Tagungsort Grand Hotel Heiligendamm

to create small businesses focussed on the arts.
The Beautiful People
A by-product of this initiative is that people
from the cultural community want to furnish
their homes in a distinctive way and buy second
hand clothes in a number of retro shops
that have been created in previously derelict
buildings in the old town. I visit the town every
3 months and on each occasion I am impressed
by the pace of the improvement and
the general progress being made. But beautiful
people also want practical services:
High Speed Train
They want to be able to get to and from London
quickly and the opening recently of the
high speed rail link between St Pancras and
Margate has transformed what was once a
horrible, long and uncomfortable trip into a
shorter, almost pleasurable journey.
Other towns have recognised that the arts can
play a key role in regenerating a resort or key
parts of the town. At Folkestone in Kent its
High Street has become home to a number
of small businesses focussed on the cultural
sector.
Jerwood Collection
At Hastings the creation of a gallery to house
the Jerwood collection has recently been realised.
The Jerwood Foundation was established
in 1977 by its Chairman, Alan Grieve, for
John Jerwood, an international businessman
and philanthropist. The Foundation makes
strategic capital grants to support the arts and
collection of 20th and 21st century works of
art.
Hastings Gallery
To help with the creation of the Gallery,
CABE contributed £2m to provide an artist
designed piazza, performance space and cultural
community centre, enhancing the new Jerwood
Gallery in the seafront area of the Old
Town. The Gallery’s austere, geometric, black
the nearby wooden netlofts, key features of
the historic environment and a testimony to
the working history of Hastings’ beach-laun-
Rhyl and Morecambe
vestment
though funds from local and county
councils, CABE, the former Regional Development
Agencies, which were abolished in
2010, English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery
Fund, has helped to create new attractions
to visit and have created an improved public
realm at many resorts around the English
coastline, but there is more work to do and
there is a need to get the private sector involved
in investing in a town’s future.
At Rhyl and Morecambe large public investment
has been put into recreating their seafronts
and works of art, especially at Morecambe,
have a central role in this. But behind the
seafront there are towns in desperate need of
further investment to improve individual properties
and provide new businesses and there
private investment, and with the contraction
that is taking place in the public purse, there is
less money for councils and national bodies to
invest in resorts.
Costa Del Dorset
England will not in my lifetime be challenging
Spain or Italy in the hot beach holiday market,
but investment in resorts, their facilities and
features that make them special, will help to
retain and increase their market. The arts and
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