04 Royston First | UPDATE
Market Stalls Sometime during the autumn, new stalls will appear on Royston Market. The current stalls are somewhat long in the tooth and looking a bit tired. We have reached the point where patching them up is no longer feasible/desirable. Based on the market’s solid performance in maintaining a good selection of traders during this year and thereby maintaining its status as a key attractor to the town centre, Royston First proposed contributing funds to the purchase of some new stalls. We are pleased to report that not only did Royston Town Council approve of our ideas but immediately agreed to match fund from the markets reserve fund thus enabling the purchase of a complete new market. You might think that overcoming the big challenge (i.e. raising the funds) would ensure everything else falls into place immediately. However ‘the devil is in the detail’ – and in this instance, most of the summer has been spent on the detail! Nonetheless, with new handling procedures,
R yston
Business
Awards
storage plans, billing system, security, and the colour scheme sorted out … we’re just about ready to go.
Royston First UPDATE - Su mmer/Autu mn
Proposed design for the market stall
So around about October time there’ll be one more reason to visit Royston Market on a Wednesday or Saturday (beyond the fact that you can get vegetables fresh from New Covent Garden that morning, fresh cut flowers and plants straight from the nursery, local fresh bread, fresh meat, etc. etc.)
Royston Town Trail
Having experience of the previous awards ‘running out of steam’, we were aware of the significant administrative burden of delivering such an event. Accordingly, Royston First agreed to underwrite the cost of a (very) part-time, freelance event organiser to assist the Chamber in their Join us on endeavours. We will also be ensuring that a Thursday suitably smart print programme will be available October 13th on the night.
The Heath Club
See you there!
Royston F1rst c/o Town Hall Melbourn Street Royston SG8 7DA t 01763 878 242 e info@roystonfirst.com
Town Trail market plaque
Many of you may have noticed triangular brass plaques set into various pavements around the centre of Royston. Hopefully many of you will know that these denote the Royston Trail – a guided tour around the many historic sites and buildings in the town centre. The Town Trail Guide is just the latest in a growing suite of printed materials being produced by Royston First to support visitors to our town.
Every now and then a new initiative comes along that is deserving of support.
As it was in the past with such ideas as the revival of the Arts Festival and the launch of Open Secrets, so we believe it is with the Chamber of Commerce’s plans to reinstate the Royston Business Awards ( www.roystonchamber.org/royston-business-awards )
2016
These include an Accommodation Guide, a Guide to Clubs & Associations (an important feature of Royston life) and two up-to-date maps (one town centre, one entire town) to which we own the copyright – enabling us to reproduce/ distribute them at will.
Picture Palace Show Reel If you’ve been to the Royston Picture Palace recently, (which we hope you have), you will have seen our new show reel featuring some of the key attractions within Royston. The film is designed to encourage outsiders to visit Royston, whilst at the same time reminding residents that they live in an active and attractive town. Feature films show every Friday and Saturday in a state-of-the-art digital cinema – programme details available at www.roystonpicturepalace.org.uk
Unless you’ve recently attempted the Trail, you probably won’t know that various resurfacings and redevelopments had taken their toll on the trail markers (there were several missing). Accordingly, Royston First set about restoring the trail, to its former glory.
Collectively these items support a tourism initiative that is being worked on for next year and will be anchored by the Visitor Information Centre we have built in the Library.
After a lengthy period spent tracking down replacement plaques, tracing the original contractor, and obtaining the necessary permissions … we can now announce that, since early July, the Royston Town Trail is once again complete. Hurray! In conjunction with the restoration of the physical Trail, we also set about refreshing/updating the printed booklet that guides visitors around the town and supplies the narrative that supports the 31 trail markers.
This work has also been completed and new guides are available from the Visitor Information Centre in the Library, the Town Hall and Royston Museum.
02 Royston First | UPDATE
Royston First | UPDATE 03
Royston Town Website
2016 Events Royston July
Trail
This year the event was based in Fish Hill Square. The key attraction was a trail which set children searching for 12 musical instruments in the windows of various retailers.
Success achieved, they were offered the opportunity to make a drum or adorn themselves with music glitter tattoos. Participant numbers were up 50%; a total of 60 drums and 100+ tattoos were delivered. The Music Trail will continue as one our events designed to attract footfall and remind residents to use Royston Town Centre.
On Saturday October 1st between 10:00am and Coming in October 4:00pm we will once again be staging the Pirate Trail. This is probably the most popular of the four annual trails we mount in the town, possibly due to the fact that we encourage everyone to come in fancy dress (and apparently Roystonians love to dress-up as Pirates!) Last year we distributed an astonishing total of 1529 items – ranging from treasure maps to chocolate gold coins. This year? Well, all we can say is we’re ready!
Already we are on the 2nd incarnation of the website we launched in the Spring. Having originally focused on producing a website offering ‘all things Royston’ we are now focusing on improving specific aspects of the site, such as: 4 Improved Navigation Having analysed the initial figures for usage of the website, we noticed that ‘dwell times’ were way above average, as were multiple pages accesses. Accordingly we will be making it easier to move between related sections by offering suitable dropdown menus. 4 The Business database The database lists every business trading in Royston, together with any website and new media links. However, we quickly received requests for more information on
individual businesses; so we are about to release a new database featuring:
• A brief description of every business listed.
• The opportunity for businesses to volunteer expanded/ amended information which, once vetted, will be displayed as part of the database.
VisIt us at www.roystontown.uk
Promoting the website has included pop up banners, postcards and exterior displays
town centre Window Displays Once again we’ve attempted to brighten-up the windows of vacant retail units - this time by affixing cheerful spring/summer motifs. These were externally fitted around the edges of the windows to counter landlord/agent objections regarding access and blocking of light for potential viewers. Our efforts only met with partial success. We were excluded from a couple of windows where tenants were expected - only for the hurly
burly of the market to result in the properties still empty 3 months later! Our efforts to clean-up windows and improve appearance were also somewhat undermined by heavy fly-posting and the sticky mess left behind. We shall persevere!
Arts Festival Bunting
Open Secrets
For the second year Royston First will erect bunting in the High Street to publicise the annual Royston Arts Festival.
Blessed with beautiful weather, this year’s Open Secrets completely lived up to its potential.
Despite already being core funders of the ‘Festival, the necessity of using the Christmas Lights supports made Royston First the obvious organiser for the bunting. We are happy to oblige.
Despite having to assemble and organise 77 participating local businesses, community groups, organisations and charities, the event ran like clockwork for the 4,000+ members of the public. Royston First intends to continue to act as one of the sponsors for this important community event.
02 Royston First | UPDATE
Royston First | UPDATE 03
Royston Town Website
2016 Events Royston July
Trail
This year the event was based in Fish Hill Square. The key attraction was a trail which set children searching for 12 musical instruments in the windows of various retailers.
Success achieved, they were offered the opportunity to make a drum or adorn themselves with music glitter tattoos. Participant numbers were up 50%; a total of 60 drums and 100+ tattoos were delivered. The Music Trail will continue as one our events designed to attract footfall and remind residents to use Royston Town Centre.
On Saturday October 1st between 10:00am and Coming in October 4:00pm we will once again be staging the Pirate Trail. This is probably the most popular of the four annual trails we mount in the town, possibly due to the fact that we encourage everyone to come in fancy dress (and apparently Roystonians love to dress-up as Pirates!) Last year we distributed an astonishing total of 1529 items – ranging from treasure maps to chocolate gold coins. This year? Well, all we can say is we’re ready!
Already we are on the 2nd incarnation of the website we launched in the Spring. Having originally focused on producing a website offering ‘all things Royston’ we are now focusing on improving specific aspects of the site, such as: 4 Improved Navigation Having analysed the initial figures for usage of the website, we noticed that ‘dwell times’ were way above average, as were multiple pages accesses. Accordingly we will be making it easier to move between related sections by offering suitable dropdown menus. 4 The Business database The database lists every business trading in Royston, together with any website and new media links. However, we quickly received requests for more information on
individual businesses; so we are about to release a new database featuring:
• A brief description of every business listed.
• The opportunity for businesses to volunteer expanded/ amended information which, once vetted, will be displayed as part of the database.
VisIt us at www.roystontown.uk
Promoting the website has included pop up banners, postcards and exterior displays
town centre Window Displays Once again we’ve attempted to brighten-up the windows of vacant retail units - this time by affixing cheerful spring/summer motifs. These were externally fitted around the edges of the windows to counter landlord/agent objections regarding access and blocking of light for potential viewers. Our efforts only met with partial success. We were excluded from a couple of windows where tenants were expected - only for the hurly
burly of the market to result in the properties still empty 3 months later! Our efforts to clean-up windows and improve appearance were also somewhat undermined by heavy fly-posting and the sticky mess left behind. We shall persevere!
Arts Festival Bunting
Open Secrets
For the second year Royston First will erect bunting in the High Street to publicise the annual Royston Arts Festival.
Blessed with beautiful weather, this year’s Open Secrets completely lived up to its potential.
Despite already being core funders of the ‘Festival, the necessity of using the Christmas Lights supports made Royston First the obvious organiser for the bunting. We are happy to oblige.
Despite having to assemble and organise 77 participating local businesses, community groups, organisations and charities, the event ran like clockwork for the 4,000+ members of the public. Royston First intends to continue to act as one of the sponsors for this important community event.
04 Royston First | UPDATE
Market Stalls Sometime during the autumn, new stalls will appear on Royston Market. The current stalls are somewhat long in the tooth and looking a bit tired. We have reached the point where patching them up is no longer feasible/desirable. Based on the market’s solid performance in maintaining a good selection of traders during this year and thereby maintaining its status as a key attractor to the town centre, Royston First proposed contributing funds to the purchase of some new stalls. We are pleased to report that not only did Royston Town Council approve of our ideas but immediately agreed to match fund from the markets reserve fund thus enabling the purchase of a complete new market. You might think that overcoming the big challenge (i.e. raising the funds) would ensure everything else falls into place immediately. However ‘the devil is in the detail’ – and in this instance, most of the summer has been spent on the detail! Nonetheless, with new handling procedures,
R yston
Business
Awards
storage plans, billing system, security, and the colour scheme sorted out … we’re just about ready to go.
Royston First UPDATE - Su mmer/Autu mn
Proposed design for the market stall
So around about October time there’ll be one more reason to visit Royston Market on a Wednesday or Saturday (beyond the fact that you can get vegetables fresh from New Covent Garden that morning, fresh cut flowers and plants straight from the nursery, local fresh bread, fresh meat, etc. etc.)
Royston Town Trail
Having experience of the previous awards ‘running out of steam’, we were aware of the significant administrative burden of delivering such an event. Accordingly, Royston First agreed to underwrite the cost of a (very) part-time, freelance event organiser to assist the Chamber in their Join us on endeavours. We will also be ensuring that a Thursday suitably smart print programme will be available October 13th on the night.
The Heath Club
See you there!
Royston F1rst c/o Town Hall Melbourn Street Royston SG8 7DA t 01763 878 242 e info@roystonfirst.com
Town Trail market plaque
Many of you may have noticed triangular brass plaques set into various pavements around the centre of Royston. Hopefully many of you will know that these denote the Royston Trail – a guided tour around the many historic sites and buildings in the town centre. The Town Trail Guide is just the latest in a growing suite of printed materials being produced by Royston First to support visitors to our town.
Every now and then a new initiative comes along that is deserving of support.
As it was in the past with such ideas as the revival of the Arts Festival and the launch of Open Secrets, so we believe it is with the Chamber of Commerce’s plans to reinstate the Royston Business Awards ( www.roystonchamber.org/royston-business-awards )
2016
These include an Accommodation Guide, a Guide to Clubs & Associations (an important feature of Royston life) and two up-to-date maps (one town centre, one entire town) to which we own the copyright – enabling us to reproduce/ distribute them at will.
Picture Palace Show Reel If you’ve been to the Royston Picture Palace recently, (which we hope you have), you will have seen our new show reel featuring some of the key attractions within Royston. The film is designed to encourage outsiders to visit Royston, whilst at the same time reminding residents that they live in an active and attractive town. Feature films show every Friday and Saturday in a state-of-the-art digital cinema – programme details available at www.roystonpicturepalace.org.uk
Unless you’ve recently attempted the Trail, you probably won’t know that various resurfacings and redevelopments had taken their toll on the trail markers (there were several missing). Accordingly, Royston First set about restoring the trail, to its former glory.
Collectively these items support a tourism initiative that is being worked on for next year and will be anchored by the Visitor Information Centre we have built in the Library.
After a lengthy period spent tracking down replacement plaques, tracing the original contractor, and obtaining the necessary permissions … we can now announce that, since early July, the Royston Town Trail is once again complete. Hurray! In conjunction with the restoration of the physical Trail, we also set about refreshing/updating the printed booklet that guides visitors around the town and supplies the narrative that supports the 31 trail markers.
This work has also been completed and new guides are available from the Visitor Information Centre in the Library, the Town Hall and Royston Museum.