HemingwayDesign is working with the London Borough of Barnet to co-create their bid to become the London Borough of Culture in 2027. The London Borough of Barnet is embarking on a transformative journey in its London Borough of Culture bid, setting an ambitious course to explore and celebrate its identity like never before. Despite being […]

Great Levelling Up Fund news yesterday for two seafront regeneration projects HemingwayDesign have played a key role in, a project we kick-started some time ago, and for a town we have been working in for a decade. Cleethorpes / North East Lincolnshire will be awarded over £18 million for a transformational regeneration of its seafront and town centre. This […]

This was an interesting one for our team. Between ourselves and our friends at CTConsults, we have plenty of experience in place brands for whole towns or cities. We have experience in creating place brands for places that don’t exist yet, and for places with lengthy histories. We’d worked on heritage projects and Action Zone […]

HemingwayDesign has a long and illustrious history. We are in our fifth decade now but the first Friday in November 2022 will go down as one of our proudest when three independent organisations which were set up when we were in the midst of urban regeneration projects and who we contributed to their inception and […]

In 2016 HemingwayDesign embarked on a project to produce a Vision for Lowestoft South Beach, with aim to rejuvenate the seafront and help enliven the town’s leisure and tourist attractions. Labelled ‘rundown and dirty’ in a recent article, Wayne Hemingway spoke to BBC Radio Suffolk’s Sarah Lilley about ‘click bait’ culture, the reality of this […]

In 2020, working with NEW Masterplanning, HemingwayDesign completed a Vision and masterplan for Andover town centre. Our team worked closely with Test Valley Borough Council, with extensive consultation with Town Council officers and members, key employers, local retailers, and the local community to secure widespread support for a comprehensive redevelopment focused on four key proposals: […]

In 2016 HemingwayDesign embarked on a project to produce a Vision for Lowestoft South Beach, with aim to rejuvenate the seafront and help enliven the town’s leisure and tourist attractions. With its extensive sandy beach, two levels of promenade, seafront parks and gardens, all flanked by handsome period buildings, it quickly became apparent that Lowestoft […]

I am not an expert on skateboarding, none of my children ever got into it, and if I were to try it I would, for certain, do myself a mischief. But I do love watching skateboarding and recognise it as an important part of youth culture and urban sport; one that’s totally durable. Now it’s […]

Everyone missed festivals and events in summer 2020, but boy did we miss them at HemDes. We’ve established and are involved in 7 cultural festivals across the country, and usually summer for us is those every weekend plus our London-based design-led markets happening around the year, making for a busy events team and a packed […]

We are all for localism when it truly serves the best interests of the local community. I recently read that Preston has been named as the UK’s most improved urban area in a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers and think-tank Demos and was cheered by the fact that a town I know and love is doing well. […]

The opportunity to design a housing development in Blackburn was something that energised Gerardine and Wayne. I often get asked for my career highlight and my answer for the past decade or so has been The Staiths South Bank in Gateshead, our first housing development. It was one of those rare projects that, despite the […]

We can tend to be utopian but a divided society serves no-one. Britain is divided in a number of ways and if it continues then everybody will suffer. Between Remainers and Leavers, environmentalists and climate change-deniers, misogynists and feminists, the curious and the ignorant and the haves and have-nots, we’re at risk of tearing ourselves […]

The story of the creation of the Festival of Thrift which turns 10 years old in 2022  In 2011 Gerardine and I were introduced to a chap called John Orchard. He was part of a group of investors who had taken on the enormous, 2 million square foot, Paton & Baldwin’s knitting yarn factory in […]

We all have “People Power” if we get together and campaign.  One of my favourite slabs of 7” vinyl in my record box is People Power by Billy Paul. I believe that active and vocal communities can bring a sense of empowerment to the wider community and can engender positive change and make things happen that […]

We have been known to dream… There are have been some wonderful life enhancing tech start-ups over the past few years. Airbnb and Uber have changed, for the better, the way I consume travel and getting about. But there is one that every time I go running in a town or city gets me thinking. […]

I’ve had an interesting few weeks sitting on the Eco Towns Challenge Panel. The proposed Eco Town programme has naturally caused a major outbreak (nay plague)  of “nimbyism”. Many of the new towns and settlements the Britain commissioned since the successes of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City are having to have regeneration money lavished on […]