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Post by Admin on Apr 21, 2007 18:42:03 GMT
It's been a while now since the Atherstone booktown was launched and despite the town now having several bookshops plus many gift, ornament and antique shops with some delightful little cafes there's the town is still quiet.
What do you think should be done to promote the town?
Atherstone forum
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Post by drazil on Apr 29, 2007 9:53:25 GMT
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Post by Madhatter on Apr 29, 2007 12:11:45 GMT
Thats fantastic news and goes against the national trend of a downturn.
I always thought it was a shame that the Dr Who museum at Llangollen closed 12 months before the BBC decided to bring it back, they hung on for all that time then just when it was right to hang on, although they didn't know that, they closed. They could have moved it into the hat factory here in Atherstone, things like that don't need to have local connections they just need to be popular.
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Post by mell2710 on Jul 14, 2007 14:57:14 GMT
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Post by Madhatter on Jul 14, 2007 15:48:54 GMT
Thanks for joining up mell, please tell everyone we're here.
I thought that petition was closed but its until 08 not 07
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Post by Madhatter on Jan 25, 2008 23:04:34 GMT
Well eight months on and we've had a leaflet and poster campaign to promote the town. A leaflet that is now out of date.
There are a number of sizeable shops up for grabs at the moment, anyone looking to start a bookshop in the town would now be able to find a decent sized shop unit.
Vikings old unit is empty, the old off licence is empty too.
Support is available from the existing book shops. It's just getting the council to get signs on the A5 to say we're a book town and getting complementary attractions.
On the plus side, I believe we'll be getting some sort of museum visitor centre in the old Britannia Mill Coleshill road.
We're getting another heritage feature this time for the Market Square.
I have a number of ideas, I feel it's a waste of time passing the ideas on though, there's no one that could implement them or no one that wants to. I may just do what I did with the lights and this site and go it alone. The lights I've done 9 years here now, the full street display 6 years, this site will soon be two years old.
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Post by Vas deFerens on Jan 26, 2008 23:47:03 GMT
yes lots of empty shops what has happened to the coffee shop
it looks empty when i went to Milos today
the shops that are owned by Arragonnt
do they advertise that places are availalbe or just put boards in the windows which wont get noticed only by local people
madhatter you type with a very negative attitude and if you have this in real life then it will very much be a waste of time giving your ideas to people
people want positive attitudes not doom and gloom
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Post by Madhatter on Jan 27, 2008 12:47:10 GMT
Well, I'm negative about there being no signs because I feel that we're losing the opportunity of getting thousands of passing cars every day, in to the town. Even one car a day would be a positive step.It's alright having Book shops and a pretty canal but on their own they aren't enough to get enough people into the town. Just concentrating on getting canal boaters in to the town and ignoring thousands of passing cars seems crazy.
I'm negative about getting any ideas implemented, not because I'm negative but because I've got experience of trying to get things done in this town. Any idea which isn't a councillors idea gets blocked by certain councillors. Some have actively helped me though , Geoff Taylor, Derek Pickard. So the negative people in my opinion are the ones that block projects that could one day expand to be something that people from miles around come to see.
Another negative attitude I encounter is to this site, We had a site and a good busy forum, but it wouldn't move with the times, wouldn't listen to peoples suggestions and therefore I started this one. Shortly afterwards the other forum closed paul gave moderation rights to a group of people that couldn't agree with each other on how to mederate, for which I feel I get some of the blame. I'm not sure how it's my fault as I'd left by then and only just returned as paul closed it. My opinions on how paul run the forum didn't close it, to suggest they did is madness. This forum will soon be two years old, I haven't got bored and given up despite paul saying that I would and despite there being very few posters.
We're now in a situation where we need a new up to date town site, not a blog, not a forum, but static pages about the town, with tourist information, some history, links to the numerous other local sites and event sites....
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Post by Vas deFerens on Jan 27, 2008 19:06:14 GMT
there are brown signs on the A5 pointing to atherstone i am sure in fact yes because they mention it is a historic town
people need a reason to stay when they visit
i dont know about your ideas getting into action - i wish you success
if atherstone needs a information website then who will do it and who will pay
otherwise you will end up with an electronic version of the leaflet which will be out of date if it is not updated often with events
and new dates
that can be as bad as not having a website at all
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Post by Madhatter on Jan 27, 2008 21:32:02 GMT
Yes they say historic hatting town. They're like every town has, they say what the town is most famous for, some are market towns, some say roman towns, some say canal towns, non exactly say tis town has something worth visiting only places like Stratford, and cities. They should have been put in a year and half ago, before sit a while closed. All the other book towns have brown book town signs, we have a reference to what we once were, and what we now have no sign of in the town, even the heritage centre with it's few hats has gone. Strange how Stockport has made something of it's hatting connection and has a decent hat museum. (Welcome to Atherstone historic hatting town where tommy coopers fez was once made in a factory now demolished and replaced with a boring aldi store, and no we don't have his fez, it was just made here  ). Mind you highways agency would probably block any sign like they made the town council remove the 'Welcome to Atherstone sign'. Now I do feel negative  I agree with that, it's hard work and can be boring updating a site and forum, and the site side is even more boring. I had a news ticker on here once that had to be manually updated in the html headers with links to stories that i had to find manually, I gave up on it in the end. If it's too much work to update It's not worth doing because as you say it will go out of date. I'll put the events in the calendar and in the events section, I don't mind doing that. I suppose if I had a news feeder on the site It would be better but I'm not sure I can on here. Most of the stuff doesn't go out of date though, static pages would just get added to, it's very rare you need to take anything away. I think we could have a good up to date looking site with information pages that can be added to by lots of different people and an events section in the forums which make them easy to edit like they are now. And that is what I'll do. |
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Post by Vas deFerens on Jan 29, 2008 1:17:02 GMT
'information pages that can be added to by lots of different people'
that sounds like your own wikipadia but that sounds strange after what you said about your other forum moderaters not agreeing
how will you verify that the information that other people put up is correct and up to dated - someone has to have control
will they be doing it for free or for sponsorship
how do you stop people putting wrong and stupid things on there - like free haircuts this saturday just ring 0761***** before 6am and shout 'haircut' really loudly
im intersted to see what you do and will help if i can
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Post by Madhatter on Jan 31, 2008 3:46:02 GMT
I could use a wiki but was thinking more along the lines of submitted articles. Not sure what you mean about agreeing with moderators, there's only me and another moderator on here, it's on other sites I didn't agree with the moderating.
As far as a wiki is goes there's problems with it because people don't tend to contribute to any other wiki than wikipedia, Wikipedia is now competition led, full of arguments, power mad obsessed editors, the longest on there telling the new what 'is not to be authorised' often deleting links to good sites or sites that contain information not all ready on the wiki. They often go to the site steal the information, hide it in a rewrite and break the link. The pages are often wrong or have chunks missing or pictures missing because of this. peoples work gets deleted, as my picture did because others want their work on there instead.
So its either dead or full of conflict and vandalism with no moderation. Totally unreliable as a source of information.
It may be different on here as it's small but as you quite rightly say how would we verify and moderate.
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bosco
New Member
Posts: 12
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Post by bosco on Apr 15, 2008 18:20:59 GMT
I do not know much about Atherstone, but from what I have read there is quite a bit of history there.
Many tourist from the States that travel to Europe use travel tips and intinerarys provided by Rick Steves. If you are not familiar with him, he has a program on the Public Broadcasting Network that is quite popular. He travels to different regions in Europe and talks of the history, sites, people etc.
This might be something to check into and send him an email with some history and send him an invitation to visit Atherstone in the future. If by chance he does visit you will have alot of free advertising in the States.
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). Mind you highways agency would probably block any sign like they made the town council remove the 'Welcome to Atherstone sign'. 
