Penzance, a coastal town and port in southwest England, is looking to revive its local economy with a prospective modern creative industries center on its high street, after a severe blow to its tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The center, which will cost 5.8 million pounds (about 7.4 million U.S. dollars) to construct, is to provide studio space for small and medium sized enterprises in the industry.
“It will be a focal point, which is really important. If you can imagine how many people will not just be in the creative industries center working and renting the space, but visiting and using it — it could be hundreds of people,” Cornwall Councillor for Penzance East and Cabinet Member for Economy and Planning Tim Dwelly, told Xinhua.
The idea is to have an area where creatives can work together and share ideas, allowing them to build a platform to work on larger, more financially rewarding, projects.
“We knew from research that the Penzance area is one of the clusters of creative industries around the UK, but they’re all dotted around. Lots of amazing people, filmmakers, app creators, actors all around this area. It’s a very creative area, but there was nothing bringing them all together,” Dwelly said.
It may sound a small development on a national level, but in a town that has been struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic due to a drop in tourism, this investment could be key to boosting the local economy and become a model for other coastal towns around the country to follow, as many try to find new industries and ways of income in a post-COVID economy.
“We also wanted to breathe more life into the top of this street,” Dwelly told Xinhua.
“What we’re planning to do is look for different ways to do town center vitality…we’re going to be having more housing in the town center,” he added.
Like many coastal communities, the economy of Penzance has suffered from the decline of traditional industries such as fishing, mining and agriculture.
Over the last two decades, light industrial, tourism and retail businesses have played a larger part in the town’s economy. But due to those industries relying heavily on the flow of people through the town, the lockdown and its knock-on effect have had a significant impact.
“We are a very vibrant town, and we’ve got some great hidden gems. But even before COVID-19 (pandemic) it was always a struggle — people don’t earn enough,” Dwelly said.
For the last 10 years, Penzance has been working on establishing itself as a “superfast” broadband location. Dwelly played a key part in trying to establish Cornwall as an area of sound connectivity.
“Now, we’ve got fibre all over Cornwall…That of course makes it easier to work remotely,” he said.
Their vision was to pull in more people looking to leave the city and settle in a rural area, allowing them to be able to work from home.
Due to the lockdown changing the working habits of many people across the country, forcing them to work from home, the investment in fast internet could really aid Cornwall in being a hotspot for these rural-life seekers in the future.
Due to the COVID-19 lockdown, almost half of the tourism season in Britain is now lost. The national tourist board VisitBritain has estimated a 22 billion pounds (about 28 billion dollars) shortfall in spending on domestic tourism this year compared with the last year.
For towns like Penzance, whose economy largely relies on income from tourism, it has meant that they have had to start looking for alternative means of getting money into the town.
“We can’t just do tourism, in fact Penzance as a market town is now not an overtly tourist town…we’d like people to come and stay out of season, and spend a bit of time here not just in the summer,” Dwelly said.
He believes that towns should look to work on other strengths that they have, whether that be in the creative industry, financial or manufacturing, so that it can be an alternative means of income for the economy.
“We could show other coastal towns that with Penzance…we came together, and we all worked together with lots of organisations to try to do things,” Dwelly said, noting that identifying and investing in these people, and creating a space for them to collaborate is key.
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