What can design do for Cornwall?
The county may be the UK’s top holiday destination, but a radical rethink is needed to safeguard its economy, as Lloyd Bradley discovers
It’s a glorious day. You’re cruising the Cornish coast road against a picture-postcard backdrop. What could possibly be wrong?
Surfer (Jordan Weeks / Alamy)
A great deal, actually. Scratch below the surface of the quaint towns snuggled around in lets teeming with yachts and cruisers, and there’s a level of poverty in the Duchy that is virtually unknown anywhere else in Britain. In some ways, there’s very little to separate this apparently affluent part of the south west from the ‘officially’ needy north east.
Even though Cornwall earns over £1 billion annually from tourism and ‘exporting’ around 100 million pasties a year, the county has qualified twice in the past ten years for the sort of EU funding reserved for Europe’s poorest regions.
Cornwall’s economic problems are deeply entrenched and exacerbated by the nature of such a sparsely populated, seasonally affected region. The second Designs of the time (Dott) initiative run by the Design Council and currently underway in the county, will face some tough challenges.
In 1998 Cornwall’s last tin mine closed, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy imposed costs and quotas that laid waste the county’s fishing industry. As the 20th century came to an end, Cornwall’s economy hinged on the tourist trade.
Funding the new economy
In 2000, Cornwall achieved European Union Objective One status, qualifying because its GDP was below the official EU poverty benchmark of 75% of the European average. Cornwall scored 62%, the lowest in the UK, with inner London at 303%, the highest in Europe.
The county was entitled to £350m in EU grants between 2000 and 2006. Yet when that schedule of payments came to an end, Cornwall remained below the cut-off point – unlike the three other UK Objective One regions (Merseyside, South Yorkshire and West Wales & the Valleys) – and was entitled to another £415m under the EU’s Convergence Funding.
Mine (Kevin Britland / Alamy)
It’s not that the first round of funding was ineffective. Quite the opposite: Cornwall’s economic growth during that period was 10.5%, the highest of those four regions and higher than the UK on average. It’s simply that the county had so much ground to make up.
Neil Tinson, chair of the Cornwall Design Forum, believes the lack of understanding of Cornwall’s economic situation is a big contributor. “Visitors don’t really take in that side of Cornwall, because they see a busy, thriving place that all seems very lively and prosperous.
But the other side of this picture-postcard idyll is the reality of somewhere like Redruth, or the more rural parts, where you’ll find dwindling industries and a lot of poverty and isolation. There is a lot of regeneration needed, but it’s difficult to get people to accept that side of things.”
Cornwall’s tourist trade accounts for more than a quarter of all employment, but this strength has a downside. Although unemployment levels are actually lower than the national average (2% against 2.8%), it is the tourist trade making that difference, and those jobs tend to be relatively low-paid. This means the average wage in Cornwall is just over 70% of the UK average.
House for sale (Matt Cardy / Getty Images)
As well as lowering wages, tourism hikes prices. Cornwall has the highest concentration of second homes in Britain, and as affluent holidaymakers snap up much of what comes on the market, house prices in the Duchy have risen to 14% above the UK average.
This means an affordability gap (the ratio between local earnings and house prices) of 8:1, the widest in the UK. Property developers prefer to cash-in on luxury dwellings rather than building for locals. Catering to visitors’ needs has further pushed up the cost of living in Cornwall, as goods and services are priced with tourists rather than locals in mind.
The other side of the idyll is dwindling industries, poverty and rural isolation. It’s difficult to get people to accept that side of things Neil Tinson, Cornwall Design Forum
This combination of low-paid jobs and high-priced housing has been skewing the age of Cornwall’s population, which has increased over the past few years. The county has been getting older faster than the rest of Britain, as young people leave looking for work and affordable housing.
Conversely, it is seen as the ideal place to retire: 25% of Cornwall’s population is of pensionable age (for the UK it’s 20% ) – and this percentage is rising rapidly, while the under-35 age group is in sharp decline. At some point Cornwall will pay for this, as an aged population requires more from social and health services, while their fixed incomes will struggle to stay abreast of a high cost of living.
Much of the ostensible lack of opportunity is due to the perception of career paths offered by the tourist industry, according to Teresa Timms of VisitCornwall. “Tourism in the UK is seen as something of a dead-duck industry – you only do it if you haven’t got anything else to do. We want to create top-quality, year-round jobs that people are proud to do and will stay here to do.”
The “year-round” aspect is important, as the seasonal influx of visitors can swell Cornwall’s 500,000 population by 60% per day during the summer – Newquay’s population soars from 25,000 to as much as 100,000 between Easter and September.
This places a serious strain on infrastructure, waste and emergency services. Out of season, Cornwall has one of the sparsest populations in the British Isles (144 people per km2), and inadequate public transport is a considerable problem outside coastal areas.
All in the minds
Despite all this there is a definite air of optimism on the peninsula. The feeling is that Dott can go a long way towards focusing the Convergence Funding programme, implementing the changes of direction needed to ensure the economy’s survival.
“If we had relied on traditional land-based industries and tourism, we would not have been able to turn things around. We knew we needed to do something different, so we started to look at creating a knowledge-based economy in a rural environment, where connectivity would be a problem. We invested in a digital infrastructure. In 2000 we had no broadband coverage, by 2006 half of all Cornish businesses had broadband, a figure that’s continuing to rise.”
The Government-funded Technology Strategy Board will be investing in Cornwall with a brief to stimulate technology-enabled innovation by providing funding and advice for small and medium-sized businesses engaged in technology research and development.
To lay deep roots for a knowledge economy, one of the first Objective One projects was Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), amalgamating the region’s higher education institutes to create the first county university.
Its primary aim was to halt the Cornish Brain Drain – youngsters leaving the area to go to college and not coming back – but Kelemen believes it fulfils another valuable function: “We’ve never had that sort of university provision before, and it’s attracting a new wave of students, many of whom are staying on after graduation and transferring knowledge to the microbusinesses of Cornwall.”
We invested in a digital infrastructure. In 2000 we had no broadband coverage; by 2006 half of Cornish businesses had broadband Carleen Kelemen, Convergence Partnership Office
This attention to new enterprise is working, too; since Convergence Funding, Cornwall’s rate of start-ups has climbed to just below the national average, and their three-year survival rate is considerably higher than the rest of the UK. Tinson believes Dott will unite the creative community. “Down here, it’s so spread out, with no hub, as you’d get in a city. People tend to work in isolation and become a bit inward-looking. We need to see ourselves on a national or international level, rather than just as Cornish designers.
“Also, it will galvanise the creative community to get involved with projects in other areas, which will directly affect the local economy as projects become more effective and inclusive.”
Dott on the landscape
Alan Livingston understands the need for interaction between Cornish people and the design community – he is chair of Dott and was formerly rector of University College Falmouth. “Because we’ve had to look outside traditional Cornish industries like mining or fishing, it is very important that every project we take on should embrace the views of the local people, and that proposals offer a long-term benefit or legacy for the county. This is a major opportunity and we have attracted support from all sections – the Cornish people, designers, politicians and the local councils’ managements.”
Kevin Lavery, chief executive of Cornwall Council, believes Dott will have to serve the landscape as well as the people. “Cornwall is a beautiful place to live and work,” he says. “And one of the biggest challenges for the initiative is to ensure that it stays that way. We need design that is concerned with environmental impact as much as with functionality.”
“We are moving forward with the Wave Hub wave energy project, the UK’s largest wind farm, and plans for energy recovery schemes and new methods of waste recycling. The environment technology industry is a big part of Cornwall’s regeneration, and Dott presents an opportunity to make great advances.”
“A huge opportunity”, is how Kelemen sees Dott. “We have one chance to make a difference that will continue with its own momentum, so we are looking at it in a holistic way – not just designing a product or service but looking at how we approach it. We have to make sure it’s done in a way that will give the next generation access and not damage the Cornwall they will be living and working in.”
No pressure then.
100 years of hurt
When the Industrial Revolution called for vast quantities of the metal, Cornwall became the world’s leading producer. One in three working men were employed in the industry, and ports and railways were built to shift copper ore.
Large-scale tin mining only came about when the price of copper crashed in the 1860s, because many of the pits could switch production.
Although tin mining remained viable for several decades it was on a smaller scale, and the local economy never fully recovered.
Indeed, Cornwall maintained a measure of affluence in the early 20th century only as the world’s foremost supplier of white china clay, used in paper production.
Clay mining clings on but, in the last 20 years, the industry has slashed its local workforce by 75% as cheaper sources were found elsewhere.
The fishing industry has shrunk – as it has in the rest of the UK – and although agriculture in the Duchy is enjoying a revival after decades of decline, the Cornish economy has a lot of ground to recover.
Employment by sector
30.7% hotels & restaurants
29.7% education/health
11.1% finance
10.2% manufacturing
6.2% other services
5.7% construction
5.2% transport & communication
1.2% agriculture
Next practice
Andrea Siodmok on Dott
Dott is all about getting people who aren’t normally involved in design to feel part of it. It’s about realising that being top-down just doesn’t work any more.
Nobody goes into politics without good intentions about making people’s lives better, but it’s easy for politicians to lose the connection to the people they’re trying to help.
So when you spend big money, the temptation is to only ask people their opinion on how to spend it when the decisions have already been made. It’s just paying lip service.
Dott programmes are different because we’ll be showing people the power of design in action, and asking them to submit their own ideas on how design can help.
That kicks off with Dott Shot, where we’re using Flickr to ask the people of Cornwall to show us what they think design means, by submitting photographs.
As well as programmes which draw on European funding, we’ll have two separate showcase projects – one looking at green transport and how it can reduce carbon footprints, and the other examining play and developing more effective play space.
We’re taking major lessons from the work the Design Council has done in areas such as Design Bugs Out, as well as projects like Kent Innovation Centre and examples from Europe.
But Dott isn’t just about benchmarking best practice – it’s about creating next practice.
Everything we do has to be sustainable, in terms of its economic, social and environmental legacy. But we want a skills legacy, too, so that when Dott leaves, something lasting is left behind for Cornwall.
Article first published in Design Council Magazine, Issue 7, Winter 2009
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