Back to Clippings Archive main page

As they try to reverse declines in employment, retailing and tourism, both towns have commissioned themselves street maps. Nothing new in that of course, but what has surprised everyone is that the sales and impact have been as much among residents as tourists.

“The map has been fantastic – absolutely brilliant,” is the enthusiastic view of Val Simpson, who Chairs Cleobury Mortimer’s Tourism Group. The South Shropshire town is a bit run down, she admits, with businesses at risk of closing, but the map and what she describes as its ‘quirkiness’ has made local people focus on its positives. “Now they sing about all the great things in the town rather than moaning about the traffic and difficulty of parking.”

“The map has been a great asset and has boosted morale, “ echoes Ross Kent, who once Chaired Crickhowell’s former Telecottage, over the border, in Powys.

What are different about the maps have been the graphic designer, Lisa Hellier’s, quirky style and her painstaking attention to detail. “Even the windows are recorded right,” applaud local residents, who are pleased that someone has taken the trouble to show their town accurately. “They are beautiful – a wonderful replica of the town.”

Children, for whom Lisa had run drawing workshops, were the inspiration for Lisa’s cartoon-like style. “I wanted the maps to look friendly,” she says, “to make the places look attractive to visit, and to have the feel that you were walking through the town.”

Lisa’s only secret is all the time she invests in drawing the map, first in pencil, on location, and then, with the aid of photographs to help her get the buildings’ relative positions right, doing the detail in ink, before scanning it onto a computer. “Oh, and I have a magic wand, “ she admits, “that allows me to reduce the size of any ugly ‘70s buildings.”

As for her observational powers, they are skills Lisa believes she learnt as a child, when her family moved between places as different as Glasgow and Cornwall - experiences that made her good at noticing things, and have to pay attention if she was going to find her way around.

The immediate and obvious benefit from the maps has been increased revenue from tourists, who can purchase them on an expanding range of merchandise: tea towels, postcards and prints. The latter are available in any size and have the glass raised off the surface, to enhance their three-dimensional feel. There is even a deluxe model, on hand-made paper.

But as well as the trickle of tourists, residents have also been quietly dropping into the Tourist Information Centres, to place their orders. “It’s like having a lovely old medieval map of the place, only new,” said one proud purchaser.

Two-dimensional or three, nobody in Cleobury expects the map to solve the town’s challenges faced for example by having an A road running through it, or the call for some locally delivered business support. But projects such as the map have pulled people together, and, as everyone knows, that is a pre-requisite for anything to happen.

All is now possible for Val Simpson, who believes the map has enhanced people’s view of the town and made them see parts that they did not see. She is confident the map will bring to life what could be, and spur new things to happen. It might even put Cleobury on the map.

www.arthousegraphics.co.uk

Back to Clippings Archive main page
top of page