As this is my last blog of 2011, I thought I would take the opportunity of taking a brief look back on the year from Downtown’s perspective and pick out some significant highlights.
In Liverpool, we were proud to be chosen as the city council’s private sector partner to open the Liverpool Embassy in London. Inevitably, the success of this initiative will only be fully understood as the dialogue and discussions with potential investors come to fruition, but undoubtedly this project was something that improved Liverpool’s opportunity to promote its brand in the capital, and we are proud to have played our part.
In terms of our events, the ‘It’s Liverpool – the business conference’ was a tremendous success, with a host of politicians, entrepreneurs and over 250 delegates gathering to discuss a range of topical issues at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Wolves FC owner Steve Morgan and Paul Levy, CEO of the Philadelphia Business Improvement District were inspirational on the day. As always, we thoroughly enjoyed our annual awards evenings, and this year’s ‘Livercool’ awards were particularly special as we presented the sell out crowd with a spectacular Christmas theme, courtesy of the Christmas Decorators, and a video featuring council leader Joe Anderson, Liverpool Vision CEO Max Steinberg and many others in a tribute to Slade’s classic ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’.
Our inaugural City of Manchester Business Awards in March was equally lavish in the magnificent cathedral. Again, we sold the venue out, and as we celebrated the success of some of the best Manchester has to offer the world of commerce we were delighted to have the exceptionally talented Rowetta entertain us – and we presented our first ‘Tony’ award (named in memory of the late, great Tony Wilson) to Sir Howard Bernstein for his services to the city.
2011 also saw us launch the Manchester Economy Forum with the New Economy, and we ended our events programme with a cracking debate about the chancellor’s pre budget statement with three genuine entrepreneurs, Scott Fletcher ANS; Gavin Wheeldon Applied Language Solutions and Tony Wilson Klarius, providing a fascinating insight into their approach to the challenging economy, politics, and much more besides.
In Lancashire, Downtown’s fourth annual business survey was our most successful yet, and ended with a presentation of results that demonstrated the county’s resilience and determination with realistic optimism a fair assessment of our findings. We were grateful for the Bank of England’s support for the ‘results’ event, and particularly pleased to have Adam Posen from their Monetary Policy Committee give his analysis of UK PLC. It was a cracking occasion and I must thank Forbes Solicitors for their contribution and support for the whole process. The results will be presented to the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership in the New Year, and we look forward to launching a fifth annual survey, albeit in a rebranded and, I promise, improved format.
Given that the ‘Lancashire’ brand is just nine months old, building on the work we had undertaken in Preston since 2007, we have been delighted with the response from across the county, and we were able to facilitate an event at Daisy Communications in Nelson with the leader of the Labour Party Ed Miliband in November, demonstrating our determination to cover the whole area effectively.
As always, Downtown has attracted many high profile speakers throughout this past year including Lord Heseltine, Employment Minister Chris Grayling, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, Shadow Secretary to the Treasury Rachel Reeves, Bruntwood CEO Chris Oglesby, Colin Rankin from Vinci, John Leach of Winning Pitch and Maggie O’ Carroll from the Women’s Organisation. We also attracted over 4,500 people to our events this year!
The list of contributors for the Downtown 2012 events programme is immense, and details of our quarter one activities will be revealed in a few weeks time.
New additions to that programme will include the ‘Mancoolian’ Awards, a revamped business survey in Lancashire and very probably the launch of the Downtown brand in another major city.
It will be another challenging year ahead, but an exciting one too. Have a great Christmas, and I look forward to seeing you at a Downtown event very soon.