Unpacking Your Place: high street action planning workshops
Our Unpacking Your Place workshops get local place leaders to talk about the future of their town centre and plot practical actions.
Unpacking Your Place participants in Hexham on the post-workshop walking tour
In a nutshell
A workshop underway in Malmesbury. Photograph by Graham Soult
It was fantastic to have a nationally recognised expert take time with us and for our local business community to respond so positively to the session.
Unpacking Your Place is an engaging and interactive high street action planning workshop.
The three-hour, in-person format, developed by CannyInsights.com, draws from our many years of working on the ground in high streets across the UK, as well as from Graham Soult’s experience as a High Streets Task Force Expert during the 2019-24 timeline of that project.
Unpacking Your Place is used by towns that want to gain objective, expert insight into their challenges and opportunities, while also bringing together the place leaders – including council, business and community representatives – who have the power, working together, to achieve positive change right now.
It gets people to think and talk about what the future of their town centre might look like, and to plot the practical actions needed to make that happen.
It was great to simply gather all these people together in one room, face to face and to be able to discuss issues openly. There was a real buzz in the room. There is so much positivity and goodwill in the town and by working together we have a real chance to bring about positive change.
Each workshop is led by nationally known retail consultant Graham Soult, who is recognised as one of the UK’s foremost experts on high-street issues.
1. Set the scene
Setting the scene in Malmesbury
Graham sets the scene by discussing the prevailing high-street trends, drawing from his work across the UK, and introducing some of the strategic frameworks promoted by the Institute of Place Management, of which Graham is an elected Fellow.
For those managing their town centres, these frameworks – including the 25 priorities for improving “vitality and viability”, and the ‘4Rs’ of regeneration (repositioning, reinventing, rebranding, and restructuring) – can help make sense of the change that is taking place, and inform and underpin plans for place transformation.
We also present our own “R-E-V-A-M-P-S” strategic framework, which underpins all our Unpacking Your Place activity, and focuses on seven “ingredients of high street success” that can be influenced at the local level.
2. Discuss desk research
Presenting the desk research in Malmesbury
Graham goes on to present some initial desk research – that we conduct prior to the workshop – to show how the town is currently portrayed, through its digital footprint, to potential visitors and investors.
This process can often reveal surprising findings. Discussion of what the desk research shows is then used to help inspire and inform possible future interventions.
3. Strengths, opportunities and challenges
Discussing strengths, opportunities and challenges in Malmesbury
This leads on to the main part of the session, discussing the current strengths, opportunities and challenges within the town centre in question, and what kind of place all the participants would like their town to be in the years to come.
By focusing both on how things are now and where participants wish them to be in the future, it raises the questions of “What needs to happen for us to get there?” and “Who needs to work together to make it happen?”
4. Action points
Discussing actions in Malmesbury
Finally, the session seeks to distil the key themes into a series of agreed action points that all those with an interest in a thriving town centre can take forward, together.
5. Walking tour
On the walking tour with Malmesbury town councillors
Immediately after the session, we encourage some of the key people in the group to take us on an optional walking tour of the town.
Even if the place is somewhere we already know well, this helps us better understand – in the participants’ own words – the positive features, new developments, problem sites, and key areas of opportunity that have been flagged in the earlier session.
Workshop outputs
Hexham opted for a follow-up Zoom call to share the findings with an even wider audience
Within a few weeks of the workshop, we deliver a concise written and illustrated report, setting out the key findings from the session, and practical next steps.
Some places, as Hexham did, like us to deliver a presentation of the report findings, in person or via video call.
Other times, like in Malmesbury, we will return to the town a few months down the line to host a “What happens next?” follow-up workshop.
In Malmesbury’s example, the second event opened up the conversation to a much wider group of local businesses; verified that the agreed areas of action were indeed the right ones; and clarified the next steps in taking those actions forward, particularly in relation to setting up a townwide business network.
Can we Unpack Your Place?
Our Unpacking Your Place workshop format is suitable for a wide range of organisations involved in local place leadership, including town and parish councils, larger local authorities, or business improvement districts (BIDs).
Get in touch if you are interested in a conversation about how it can potentially help in your town.
