THE IRIS MANIFESTO

A FORMANIFESTOSANDOWN

THE IRIS MANIFESTO

WHY DOES SANDOWN NEED A MANIFESTO?

1. MAKE A PLACE FOR PEOPLE

1.

Sandown is much more than just a town for tourists; This does not mean that we disregard the visitor economy, quite the reverse, we generate the enduring tourism appeal that comes from a place that truly believes in itself, and which puts the wellbeing and welfare of its own community first.

Sandown has the acumen, imagination, and determination, in its businesses, students and civic society, to grow its own future. There must be a new people-centred approach, demanding direct community benefit and tangible common good from public procurement, investment, development, and the management of public assets.

Sandown must now fully commit to prioritising real and lasting ’levelling up’ where it is most needed: life chances for young people, improved mental health and wellbeing, reduced inequality and income deprivation, and boosted economic opportunity.

Commit, above all else, to secure the wellbeing of the town’s own people, building an active and engaged citizenry for the future. The essential question at every town meeting must be, ‘How will this decision improve the health and welfare of those who live and work here?’

2. UNLEASH NEW STRENGTH

Invest in the town’s true spirit of place, its coastal community, natural world, earth science and lifelong learning environment. Build on what is already here, sustain the value of the past while constructing new, different, and ambitious expectations for the future.

2.

We believe that the natural world, creative industry, and lifelong learning are Sandown’s essential raw materials; these are the antidote to the past and the foundations of the future. Sandown’s special combination of urban and wild, built, and natural, was an inspiration to the Island’s successful bid for UNESCO World Biosphere status in 2019.

This extraordinary global accolade brings together the protection of high value cultural and biological diversity in new ways to support the lives of the people who live and work here.

Sandown is enveloped by land managed for wildlife, overlapping with sites of prehistoric, cultural and heritage importance, all embedded in the everyday life of a coastal community. Sandown can and must capitalise on these distinctive strengths.

3. ENRICH OUR ENVIRONMENT

Forge a new partnership between civic, voluntary and business organizations to protect and enhance the town’s free and common spaces. The vitality of Sandown’s public land and buildings is its heartbeat.

3.

Sandown’s exceptional public estate is the key to its revival; Sandown contains a square kilometre of seafront, play area, parks, gardens, and public greenspace, as well as 85 public assets including 30 buildings, modern and historic. Too much of this rich diversity of resource is anonymous, underused, forgotten or depleted through disposals to private interests.

There is great potential in this wealth of public capital, but it requires a progressive, imaginative local politics and a shared vision for radical change to be realised. A new partnership between public, private, community and social enterprise, is now needed, in which the public estate enriches the quality of Sandown’s physical and social environment, building new cultural and economic value.

4.

UNIFY FOR A COMMON GOOD

4.

The future of Sandown is inextricably linked to that of The Bay as a whole; The Bay is, a single functioning district for transport, schools, health services, destination marketing, coastal defence, climate resilience, and local plan policy, yet its everyday administration is split between three local councils with no significant cross-working or joint initiative.

This fundamentally weakens each of the three constituent localities, generating meaningless competition, limiting the impact of the £¾M collected and spent every year through precept, and leaching away the capacity of the Bay to be more than the sum of its parts.

The newly elected local councils must make every effort to proactively bring together the three administrations, using the establishment of the area NHS hub in the town in 2020, the shared Eastern Bay Vision in 2018 and the foundations built by The Bay Coastal Community Team since 2015 as platforms for effective collaboration and the delivery of positive change.

THE MANIFESTO IN ACTION CAN BRING ABOUT CHANGE people

Bring together the three neighbourhoods of The Bay as one coherent and resilient place that can successfully adapt to the challenges of future politics, economy, and climate, and fulfil its true potential, to be one of the most vibrant coastal communities in England.

IRISInspiring Revival

InSandown

Sandown is a town, a parish and a community in discontent, permeating its public and private conversations, its outlook and its governance. Its High Street and seafront have been blighted by ruined hotels and indifferent landlords, and the fate of its public places is increasingly controlled by commercial interests. It has no business association, and its council has, in recent times, been unable to meet the challenges that the town faces. Sandown has amongst the highest levels of income deprivation, and lowest life expectancies of any community on the Island. These are the consequences of the powerlessness, neglect and loss of hope that have grown here in the last two decades.

Sandown was an unplanned Victorian settlement, created to serve the demand for more affordable seaside holidays amongst the affluent nearby resorts of the mid-19th century. This central purpose has remained the primary focus of development planning ever since, despite fundamental shifts in domestic tourism and coastal resort lifecycles, and the inability of tourism alone to support and sustain a living, resilient place. There is now a critical dislocation between the needs of the community and a reliance solely on the visitor economy, a problem clearly visible in the debates around the future of Browns and Culver Parade, and in a High Street being slowly destroyed by the very hotels that created it 150 years ago.

And yet Sandown has arguably the best combination of traditional seaside and wild coast anywhere in England;

it contains a huge public estate (almost a quarter of its land area) and thereby room to instigate and manage change, and it hosts one of the three Island ‘locality hubs’ for public health services bringing a concentration of NHS employment. There is a busy network of volunteers, clubs and associations and a rapidly growing engagement with social media, there is a major free annual science and arts festival (Hullabaloo) a calendar of community activities (Discovery Bay) and a spring and summer programme of free live music shows (The Campfire Sessions). Sandown, with Lake and Shanklin, is part of The Bay Area urban district, and the largest conurbation on the Island. Annual visitor numbers can reach half a million and The Bay remains the capital of the Island’s tourism bedspace. The raw materials for positive change are already here.

But there is a local momentum building, to push ahead with small-scale, imaginative change, focussed on priority public spaces. These activities have in common, a culture of collaboration and shared learning. Each initiative finds a way to use local content, features of significance, landmarks and locally distinctive information, to attract funding, secure public assets, create opportunities for people to participate, learn more and add to the store of social and cultural capital available to the next initiative. The twin themes of an encounter with the natural world and an exploration of artistic expression run throughout and are perfectly represented by the town’s most famous guests, Charles Darwin and Lewis Carroll. The beauty of this approach is that it creates a place that is filled with curiosity and experience sought out by visitors; tourism is not abandoned, it becomes the successful by-product of a place that looks after its own community first.

This is the basis for cultural regeneration, made from the materials that already constitute Sandown, an essential antidote to the too-prevalent attitude that the town can only be saved by selling itself to the richest mainland buyer because ‘the right sort of people’ for success aren’t here.

Sandown will have to rediscover itself, perhaps even reimagine itself, but it is still young enough to do so. The next chapter will be an evolution, a new expression of Sandown’s capacity to be a living, working place, profoundly influenced by what has gone before but unrestrained in where it might go next.

Sandown will have rediscoverto itself, perhaps even itself,re-imagine but it is still enoughyoung to do so.