‘Issues based’ consultancy Creative Concern has started work on the high profile, and in some respects highly contentious, project to re-brand Wythenshawe.
As first reported on How-Do back in October, Manchester City Council and a band of public and private sector partners are looking to address the widespread perception that the area is rife with deprivation and social ills.
Instead they wish to focus on the myriad regeneration projects that are transforming ‘Manchester’s Garden City’, bringing to light the huge steps forward, and investment, the district has enjoyed since the turn of the millennium.
One of the key drivers behind this planned public (and media) reappraisal of Wythenshawe is the new brand for the area – which Creative Concern, as victors in a long-running tender process, will now be charged with delivering.
Speaking to How-Do about the task his agency faces, Creative Concern chief executive Steve Connor said the team were well underway with the £30,000 project:
“We’ve had the first session with our steering group now,” he explained, “and we’re going about engaging with the numerous stakeholders on the project – in terms of the group that appointed us and the community itself.”
Connor
He said that a “sizable section” of the team had already spent a day in Wythenshawe talking to representatives from the various regeneration projects (the centrepiece of which is the £130m development of the town centre) and that a full-time researcher had been tasked with uncovering the history and idiosyncrasies of the area.
Connor also revealed that the end product would be delivered in the summer and that it would be “more than just a standard branding job.”
“We’re certainly not going to be dumping a CD with a logo and some guidelines on the client’s doorsteps and running off,” he stressed. “There’s a lot more to it than that.”
Part of this added value will apparently be a film, documenting the branding process, which allows the people of Wythenshawe to have their say about the area. Something that, according to Connor, they rarely get the chance to do in the media.
He added that the job would be focused on clearing up “the myths and misperceptions” surrounding what was once claimed to be ‘Europe’s biggest council estate,’ giving local people, organisations and businesses “a rallying point” as they move forwards with Wythenshawe’s renaissance.
When the project was first announced last year it was reportedly criticised by some local community groups, who believed the money could be put to better use on other projects.
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