An Integrated, Creative Approach to Shrewsbury's Development

A creative approach to urban policy as a whole should include the strategic contribution that leisure, culture and tourism policy could and should make. Indeed Shrewsbury lends itself greatly to using these three components to ensure its economic future. In so doing Shrewsbury's ambition to strive to be A Centre of Environmental Excellence can also be addressed. The creative use of the three components can provide a very important impetus to improving living and working opportunities in Shrewsbury and simultaneously, because of its originality, help spotlight the town. This approach, although not unique, is well founded on the principle of towns and cities as unique, multi faceted cultural entities with specific traditions and potentials. It also involves thinking through, how not only cultural facilities, but also culturally inspired urban design concepts and wider urban development strategies could be used to revitalise the town, strengthen its identity and role as the county town and also create wealth and employment. This approach can be adjusted to accommodate and link in with the findings of the Visitor Economy Strategy. The overriding feature of this approach is to recognise the importance of creative responses to urban change - be they in areas of cultural development, leisure development or tourism development; be they also in the more contentious areas of traffic management, greening the town, regenerating run down housing schemes or enlivening the town centre at different times of day. In other words the three component players in this report - Leisure, Culture and Tourism - form the basis of regeneration, but tackle the issue from a different direction.

Clearly, Leisure, Culture and Tourism have a central role to play in furthering this idea as the notion of creativity tends to be associated with the arts and tourism worlds. However, creativity has a far broader application through all disciplines evidenced by major strides taken in the last five years, primarily in the arts development, exhibition field.

Creativity involves:- experimentation, originality, the capacity and willingness to rewrite the rules, be unconventional, think a problem afresh with a new perspective, the ability to think from first principles, to visualise and imagine future scenarios and solutions to problems and to look at problems laterally and with flexibility. It is a way of maximising the possibilities of any given situation.