Dewsbury Challange

Dewsbury regeneration effort together with Kirklees Council

Dewsbury is located in the Leeds city region.  The town was once an important textile-producing centre in the United Kingdom.

The town is set in picturesque Pennine valleys and industrial waterways and has an attractive architectural legacy.  In close vicinity to major metropolitan centres, Dewsbury can boost excellent rail-network links to Manchester, Leeds and Manchester International Airport.

However, Dewsbury has not yet been able to recover from the shock of de-industrialisation that caused a massive decline in manufacturing jobs during the last decades of the 20th century. The town’s population suffers from relative deprivation including low skill levels, unemployment, poverty and high levels of disability and mental health issues.

Recent negative headlines (the Karen Matthews, terrorist links) further blackened the town’s image in the national eye.

The Dewsbury challenge has two aims:

1)      Develop marketing strategies to raise Dewsbury’s image,

2)      Improve the quality of public space to create a platform for intercultural communication.

www.kirklees.gov.uk

About: Robert Grimm

All over Europe, cities are faced with the challenge of using cultural resources to re-position their city in an increasingly culturally and economically diversified European space. Related to this is a clear recognition of the growing importance of cultural resources for economic and community development. This produces new opportunities and challenges for local cultural planning and management. In order to fully exploit the innovative and supportive role of culture in European urban development, it will be necessary to develop a new socially and culturally sensitive professionalism, able to cross the boundaries between the arts, design, urban and spatial planning, public policy and the market, artistic creativity and cultural management. The MA in European Urban Cultures offers a specialist programme aimed at graduate students from Europe and elsewhere with undergraduate degrees in subject areas such as the social sciences; cultural and leisure studies; art, design and architecture; urban theory and planning; cultural marketing and management. The course is also targeted at professionals and administrators eager for the latest experiences, ideas and insights in urban cultural policy.