Around the Solent Project Development

Please see our latest news page for the most recent project developments.

July 2007

In July 2007, the brave but difficult decision was made by the project steering group consisting of primary project partners to no longer pursue the HLF funding route to deliver the project. Instead individual funding streams will be identified for the different strands of the project. Work to date will not be lost as the matrix of projects will remain as a master plan to guide future access and interpretation related project work.

Over the coming months the Solent Forum will consider running an interpretation and access related funding event to assist all project leaders.

DECEMBER 2006

In December 2006, the Around the Solent (ATS) project partners agreed that an implementation bid be put together for Heritage Lottery Funding, to take forward the recommendations of ATS Phase I. This has been undertaken in-house by the Solent Forum Officer, Tracey Hewett, and will be submitted to the Heritage Lottery at the end of April 2007. The anticipated cost of implementing the Phase I recommendations is £1.6 million.

Final documents were received from PHT Consulting for submission to Heritage Lottery Fund. To see the Executive Summary please follow this link. To access the file you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader, the file is 2.1MB. At the end of May, the ATS project steering group meet to discuss their preferred way forward, the resulting proposal was taken to the Solent Forum Steering Group in June.

MARCH 2006

A meeting was held at the beginning of March to receive and comment on the Audience and Access Development Plans, Interpretation Plan and an outline of the proposals that PHT Consulting were considering for the ATS Action Plan in light of the community engagement that had occurred since the last meeting. The following summarises the main points of the meeting. It would be beneficial to offer sites funding to undertake themed activities and learning opportunities. Outreach activities will be easier than fixed infrastructure in some circumstances; it may be difficult to put orientation panels on some sites as this has to fit with the sites' development plan and they may not appreciate being told this is what is needed. The flexibility of the project makes it attractive. Integrated access aspects and sustainable transport are welcomed. The ferries as yet are an under exploited resource for interpretation.

Suggestions include:

• material with pre-booked tickets;
• exhibitions on board; themed catering;
• captain's commentary;
• meet and greet service at terminals;
• live interpreters;
• talking telescopes;
• floating classrooms.

Ferries might have Solent themed information racks. It is important to consider impact of disturbance at sites before encouraging an increase in visitor numbers at sites. There is lots for the public to enjoy and to enrich themselves but they don't know about it or it's difficult to get at. There is lots of print promoting sites in the Solent but the distribution mechanism may be flawed. There would be merit in looking at how the information is distributed and whether sites signpost to others. Perhaps literature swaps between sites would go some way to solving this.

FEBRUARY 2006

PHT consultants and Tracey Hewett of the Solent Forum met with an HLF case officer to discuss the proposed way forward. The meeting was considered a success with much positive feedback by the HLF officer. He remains enthusiastic about the project and was pleased to see the amount of community engagement that we had undertaken to understand current audiences and the barriers experienced. He reminded us to be mindful of the sustainability issue at the next stage when considering items such as minibuses.

JANUARY 2006

Online Survey available for two months asking what use people make of the various sites and places of interest in the Solent.

DECEMBER 2005

A meeting was held mid-December to receive a progress report from the consultants and to discuss in particular buy-in and commitment to delivery. PHT has a fair indication of the existing audiences. From the contacts suggested by the Primary Project Partners (PPP), the Solent Forum has initiated community engagement and PHT have followed this up.

Various methods have been used to engage with the community:

• emailing surveys and following up with telephone calls;
• an online survey; and
• meeting representatives of community groups.

Already, barriers to visiting sites are becoming apparent. These are the usual suspects:

• lack of information;
• complacency;
• transport cost;
• lack of own car;
• lack of interest;
• expensive (family ticket);
• insurance cost; and
• car park charges.

But, at least we have supporting evidence now. Part of the delivery will need to ensure those who don't currently make use of facilities have the opportunity to do so. Methods for garnering commitment were discussed and the need for an event for managers and councillors was recognised. This is likely to occur after submission of the HLF plans. There will also be a celebratory event for all those involved in particular community groups at this stage.

OCTOBER 2005

Parkin Heritage and Tourism gave the primary project partners a progress report in October. Community engagement/potential overarching outreach projects and delivery were also discussed. Progress has been made with the majority of the chosen sites. The consultants have visited the sites and their managers at least once and prepared site appraisals. It is considered that physical access, level of investment and marketing are the main barriers to access. However, there is a lack of hard data to support the identification of non-users although this suggests that marketing is not a priority of such sites, probably due to lack of resources. The next stage is consultation with local people to determine the barriers to access.

Consultation: Consultation with Solent stakeholders including hard to reach groups will be undertaken through an online questionnaire, focus groups and radio phone-ins.

HLF visit: Jason Lowe, the ATS case officer, spent a day on the Solent with Ian Parkin (consultant) and Tracey Hewett, Solent Forum officer visiting three of the pilot sites on the Western Solent to familiarise himself with the project. It was considered a successful and useful PR exercise and enabled us to find out more about how to approach the larger bid.

Interpretation Plan Volume 2 of the submission will be the interpretation plan combining both the access and audience development considerations together into one document. The first draft of this is attached and comments are welcomed within two weeks. The group were asked for suggestions of improving interpretation. It was thought that the best use of funds would be on hardware and investing in items that will last longer than the 3-5yr project funding.

JULY 2005

Parkin Heritage and Tourism presented the findings of the literature review, site survey and workshop to the primary project partners. They outlined the key themes associated with the Solent and they also proposed the way forward for the development of access and audience development plans. It is unrealistic to produce an Audience Development and Access Plan for all sites of interest in the Solent area. Rather, the project will take a representative sample and study them in more detail. The objective is to identify:

• existing audiences to different types (and locations) of site
• who is not visiting
• to assess these non-user audience groups in more detail: Who are they? Where are they located? What is their make up?
• to find ways to access these groups and by means of attending meetings, focus groups, undertaking interviews etc really try to find out what the barriers to access are, how real they are and what can be done about them
• having clarified the barriers to work with Site Managers to devise innovative ways of reaching these groups in order to remove the barriers including the assessing the costs involved and also the benefits.
• we then need to agree the audience groups we believe we should target because they are the most achievable
• prepare a Marketing Strategy to reach each audience group with programme and costs.

Using such a cross-section of sites around the whole study area will enable the team to get the best possible understanding of the barriers to access. From this they can generate a series of innovative initiatives that will be implemented with Phase II funding which can then be applied to other sites. Eleven sites have been identified to explore in more detail and the site managers of these sites will be approached on agreement with the Steering Group.The Steering Group will approve this way forward in August.

JUNE 2005

The primary project partners attended a workshop in Portsmouth, facilitated by the consultants Parkin, Heritage and Tourism, to determine the principal interpretive themes present in the Solent. The outcomes of the workshop will be presented to the Primary Project Partners at the Steering Group meeting in July. They will form the basis of the messages we want the Solent visitor to take away with them.

MAY 2005

Parkin Heritage and Tourism were commissioned to undertake Phase I of the Around the Solent project at a meeting on the Isle of Wight. The methodology for this phase and the following timetable for milestones were agreed with the project Steering Group.

• Interpretive themes identified (August 2005)
• Interpretive plan (September 2005)
• Access/Audience Development proposals (October 2005)
• Access/Audience Development draft plans (November 2005)
• Submission of Implementation (Phase II) bid to Heritage Lottery (January 2006)

APRIL 2005

Around the Solent Phase I launched and project management structure agreed.