Musings on the first lockdown, creativity and the future of public space.  It’s now almost 40 years since we started our design business and perceptions of the creative industries have changed hugely over that time. I grew up in a household where my mum and my nan were always making clothes and my pop was […]

Disposable fashion is an awful concept. By the time you read this the UK will have been under lockdown for roughly one week, and our lives as we know them have been drastically changed. We don’t know how long it will last before these restrictions start to ease off, but it has me wondering whether […]

The definitive history of Blackburn is Open and the build up to The National Festival of Making. In 2012, we had the idea to take what Blackburn had – empty shops in prime town centre locations, an open minded Council, unused evocative buildings, strong industrial heritage, successful diaspora – and embrace these assets to start […]

Our town centre thinking continues… This week it’s the turn of another so called “retail institution” the House of Fraser to announce a significant store closure following a shrinking of Mothercare and the demise of the likes of Maplin’s, Toys R Us and a whole raft of retail “brands” (that often actually has done the […]

A blog about how affordable rents helped us get started and how through the markets we curate we are, in a small way, helping start-ups “have a go” by providing low cost opportunities.  I grew up in modest background to the sound of whirring sewing machines and with a mum and a nan who always […]

Improving equality and life chances for the younger generations have always been hugely important to us. Growing up in the 60s and the 70s my guess is that most young people in normal working class communities like the ones Gerardine and I came from in North East Lancashire had the belief that if they rolled […]

In 2015 we continued to discuss and document our positivity about the evolution of town centres, as a more indie and experiential spirit started to replace the dinosaurs that continued to fail and cease trading.  I have “mouthed off” pretty regularly these last few years about the future of our high streets – one recurrent […]

At HemingwayDesign we work in a number of towns and cities that have suffered economically and socially over the past decades and I occasionally attend round table discussions or conferences in these towns that focus on regeneration. There is no fairy dust (as Oliver Wainwright said about what we do, possibly snidely, see here) to be sprinkled, […]

We are excited about Margate as Dreamland, the project we led on, is about to open. Last year I wrote about some words about Margate that were published on the Design Council website.  Margate  A seaside town that the press often depicts as a bit of a basket case. I have one word for it: […]

Here we reclaim the much maligned term “hipster” and sing their praises for their contribution to regeneration.  The word hipster is much maligned. The media has helped turn a sector of young folk who are interested in new things and being a bit different – someone who in the past might have been described as […]