Final Year Students' Visit To Halifax, 11 April '08

A large group of students descended on Halifax to study tourism and regeneration in industrial towns. It poured down for much of the day, so the photo below was taken a while back. This view is from Beacon Hill showing the main stops on our tour, which followed the "yellow brick road" concept of tourism development. This route starts or finishes at public transport and car parking points and links main attractions within the destination. In theory signposting and environmental improvements are then concentrated along the route. Calderdale Council (in which Halifax is only one part) never really got to grips with the idea. Its ambivalence about tourism led it to open an industrial museum by the Piece Hall, then neglect to promote it, finally closing the museum because it had "too few visitors" - a situation for which it was responsible. It saved the 1774 Square Chapel from collapse, but saw that important component along the yellow brick road become an arts centre, often closed and of specialist interest only. A stronger use of the building would have been as a general visitor centre about Calderdale's past and its vision for the future.

Our visit was only for the day but was related firmly to a course module - Economic and Financial Management of Tourism - in this case by the public and charitable sectors as well as the commercial non-tourism organisations which nonetheless benefit from tourism develop through image building. Huge amounts of UK and world tourism are developed by this kind of mixed-organisation approach, something which is still poorly represented in text books, and sometimes in teaching, too.

The day contained five talks and three main locations - three more were hastily walked past in the rain, though a couple of them visited by some of the group during the lunch break. Here, Tudor Gwyn from Eureka! is describing how that children's museum came about thanks to an educational charity, the involvement of the Prince of Wales, and support from Calderdale Council. The group later had a good play - er, sorry, testing session - in the museum itself.

The three speakers at Eureka! were (L-R) John Hodgson (Calderdale Places Manager), Tudor Gwyn (Eureka Projects Director) and Joanna Mawson of Calderdale Town Planning.

Archimedes awaits his famous bath on the left - a bit of displacement activity if you ask me.... Mum and son try out a computer-driven activity... but the printed word still towers above all else.

A number of local companies sponsored displays at Eureka!, including Marks and Spencers' Halifax store which keeps the Eureka! version's tills ringing.

The point about Eureka! - it's USP if you like - is that it aims to educate children about their everyday surroundings, unlike the multitude of Science Centres around the globe. So shopping, banking, a repair garage, the human body and the natural landscapes are the subject of the displays. And, of course, education is best when it is entertaining. Even at university ....

Your reporter noted that our Leeds students had to wait patiently for school children visiting to move on so they could have a play. Vroom! Vroom! Hey, girls - the door's fallen off!

On to Halifax Town Hall. We were able to use the Council Chamber for a short talk by myself on local government and tourism. Above is the 'crush hall' in the centre of the building, with the various committee rooms and offices leading off it. This town hall is quite small. It was built by Sir Charles Barrie who was the architect of the slightly earlier Houses of Parliament, and opened in 1863.

Looks like a shared Mayorality this year.

Now, if I were Mayor of Calderdale ....

The third location was Dean Clough business Park on the northern edge of town. Again, these outdoors photos were taken on an earlier, sunny occasion. This is the spectacular main car park, surrounded by mills. Here, John Crossley and Company built up the world's biggest carpet mill complex between 1804 and 1982. From a peak of around 5,000 employees in 1900 they declined to a couple of hundred at the close. That event shocked the whole area. Then Ernest Hall (later Sir Ernest) and the late Jonathan Silver bought the property and began to convert it into a business park. At the same time, art galleries, theatre areas and restaurants were added. Some lasted for a few years before being replaced, others have stayed and thrived.

Dean Clough is different. It is a whole set of organisations for a start - the owning business and the tenant-buasinesses, large and small, are commercial. But some elements, in the arts, are charitable organisations. Secodly it isn't strictly a tourist attraction event though business visitors and arts visitors might come from far afield. Yet it has a Travelodge in a converted spinning mill, its promoted, signposted and served by transport infrastructure - all reminders of the closely symbiotic relationship between different motivations for travel. Especially important is the international reputation of what was achieved at Dean Clough for the town and the District of Calderdale, helping to change previously negative images of smokefilled skies and grimy manufacturing. The communities of the Calder Valley were world leaders in cloth and carpet making, wire manufacturing, confectionery production and mortgage lending. Carpets from Dean Clough went into royal palaces and passenger liners. The local traditional of radical growth and development can be seen at first hand by tourists whether they are on business or at leisure, and the promotion of the one supports that of the other.

Press and Public Relations Manager David Nesbit talking to the group.

David Nesbit describing the derelict state of Dean Clough after John Crossley and Company closed, wreckers destroyed the machinery to prevent it being used again, and sold the site.

There was a strong discussion by the student group about urban regeneration and the operation of Dean Clough Business Park over the last quarter century. Then there was some time to explore the mills, Halifax town centre and Eureka! before the return to Leeds.