44 million is planned to be saved by Northumberland County Council.

The Northumberland County Council budget was announced in February. From 01/04/15 NCC has now transferred all of the Culture, Heritage and Libraries teams to Active Northumberland which was set up in 2004 to support leisure services in Blyth Valley. NCC will be the principle funder of Active Northumberland. All staff have undergone a TUPE transfer. Because Active Northumberland is a charity they will receive aid relief on buildings. The aim of this move is to protect services and cross fund various facilities under Active Northumberland. The advantages of this are that all cultural services are now fully integrated. Property of council buildings have been leased to AN. All leisure centres are now ran by Active Northumberland which means things like membership schemes can now be rolled out.

Property Since 2009 NCC have been trying to rationalise buildings. It was recently announced that buildings will be rationalised over nine specific towns. It is aspired that £3.4 million can be saved across services. Many council services have been operating from outdated buildings. Plans are in place but anything can happen. NCC endeavour to invest in buildings if it will save money in the long term.

Key Town Changes:

Alnwick: Alnwick Playhouse will be converted into a customer facing hub which will accommodate the library, TIC and customer services. Negotiations are ongoing at Alnwick Playhouse as it is part owned by Northumberland Theatre Company.

Ashington: This is where NCC plans to relocate its headquarters to. The new leisure centre opens in October this year which contains a library. Plans going forward could see the library operating in a new way.

Berwick: The TIC will leave their current location at the end of the season and move temporarily into the library. Plans are in place to move the TIC, library, records and heritage offering into The Maltings. This is an aspiration at present. New council offices are also planned to be built in Berwick.

Blyth: Customer services will leave Keel Row Shopping Centre and move to the library. The library will be seen as a hub for information.

Cramlington: Library will be leaving their current building and moving into Concordia along with customer services.

Morpeth: The library is in a poor state and is unfortunately too expensive to fix. The library will move into The Chantry alongside the heritage offer. An architect is involved with the process.

Ponteland: Focus is on schools, library and leisure. A new leisure complex will be will be built and a new library. Amble: No definite plans are in place. Amble TIC could be relocated to the harbour.

Newbiggin: New library to be built with accommodation above.

Seahouses: The TIC building is not owned by NCC. The TIC is in a key location. Discussions are ongoing.

Craster: No plans.

There are some significant changes planned but everything is subject to discussion with partners.

NCC have commissioned an investigation into Tourist/Visitor information that Stacey Hall is overseeing. Council is looking at how to take Visitor Information forward over the next 10 years.

Timescale: 6 months for Morpeth/Berwick/Hexham plans to be finalised. We are lucky not to be losing any unlike many other areas across the country. It’s very positive but services will need to be run differently. Tourism is one of the biggest growing sectors in the council and NCC wants to support that.

Northumberland Tourism

The Destination Management Plan is now out. The brochure is available now and the full plan is available online. If you have any ideas or questions please forward them to Natalie or Jude.

Lynn Turner asked how these plans will be implemented and if a group is in place to do so. Natalie explained that things are changing at Northumberland Tourism. Rachel Williamson recently joined the team as their new Sales and Office Administrator so will be taking over a lot of Natalie’s workload. Natalie will discuss with Jude what the best way is moving forward regarding the implementation of the DMP. Lynn mentioned that it may be useful to see where things are strategically and see what areas of the plan are being acted upon and what areas are being missed out. It should be addressed how we collectively move forward with the plan. Attractions have lots of responsibility within the DMP and it would be helpful to discuss as a group what areas different people can deliver on in regards to the DMP.

Business Needs and Issues for Group Discussion

It was mentioned previously that businesses are interested in looking into admission charges. If attractions are willing to submit information regarding their admission charges Natalie at NT will be happy to collate the information. Lynn asked if it became a large scale project would funding be available from external funders?

Bamburgh Castle reported that they have raised their OAP ticket age to 65+. Family tickets are “Any 2 adults with 3 children” which acts as a saving even if the adult tickets were at an OAP rate. This takes into account the fact that many Grandparents take their Grandchildren to these attractions.

Attractions are invited to send over their admission charges information to Natalie who will collate the data ready for the next meeting should it all be returned.

Northumberland Tourism Update:

New stats show January-March – 83% attractions reporting an increase compared to this time last year of 62%.

Some attractions have opened earlier this year and are looking to extend seasons. Natalie creates a business barometer every month which the NT board uses these figures to monitor the work of NT, this is all available on the corporate site. It includes interesting statistics which may be of interest.

Due to a new reporting mechanism Natalie has collated some new data regarding accommodation searches through Visit Northumberland. Length and area of searches can now be tracked. Recent stats showed that 50% of people searching for accommodation are looking for that month alone which makes for very interesting reading.

Travel Trade

Chris Calvert from Bamburgh Castle recently attended BoBI. The event was an improvement on last year and going forward will be called ‘British Tourism and Travel Show’. The Visit England event at Ascot was a success and offered a speed dating type experience for attendees. Chris has travel trade events in place for the year ahead, two of which are in September. Explore Northumberland group are in the process of redesigning the show stand with funding received.

Going forward NT plans to have a travel trade page on their website and a quarterly newsletter is planned. Feedback from a VE event showed that information should be digestible and relevant so the planned newsletter may be sent out as and when information is relevant. A meeting will be organised by Natalie to bring everyone together to look at what we need to do and what help the county needs. Moving forward there needs to be a county strategy to resolve all issues and aim to help travel trade in Northumberland. Keith Merrin seconded this and thought that a meeting regarding these issues was a good plan going forward.

Quality

Woodhorn recently sent staff to the Meet the Maker Meet The Buyer event organised by Dawn Goodwill Evans at ActiveNorthumberland/NCC. Through that Woodhorn made many contacts and are now running a food fayre because of it.

The event offers the opportunity for buyers to meet a wide range of food, drink, art and craft providers from Northumberland. This will hopefully help to expand on the food and drink offer in Northumberland as well as making businesses aware of local suppliers.

Know Your Northumberland (Active Northumberland/NCC): 2 members of staff from NT are attending all of these events and have found them extremely useful as a source to build knowledge. You receive a logo that can be used on your branding should you attend the courses. Certificates are also available in conjunction with Northumberland College, should you complete a certain number of courses. For more information please contact Sarah Davidson at Active Northumberland/NCC.

Dark Skies: Awards are available now for dark sky friendly businesses. Dark Sky Friendly: Allowing visitors to have late/early check ins, catering for their needs in relation to star gazing events. Dark Sky Stay and Gaze: For businesses who hold events at their accommodation and cater for star gazers. Star Makers: people are trained in star gazing and are available to hire for events – their information is available through the NT corporate website.

Discovery Sites: Many sites can be registered as dark sky discovery sites. Anyone can submit the application. Application asks for dark sky readings. For more information contact Duncan Wise at Northumberland National Park who is now a member of the IDA. Holding Dark Sky events can be a great new option for expanding the season.

Business Trends

Kielder Water and Forest 10% up on last year. Currently working with Northumberland Tourism to increase accommodation bookings. It is now clear that Kielder gets visitors right across the year, not just in the peak summer season. Kielder are planning to add to the current observatory offer: a planetarium and new telescope which would be the largest publically accessible telescope in the world. Plans are ongoing.

Visit Northumberland Natalie is currently gathering occupancy figures from accommodation providers. This helps to give us context between accommodation and attraction figures in the shoulder season. Rachel has recently joined the team in the role of Sales and Office Administrator. Tender will be going out this week for the holiday guide and bedroom browser. NT is looking at different options for the bedroom browser, possibly something harder wearing. Natalie brought along the unofficial Kingfisher Press bedroom browser. NT prints 20 thousand copies and does not have funds to print one of the quality produced by Kingfisher Press. Natalie encouraged businesses to buy advertising in the official bedroom browser in order to advertise their business as the distribution area is much wider and the guide is 100% official. Chris and Elspeth seconded this.

Woodhorn It’s been a busy few months at Woodhorn with the Lego- Brick Planet exhibition. They reported their busiest February on record. Miners Picnic is set for June 13th. Berwick Museum benefited from the Burrell collection being on show at the Granary Gallery. Hexham Gaol reported their busiest year.

Ford and Etal Attraction opened in February for three days. First time they have done this so was very exciting. Not overly busy but a very positive step forward and will do the same again next year. Busy Easter in particularly the Sunday due to the fine weather. They named their new steam train on Easter Sunday – Binky. Good Friday was quiet due to weather. Heatherslaw 9-10 May will have half price entry in line with the National Mills event. It is their 40th anniversary this year so will have 40 days of offers planned for later in the year. Lady Waterford hall will be home to new artists over the summer season. The Heavy Horse event will also be back in Etal 7 June.

Vindolanda Closed during January due to cafe refurbishment. This has made a difference to the spend per head. 12% up on last year. Busiest March since 1982. Busy Easter. Lots of press coverage helped for Easter figures. Whit Week events: Roman Potter and find handling. Excavations are also ongoing.

Cragside Attraction offered free entry over the February half term. Busy over Easter due to good weather. Cragside are working with Culture Creative to plan events over the summer. Each week will be themed with mud week and tree week as some examples. The opening of the musical box in the labyrinth is scheduled for 23rd May.

Baliffgate The site is volunteer ran but hired their first full time operations manager who will hopefully doing lots of new things around marketing. Their annual craft fair was a success and they currently have a good position on trip advisor.

Heighley Gate Reports from Jan/Feb/March show figures are down. Experienced a good Easter due to the fine weather. Second week in April was almost record breaking. Currently supporting Morpeth In Bloom and have helped KEVI in creating gardens as well as helping a school in . Wildlife week event planned.

Bamburgh Just under 10% up on previous year. Bamburgh was open on weekends over the winter season – good figures. Easter figures are up. Starting to pick up numbers from recent publicity in a children’s programme. Lots of excellent free media coverage on BBC weather, Telegraph and Daily Mail. Chris encouraged people to support the Northumberland Tourism bedroom brochure in order to support the local economy.

Sanderson Arcade Up like for like 7% on footfall. Good Easter especially on the Saturday which was their busiest Easter Saturday so far. Upcoming events are an all day fashion show on June 6th and the 3rd Food and Drink Festival on Oct 3rd which Sanderson Arcade take the lead on. The event is expanding massively and it is planned that Bridge Street will be shut for the day with vendors lining the street. Farmers and Wednesday market are at full capacity.

Any Other Business

Tales From Northumberland Discussions are in place for a 3rd series, currently looking for ideas of a quirky nature. Viewing figures were excellent. Please send ideas though to Paul Nichol/Sarah Davidson at Active Northumberland.

Apologies from Justine James @ Seaton Delaval Hall Sorry to miss the event. SDH had an excellent Easter due to being featured on More Tales from Northumberland. No building work is taking place at the moment so they are really focussing on the attraction as a whole. They are currently tendering for major funding to develop the site.

Filming Beowulf – ITV – Filming on Bamburgh. Woodhorn experienced good exposure in Vera over the miners’ strike.

Salvage Hunters – Bamburgh Castle featured, due out in May.

If anyone would like to send information on filming at their site please send it to Northumberland Tourism who can display in on their website.

Next Meeting: Date: 6th July 2015 Location: Seaton Delaval Hall, The Avenue, Seaton Sluice, NE26 4QR Guest Speakers: Jude Leitch – EFRID funding