Client
Durham City Partnership 

Brief
The historic city of Durham, a World Heritage Site encircled by former mining villages, has a rich mix of communities but no clear economic way forward into the 21st century. How do we build a new vision for our city that everyone can engage with?

Approach
We worked on the assumption that the people of Durham themselves - never known for holding back- would help us find the best answers for their own future. Balancing the city’s economic, heritage and topographical exigencies against the need to create a thriving local economy and visitor destination, we undertook extensive best practice, quantitative and qualitative research before "casting" a group of 36 local "archetypes", the Voices of Durham, to be our creative partner and "expert users" of their own city. With the Voices we explored local issues and needs, before engaging a group of outside experts and innovators to suggest future opportunities for Durham. The Voices helped us take these scenarios further in locally specific directions, showing that any attempt to develop Durham as a destination needed to have as its first principle the intrinsic improvement of everyday life for the many communities of Durham.

Outcome
A set of twenty key recommendations for Durham met with widespread local approval, and we developed the principal ones into strategies with clear action plans. The further public consultation that succeeded the linked Master Planning exercise - which itself engaged the Voices of Durham as a form of check and balance - showed that our approach helped guarantee local support for a clearly aspirational and shared future.

Feedback
"Your work with us over the last two years - and moving forward into the next two - has helped us involve what are sometimes hard to engage communities to help us build a vision all can support. We are excited about the opportunities uncovered and are confident that these are achievable."
Bob Ward, Head of Regeneration, Durham County CouncilCreating Visions - II