thud. that’s the sound of may’s renaissance news hitting doormats with the latest news from scarborough’s urban renaissance initiative.

kapow! that’s the sound of scarborough’s cultural explosion as documented in the centrespread by the arts and culture forum.

ping. that’s the light switching on in people’s heads as they realise what a culturally vibrant part of britain we live in.

the scarborough contingent is david archer - the council’s strategic director of operations, andrew clay - director of woodend creative workspace, and myself. our presentation will be on renaissance and the role the creative industries is playing in the regeneration of the town. wish us luck.

at last we’re allowed to tell you… we’ve been keeping quiet about coastival - a new 3-day arts festival taking place in scarborough in 2009.

the festival which takes place in the otherwise sleepy month of february pulls together organisers from many of the yorkshire coast’s main festivals including beached, acoustic gathering, the jazz festival and it will be the new home of the festival of light. festival strands include dance, theatre, spoken word, visual arts, music, film, comedy and a full children’s and youth programme. events will take place across venues in scarborough. you can see it as a taster for the rest of the year’s festivals or as a new rich mix of the very best art and culture yorkshire has to offer.

we have been commissioned to develop a visual identity for the festival, a website and work on ideas for a promotional campaign over summer 2008. we also came up with the name ‘coastival’. the signs we’ve been teasing you with are the start of the publicity campaign [bringing yorkshire to the seaside], photos below are from yesterday’s launch and photocall with the yorkshire post [on page 8 of today’s edition] and scarborough evening news [their story here]. photo above is of mezzzo-soprano victoria wright helping launch the festival.

you can catch me talking about our plans to tour yorkshire with an opera singer on yorkshire coast radio today and you may have heard festival organiser wendy clews of create on radio york yesterday. more about the summer tour as the plans firm up…

in the meantime put the dates in your diary: coastival - february 17-19 2009.

it’s rare that the sound of breaking crockery can be heard from the electric angel studio, but that was the image we developed as part of this work for domestic abuse services - an organisation that helps victims of domestic abuse in the north yorkshire coast and ryedale area.

this project is a good example of how we like to work whenever opportunity arises - a group creative session to help us understand who we’re working with and what they do and opportunity for the people involved [not just the person who wrote the brief] to talk to us first hand. on this occasion we used creating montages of images and some mini story writing as a route into learning what the organisation does and the vital role it plays in helping both female and male victims of domestic abuse. we blogged about the creative session here.

we then returned with several possible concepts for communicating this to both those who might need to use the services das provide and to potential funders. you can see the end results here - a multi-purpose leaflet, an adaptable information pack with multiple inserts and a poster. we believe that effective design is that which is appropriate to the situation - in this context the temptation is to be ‘clever’ with the message and the imagery, the challenge however is to engage interest and then communicate quickly and simply. das believe we’ve got that balance right. this project had quite a lot in common - both in the way we worked, the approach and the subject matter - with the work we did for lighthouse in hull.

a bit of technical stuff for those who are interested - print is on uncoated paper [ie. not flashy] as seems appropriate to the subject matter and it’s a two colour print job which helps to keep costs down as well as having a visual impact. a quick mention whilst were here for the stationery we also designed as part of a process refreshing the organisation’s logo to be applicable to fresh areas of work.

broadband capital of britain - that’s how monday’s yorkshire post describes scarborough’s ambitions as part of an article about freebay wifi [above]. it’s not just the seafront wifi that causing waves but also the 100mb connection into woodend creative workspace - scarborough’s new creative industries centre - which opened for business last week. it’s good to see word getting around and the north yorkshire coast challenging a few preconceptions.