Click here to read the Lowestoft Story
East Suffolk Council and its partners are incredibly excited about the future of Lowestoft and the opportunities to maximise its huge potential. With this in mind, the ‘Lowestoft Story’ has been developed which will focus our energies and intends to explain and map out what makes Lowestoft special, competitive and different to other places. A story which every organisation and individual across the area can share and be part of.
To date, a Place Board featuring key stakeholders from the town has been formed who have lead the creation of a town vision, a Town Investment Plan and place brand for the promotion of the town have been created, alongside an innovative Ambassadors Programme.
The story will help give us focus, ensuring that Lowestoft plays to its strengths and that grasps the opportunities available. It’s real strength will come from every organisation playing their part in bringing it to life, so that ‘we’ in Lowestoft and the ‘rest of the world’ start to see and hear a more confident and consistent message about what makes Lowestoft special.
The story is for everyone, in all aspects of life and it is especially important for people talk about Lowestoft to those outside of the place. This can be achieved by having one story as it can be flexible depending on which audience is being addressed.
The story needed to identify the assets and strengths that are fundamental to defining what people in Lowestoft are all about; what makes the place and its people special and what makes it different. The story is split into themes, there are two key themes and they have been identified because elements of them have shaped the place it is today – and they will certainly be central to the future.
Lowestoft developed as a place because of the sea; this relationship shaped the sense of place and personality of the town and area.
Lowestoft benefits from a great variety of landscape and seascape with big skies, beaches, the Broads, coastline and marshland.
These themes sit alongside a statement that reflects the aspiration or “big idea”:
Lowestoft has been the place to be for visitors and business and it will be again. The natural beauty is still there and the apparent disconnect with port and industry give it an authenticity and charm that is hard to find.
John Till – Director thinkingplace
“Every so often a place we work in takes your breath away; by its beauty, by its character, by its potential and by the enthusiasm of its stakeholders … Lowestoft is that place. This is a town, area and community on a mission with massive investment underway and a cultural gene that has led it to bid for UK City of Culture 2025 … take a look, take a breath and be inspired by the leading light that is Lowestoft”
