Agenda and minutes

To elect a Chairman of the Committee who shall be a member of the Borough Council of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk for the remainder of the Municipal Year.

RESOLVED:  That Councillor Mrs E Nockolds be appointed Chairman for the remainder of the Municipal Year.

To elect a Vice-Chairman of the Committee who shall be a member of Norfolk County Council for the remainder of the Municipal Year.

RESOLVED:  That County Councillor H Humphrey be appointed Vice-Chairman for the remainder of the Municipal Year.

The Committee is invited to confirm as a correct record the notes of the previous meeting held on 16 March 2015.

The notes of the previous meeting held on 16 March 2015 were agreed as a correct record.

To consider any matters arising.

There was none.

Please indicate if there are any interests which should be declared.  A declaration of interest should indicate the nature of the interest (if not already declared on the Register of Interests) and the agenda item to which it relates.  If a disclosable pecuniary interest is declared, the Member should withdraw from the room whilst the matter is discussed.

These declarations apply to all Members present, whether the Member is part of the meeting, attending to speak as a local Member on an item or simply observing the meeting from the public seating area.

There were no declarations of interest.

To consider the report on King’s Lynn Museum activities in the period from February to August 2015.

The Head of Operations and Learning and Western Area Operations Manager jointly presented the report which provided information on King’s Lynn Museum activities for the period February to August 2015 and highlighted the following points:

Temporary exhibitions and events at Lynn Museum

The current major exhibition at Lynn Museum explored the life and work of Frederick Savage and was entitled Art of the Mart:  Savage’s – the famous fairground makers of Lynn.  The exhibition was opened on 25 July 2015 by the Mayor of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk.  It told the story of King’s Lynn iconic creator of merry-go-rounds – including a close look at the art, craft and design of the fairground.  The exhibition included the modern ‘Mart’ horse, and the bell used in the Opening Ceremony in February, on load from the Town Hall collections.

The previous major temporary exhibition 1914-2014: King’s Lynn and the First World War ran until 6 June 2015. Marking the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, the exhibition explored the town’s experience, including damage caused by Zeppelin raids, the Home Front and the role that local businesses played in the war effort. The exhibition features a broad range of collections including costume, ephemera and Zeppelin fragments.

A small travelling version of this World War One exhibition had been created and had been loaned to a number of community venues including schools in Upwell and Emneth.

From the 12 June until 12 July 2015, the Lynn Museum showed Trading Stories: A century of shops, crafts and trade. This exhibition was an enhanced version of the Shops and Shopping travelling exhibition produced by the Fens Museums Partnership as part of the HLF-funded Fenland Lives & Land project.  Graphic panels featuring photographs of historic Lynn shopfronts used in the display had now been passed to colleagues at the Borough Council to support the promotion of the Townscape Heritage Initiative in the town.

A programme of illustrated talks continued to be offered at Lynn Museum on Wednesday afternoons. Recent topics had included Hidden Histories, The First Official First World War Artist and the History of Lynn Museum.  Attendances averaged 15-25 and most talks were delivered by NMS staff.

An enhanced programme of informal family learning events continued to be offered at the Lynn Museum. Recent ‘drop-in’ format events had included:

·        Carousels and Candy Floss – 17 February (66 participants).

·        Dinosaurs – 31 March (210 participants)

·        Romans and Iceni – 7 April (70 participants)

·        Waterloo – 26 May (45 participants)

·        Seahenge– 28 July (48 participants)

·        Egyptians – 4 August (44 participants)

·        Treasure – 11 August (72 participants)

·        Vikings – 18 August (108 participants)

·        Dinosaurs – 25 August (126 participants)

An additional Fairground event for families was held on 25 July, to mark the opening of the Art of the Mart exhibition (50 participants).

During the school holidays the Lynn Museum continued offer a popular programme of themed gallery discovery trails, with a new trail available for each week of the school holidays. 

The  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

To consider the Borough Council Report.

The Tourism Manager presented a report which provided an update on the Borough Council’s tourism marketing and development activities since 2015 and highlighted the following areas:

Destination Marketing Campaign

2015 West Norfolk Holiday Guide

The 2015 brochure campaign had progressed well. To the end of August around 35,000 copies had been sent to people requesting the brochure through the advertising campaign, around 10,000 to TIC’s nationally and 13,000 copies through West Norfolk TIC and local events. Further campaigns running in September and October would see a further 11,000 distributed with the balance of 6,000 continuing to be distributed through Tourist Information Centres.

2016 West Norfolk Holiday Guide

Work is underway on production of the 2016 guide. Advertising rate cards were sent out on 1^st September. The new format introduced for 2015 would be continued and the print run of 75,000 will continue.

www.visitwestnorfolk.com

Traffic to the website www.visitwestnorfolk.com had continued to increase in 2015. This had seen the Hunstanton and King’s Lynn pages become the most viewed pages, ahead of the home page which reflected work done to improve search rankings for these terms.

When asked which themes/activities were of most interest to website visitors in 2015, the coast and beaches were ranked slightly ahead of countryside with similar numbers highlighting King’s Lynn. In terms of activities/themed areas of interest the three most popular areas indicated by users were.

-        Nature and wildlife

-        History and heritage

-        Food and drink

New Version of the Website

Work has been taking place since June on developing a new version of the website. Most importantly this would be a responsive website optimised for viewing on mobile phones and tablets as well as desktops. (currently 42% of people access the website via desktop, 29.5% via mobile phone and 28.5% via table). In April, Google indicated it would favour responsive websites over non responsive websites in its search terms. Around 83% of current visitors to www.visitwestnorfolk.com were from organic searches. Development of the new version of the website was largely in response to these changes.

The new site would provide much more content on many of the villages within the Borough. This was aimed at improving awareness of visitor opportunities throughout the rural areas of the Borough.

Mobile Phone App

Work on the new mobile phone app for the whole of West Norfolk would be progressing during the autumn. The aim was to use the same content database used for the West Norfolk website so that consumer information on facilities, services and events was consistent across online and down loaded formats.

Location specific and attraction based marketing

Distribution of the following publications had taken place throughout 2015.

-        Where To Go and What to Do in West Norfolk - 200,000 copies.

-        Discover King’s Lynn - 130,000 copies.

-        Hunstanton Mine guide - 42,000 copies.

-        Downham Market Mini Guide – 15,000 copies.

-                               

-        Lynn Lumiere (Art, Cities & Landscape) - 50,000 copies.

-        King’s Lynn Guided walks - 15,000 copies.

-  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

To note the date of the next meeting is 9 November 2015, 2.15 pm, Committee Suite, King’s Court, Chapel Street, King’s Lynn.

The date of the next meeting was Monday 9 November 2015 at 2.15pm in the Committee Suite, King’s Court.