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Livin’ for the City…

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
Dorchester city status

Dorchester - the UK's newest city?

Is Dorchester on the verge of becoming the UK’s newest city? As part of her Diamond Jubilee celebrations this year, the Queen will be creating a new city, and Dorchester is among the 25 towns who have applied for the honour.

The tangible benefits of becoming a city don’t amount to much in economic or political terms, but if Dorchester were to win, the prestige of being the only city in Dorset would be considerable, and there would undoubtedly be a lot of publicity to mark the award.

So by what criteria is a town deemed worthy of city status? The old standard used to be the presence of a spired cathedral, without which no settlement could be counted a city, regardless of its size. However, this is no longer seen as a determining factor, and the current candidates will most likely be judged on their size, historical significance, and cultural and economic contributions to the UK as a whole.

The City of Dorchester?

We may not be the front-runner – Dorchester’s population of 18,280 looks very modest compared to Gateshead with 171,700, and Bolton with 266,500 – but we’re definitely in with a shot, particularly in terms of the history and cultural influence of the town.

With an Iron Age hill fort just minutes away from some of the best preserved roman ruins in the country, Dorchester speaks to Britain’s long distant past in a way few other places can. Let’s not forget that even the word city comes from the Latin ‘civitas’ – the Romans’ impact on us was tremendous, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Dorchester.

Add to that the fact that we can claim as our own one of Britain’s greatest ever authors, Thomas Hardy, whose novels continue to capture the imagination of millions of people around the world today.

With the 20th Thomas Hardy Conference and Festival being held in Dorchester later this year, the popularity and cultural significance of Hardy shows no sign of abating, and this will surely count in our favour when it comes to deciding which town deserves the honour of city status.

If you’re the betting type, Dorchester is currently a rank outsider at 25-1, while Reading is the strong favourite at 10-11, followed by Perth and Middlesborough at 10-1. What do you think, worth a flutter?

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A Piece of Dorset History Goes Under The Hammer!

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

harvesting 1880sFans of local heritage and antiques have the opportunity to get their hands on a genuinely exciting piece of Dorset history next month, as a set of 100-150 year old Victorian brass bushel measures go under the hammer at Duke’s Auctioneers in Dorchester.

These rare and collectable items belong to Dorset County Council, and are one of seven lots up for sale at an auction in early February. Also included in the sale is a pair of checkpump petrol measures – a slightly more recent piece of Dorset history, expected to raise around £150.

The set of 10 imperial standard bushel measures date from 1858 to 1899, and were used to track and regulate crop production and sales in Dorset. Each piece has a date stamp and a label marking it as property of the County of Dorsetshire. They are estimated to sell for £2,000 at auction, so you better have deep pockets if you want to make a bid!

A key attraction of these pieces is that they come from one of the most fascinating periods in Dorset’s history. While much of the rest of Britain was in the throes of being transformed by the Industrial Revolution, Dorset kept its largely rural character in the late 19th century, with an economy that never lost its focus on traditional agriculture. This was the Dorset of Thomas Hardy novels – thatched cottages, milkmaids, harvest festivals and an altogether simpler existence than that being experienced by those dwelling in the cities.

The Victorian crop measures speak to that simpler time in Dorset history, with its farm economy and centuries old system of trade and bartering. They would a great buy for anyone with an interest in local history or a wider appreciation of antiques from the Victorian period.

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Dorchester Dinosaur On The Move!

Thursday, January 12th, 2012
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TriceratopsDorchester will get its first television appearance of 2012 when it is featured on Channel 5 show The Removal Men later this year. The programme will follow one of the most unusual assignments ever undertaken by removal specialists Pickfords, when they were tasked with transporting a life-sized model triceratops belonging to the Dinosaur Museum in Dorchester.

The triceratops has been with the museum for 23 years, and after decades of wear and tear it was felt that the fiberglass beast, named Tricky, could do with being sent for a makeover to get it back to looking its best.

The logistics of removing the dinosaur presented quite a challenge for the Pickfords team, and their operation to winch it up off the ground and place it onto a flatbed lorry was all captured on film by the camera crew from the Channel 5.

Dinosaur Museum Discount Vouchers

While the Dinosaur Museum staff are eager for the return of Tricky as soon as possible, in the meantime they have plenty of other features inside the museum to wow kids and adults alike, including full dinosaur skeletons, genuine prehistoric fossils and hands-on multimedia displays.

The museum is open daily from 11am-4pm, and the entry prices are £6.99 for adults, £5.99 for seniors, and £5.50 for children (free for under 3s). For 50p off each ticket purchase, print off a discount voucher from the Dinosaur Museum website.

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Things To Look Out For in Dorchester in 2012

Friday, January 6th, 2012
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Brewery Square

Happy New Year everyone! 2012 is shaping up to be a very exciting year for us here in Dorchester. Here are a few things we’ve got to look forward to in the coming weeks and months…

2012 Olympics

The wait is almost over – this summer the world’s biggest sporting event comes to Britain, and most excitingly the sailing events will be taking place right on our doorstep over in Weymouth. We’re ideally placed to benefit from tourists and visitors flocking down to see the competitors battle it out in Weymouth Bay, so expect it to get very busy for a couple of weeks in July and August!

We’re lucky enough to be on the route of the Olympic torch relay, so we’re hoping for some fantastic celebrations in town to mark the occasion. The big picnic gathering at Maumbury Rings for the Royal wedding was a highlight of 2011, so hopefully we can repeat that kind of success come the summer.

Brewery Square

Phase 2 of the Brewery Square development is scheduled to open in October – bringing popular restaurants like Pizza Express and exciting new shops like Hobbs.

It’s difficult to overstate how important this development is to the town. At a time when the whole country is mired in economic gloom and we’re seeing UK businesses boarding up left, right and centre, it’s fantastic that a previously derelict and abandoned site in Dorchester is undergoing an extraordinary regeneration, attracting brand new big name businesses to the town and providing luxury homes for hundreds of new residents.

DBID Projects

The parking ambassadors initiative we rolled out in the run-up to Christmas was a big success, and we’d love to see that return at some point in 2012. Meanwhile, the much-admired Dorchester free parking scheme has been renewed and will run until early next year. We’ve also got a number of other exciting ideas in the pipeline, so stay tuned!

Other Events

Dorset County Museum’s incredible Pharaoh: King of Egypt Exhibition is here until 22nd January, when the artefacts will all be boxed up and moved on to their next stop on their tour of the UK. If you haven’t been already, it’s an amazingly rare chance to see a fascinating collection of ancient artwork and objects outside of their home in London’s British Museum.

As always, Dorchester Arts have a packed line-up for Spring 2012, starting with a performance of Francis Hodgson Burnett’s endearing classic Angel Exit on 5th, 6th and 7th January. Visit the Dorchester Arts website to see their full Spring 2012 Brochure.

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An Open Letter to Mary Portas

Monday, December 19th, 2011
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Dear Mary,

As someone who has enjoyed your program output for many years (they would all make excellent training films too) I wanted to add my thanks and congrats on behalf of all High Street retailers for what you have done/are doing to champion the cause of the high street business. I tweeted you on this today but I expect you get too many to reply?

As the project director of Dorchester’s BID and already a convert to your way of thinking, your timely report HAS to be listened to and I hope acted on.

I would love to share some of the ideas with you that we have implemented here in Dorchester since 2008 when DBID first started. We are a very small BID (levy take is £100k p.a total) so I have to make the cash go a long way to make sure it helps businesses as much as possible. For just over a year (after several years of talks) we managed to get WDDC (west Dorset District Council) to agree to bringing back FREE parking after 6.00pm and all day Sundays in all car parks in town. A few months later we managed to get Dorset County council to follow with the on street parking meters too!

The next idea was a parking voucher scheme which meant you could effectively park all day for free in Dorchester as long as you kept spending money in the shops (£1 gets you 2hrs, spend £10+ in supporting shops and you get your £1 off your purchases at the till).

As the second phase to this highly successful project DBID has just secured agreement for matched funding from WDDC which allows DBID to give the businesses £4 back for every £10 they pay out to customers (equates to a minimum of £100 t/o for that shop @£10 min spend to qualify). This ‘sharing of the cost’ has made it viable for some more of the smaller shops to join the scheme too. The nice thing about this idea is that the independents can get a very large chunk of their BID levy back as a direct result of the project so helping to make the BID cost neutral for them (which is another one of our aims).

Finally, our last pilot project for the year is ‘Dorchester Ambassadors’ – A small but locally knowledgeable team of people that meet and greet visitors when they arrive in a car park in town, get them parked briskly (or direct them to the nearest car park with spaces). Once parked they then hit their other role of town guide and can offer directions to the place/s they want to find or the shop they need.

This is where I need your help: We are getting fabulous feedback from both the public and the shops with this idea but I really need your help to make happen the next logical stage – I want to make this a permanent feature of town for Wednesdays (market day) and all school holidays and to afford to do this we need to spread the cost over all 3 LA’s and DBID. With your assistance (it would make a great program too?) I am convinced we can get the councils to play ball and not only share the cost but share the glory of the positive news story and help local high street shops survive the recession!!

Please can you call me for a quick chat if you like the idea in principle and would like to know more.

Kind Regards,

Phil

Phil Gordon

Project Director

The Dorchester BID Company
2nd Floor, 49 High West Street
Dorchester, DT1 1UT

website: www.dorchesterdorset.com

E: philg@dorchesterdorset.co.uk

M: 07799 494886

DBID…Working for Business in Dorchester”

PS Here is the latest email feedback from a happy shopper this morning

Dear Phil

Rarely am I moved to find time to feed back!!  Poor really given my job, but for the first time in at least 1o years  ventured to Dorchester from Burton Bradstock to see if I could finish my Christmas shopping in the town.  My teenage daughter decided to drive to Exeter. I arrived in the Gould’s car park and was greeted by an ambassador, simply wonderful a complete contrast to Bridport where generally you cannot find a space and when you do there is usually a panic to get to it!

I great scheme and I thoroughly enjoyed my shopping experience.

Congratulations to your team

Elise

More about The Mary Portas High Street Review

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The Mary Portas High Street Review

Friday, December 16th, 2011
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Retail Expert Mary Portas

Retail Expert Mary Portas

Many of you will have already seen the report from Mary Portas on the nation’s high streets, and read her 28 recommendations for how to keep them alive in the years to come. The report comes with the shocking revelation that the number of town centre stores in the UK has decreased by 25,000 in the last 11 years, and almost one in six outlets are currently standing empty.

It’s a fascinating report, but what struck us was how many of her recommendations are already being implemented here in Dorchester! Here’s a couple of points that we thought would be worth highlighting…

Super BIDs

2. Empower successful Business Improvement Districts to take on more responsibilities and powers and become “Super-BIDs”

One of the key changes Portas wants to see is the creation of so-called “Super-BIDs”. She describes the BID model in glowing terms, and in her view its strength lies in its ability to engender a feeling of trust among retailers to promote investment in areas.

Portas would like to see the BIDs become more sophisticated and take on a broader role, working to  develop a dynamic strategic vision for our towns. This is all music to our ears, as we’d love to build on the successes we’ve had in Dorchester in the last couple of years.

Free Parking Schemes

9. Local areas should implement free controlled parking schemes that work for their town centres and we should have a new parking league table

Sound familiar? Mary Portas’ ninth recommendation is for more towns to implement free parking schemes, similar to the one we’ve been running in Dorchester for the last year. It’s been an extremely well received and successful project for us, and we’re tremendously gratified to see this being acknowledged as the way forward by influencial figures like Mary. She is the queen of shops after all!

Click here to read the full Mary Portas High Street Review

Dorchester Ambassadors

Don’t forget the Dorchester ambassadors will be in the town’s car parks this weekend, so if you need any advice or help with finding shops or attractions, they will be more than happy to point you in the right direction.

Dorchester Parking Ambassadors

Dorchester Ambassadors Team

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Dorchester Christmas Cracker Goes with a Bang!

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
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Father Christmas in Dorchester

Thanks to everyone who came along to Cracker Night on Thursday last week – we brought the magic of Christmas to Dorchester and proved that it’s one night not even the cold wind and rain could dampen!

The town centre was absolutely buzzing, as South Street was filled with people enjoying themselves amidst the stalls selling all kinds of Christmas treats.

We at the BID made our own little contribution to the evening with the light display projected onto the side of Lloyds TSB bank, showing alternately a dancing ballerina, a fairground carousel and a creepy crawly spider!

Eric Knowles

Eric Knowles turns on the lights!

The star of the show was of course Eric Knowles, who did the honours of pulling the switch to light up the town this year. He spent the day in Dorchester with a book signing at Waterstone’s during the afternoon, and regaled his audience with tales of his long career in antiques in the evening at the Corn Exchange.

At St Peter’s Church visitors were treated to wonderful live music, and children got the opportunity to see Father Christmas in his Grotto, where he was handing out sweets and mince pies and wishing all a merry Christmas!

Another highlight was the town crier competition – We don’t think we’ve ever seen so many of them in one place! They certainly added to the jollity of the occasion, so a big thank you to all of the criers who travelled from across Dorset to take part.

Finally, a mention of the prizes: Hi Ho Silver in Antelope Walk were declared the winners for Best Dressed Staff, while Mabbs Menswear in High West Street scooped first prize in the Best Dressed Window Competition.

Borough Gardens Lantern Parade

If you missed Cracker Night, you will have another great opportunity to experience some Christmas cheer in Dorchester with the lantern parade in the Borough Gardens on 15th December (next Thursday!).

The lantern parade will share the occasion with the traditional Borough Gardens carols evening, which takes place every year at this time. The parade, which sees children carrying their own homemade lanterns, will start out from the Corn Exchange at 6pm. They will carry their lanterns through town up to the Borough Gardens bandstand for 6.30pm, in time for the start of the carol service.

Anyone is welcome to join the parade with their own lantern, and the stated intention of organisers Dorchester Arts is to have an event which is very child-friendly, particularly for young children.

Cracker Night Gallery

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Dorchester Cracker Night Preview

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
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Antiques Roadshow's Eric Knowles

Antiques Roadshow's Eric Knowles

So the big night is almost here, and the final preparations are being made for Dorchester’s Christmas Cracker Night on Thursday evening.

The latest news is that ‘Mr Antiques’ himself Eric Knowles will be here to turn on the Christmas lights in South Street at 6.30pm. Viewers of BBC’s Antiques Roadshow will know him as one of the show’s expert valuers, and you will also be able to catch him here earlier in the day at Waterstones from 2.30pm where he’ll be signing books and chatting to fellow antiques enthusiasts.

If that’s not enough, Eric will also be on hand to value your own antiques and heirlooms for you at the Corn Exchange from 6.40pm. Tickets for his ‘Antiques Antics’ event are £12 (£10 concessions), and after 7.30pm he’ll also be sharing some of his best insights and anecdotes from his long career in antiques.

Shopping in Dorchester After Dark

We’ve put up a list on our website of the Dorchester businesses staying open late on Thursday for Cracker Night.

As per tradition, they’ll all be competing to see who can have the best dressed shop front, so keep an eye out for decorations that really grab your attention. Remember also that many of these shops will also be open late every Thursday between now and Christmas, and we’ve also added this information to the Cracker Night list.

For those of you who’ll be coming by car on Thursday, we’d recommend you get to Dorchester as early as possible, because the roads in the centre will be closed for Cracker Night at 5.30pm. There will be FREE parking in all the WDDC car park from 5pm onwards. Click here for our Dorchester car parks map.

Finally, look out for DBID brightening up Cracker Night with some amazing projections onto the Lloyds Bank building in South Street from 5pm! See you there!

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Parking in Dorchester Report – The Results are in!

Thursday, November 24th, 2011
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dorchester high street

West Dorset District Council have just released a big 28 page report on car parking in Dorchester, looking at all aspects of the current arrangements and assessing ways in which things could be improved in the near future.

Admittedly it might not make for lively bedtime reading, but it’s well worth a look for anyone with an interest in local issues, as it gives some really good insights into the much-discussed parking problems we face here. One notable thing the report raises is that contrary to much of what’s been reported in the local press, in recent months there have actually been a number of short term parking spaces available in the town’s car parks even at busy times on market day!

There definitely are areas in need of improvement though, as the report notes that at times as much as 20% of town centre traffic is composed of people just looking for a parking space. This needs to be fixed, and hopefully the recommendations put forward by WDDC will go some way to solving this issue.

The Dorchester BID and Chamber of Commerce were called upon by the Committee working on the report to give advice and suggestions for future improvements, and we are pleased to see some of these ideas are already being implemented. The Dorchester ambassadors scheme we talked about on the blog a couple of weeks back is being rolled out in the run-up to Christmas, and the parking spaces set aside for coaches in the top of town car park have already been converted into spaces for cars during peak times.

Here is a link to the Dorchester car parking report. It also contains a very good powerpoint presentation entitled ‘A Renaissance for Dorchester’, which looks at all the major developments taking place in the town in the next couple of years, including the Brewery Square regeneration, Charles Street, and the continued expansion of Poundbury. It gives a really encouraging picture of where Dorchester is heading, so we urge you to go and have a read!

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Christmas Cracker Night 2011

Friday, November 18th, 2011
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It’s that time of year again – Cracker Night is just around the corner, the OFFICIAL start to Christmas in Dorchester! The event has been running for several years now, and the turn-out gets better every time. Can this year be the biggest yet?

Let There Be Light!

Dorchester Christmas Choir

Dorchester Cracker Festivities

For this year’s Cracker we’ll be welcoming special guest Lee Latchford Evans from Steps, who’ll be doing the honours of switching on the lights for us. He’ll be hitting the switch at 6.30pm on the St. Peter’s Stage, so don’t miss it!

Late Night Shopping

As well as all the usual entertainments and amusements, Cracker Night is also an opportunity to do some late night shopping, with a large number of our most popular shops and other businesses staying open into the evening for you to peruse at your leisure. Many will be doing something a bit special, so look out for free giveaways and other exciting things going on all evening!

Christmas Stalls

Obviously the stalls are a big part of the Cracker Night experience, creating an authentic Christmas market feel with everything from mulled wine to mince pies and hog roasts. This year a website has been set up for traders to book a space for their stall, which will cost £10 for charities and non-profits, and £40 for regular traders.

The spaces are already filling up fast – take a look at who’s already going to be there.

See You There!

Dorchester Cracker Night begins at 5.30pm on Thursday 1st December. We’re expecting a big crowd, and hopefully there’ll even be an appearance from Father Christmas himself, accompanied by one or two of his elves and reindeer!

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