Blackpool’s new town centre cinema complex will feature one of the largest IMAX screens in the country, standing at a massive 10.8m, it was revealed today.

IMAX has signed up to deliver state-of-the-art, immersive movie experiences at the new multi-screen development which will be known as the Backlot Cinema.

The Backlot Cinema will comprise nine screens and a total of 850 luxury seats and will be the anchor tenant of the Phase 2 extension of Houndshill Shopping Centre in the heart of Blackpool town centre.

The Backlot Diner will open for all day dining to the local and tourist population with a classic yet contemporary menu including great shakes and crafty cocktails. The new 22,500 sq ft Wilko home retail store will also be housed in the Phase 2 extension.

Work on site is progressing and on schedule with steelworks taking shape to build the structure that will feature ground-breaking IMAX with Laser technology, as well as IMAX’s 12-channel sound technology.

“We’re thrilled to see this ambitious project come to life and to bring the IMAX experience to new audiences in the Blackpool area,” said Alessandra Pavan Bernacchi, VP, Theatre Development at IMAX. “We’re excited for moviegoers to experience the latest blockbuster films in this new state-of-the-art IMAX theatre, which is sure to become a destination for premium entertainment and events in the community.”

John Sullivan, Founder of Backlot Cinema said, “The backlot of a film studio is at the heart of the film making process – it’s where the action really happens and where creativity is allowed to flourish. It seemed an entirely appropriate name for this thrilling entertainment hub which we couldn’t be more excited to be bringing to this vibrant town.”

The completed Phase 2 scheme will deliver:
• Over 100 jobs created both directly through the scheme and locally
• 0.5 acres of brownfield land developed
• 76,500 sq. ft. of new commercial floorspace
• Approx. over 260 construction jobs created over the build period
• Increase of 1.2m shoppers and visitors to the Houndshill Shopping Centre

Cllr Lynn Williams, Leader of Blackpool Council said, “We are delighted to welcome IMAX and Backlot Cinema to the Houndshill Shopping Centre as it will be a major draw for residents and visitors to the town centre.

“For the town centre to prosper we must continue to provide new reasons to attract resident and visitors and to extend the time of visits into the evening with more entertainment and leisure choices that the whole family can enjoy. The new multi-media cinema complex will provide something brand new for our residents combining a state-of-the-art cinematic experience but also the availability of new flexible creative spaces that many that many artists and businesses will also be able to benefit from.”

The £20m scheme has been part-facilitated by £5m of funding from the Government’s COVID-19 Getting Building Fund, following formal approval by the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership (LEP) in October 2020. Blackpool Council will fund the balance of the scheme through prudential borrowing.

Blackpool has launched its biggest ever marketing campaign Only in Blackpool – spearheaded by new ‘spokesbird’ Nigel C Gull.

The £1.3 million partnership between Merlin Entertainments, Blackpool Council, Blackpool Tourism Business Improvement District and other partners will feature seagull Nigel – voiced by legendary actor and comedian Johnny Vegas – bringing to life the iconic seaside resort’s distinctive charm and character and reaffirming its status as the UK’s capital of fun and ultimate destination for families.

In the new adverts, which will air across TV, radio, social media and video-on-demand, Nigel – a straight talking, no-nonsense embodiment of the town itself – visits iconic attractions including Blackpool Tower, the Pleasure Beach, Madame Tussauds and SEA LIFE.

Nigel says: “Think you know Blackpool? Well think again!”

Nigel was created by award-winning puppeteer Andy Heath, who has worked with the BBC, Lucas Films, The Jim Henson Company and Disney, with the campaign produced by the Creature London agency.

Merlin Entertainments Regional Director for Blackpool, Kate Shane, said: “We are thrilled to launch Only in Blackpool, the largest marketing campaign the resort has ever seen, and introduce the world to our ‘spokesbird’, Nigel C Gull.

“This campaign has been a collaboration of some truly creative minds including award-winning puppeteer Andy Heath and the man with the unmistakable voice, Johnny Vegas.

“Merlin is hugely committed to Blackpool – we recently opened our new Peter Rabbit™: Explore and Play and will soon launch another new family-focused attraction to complement our seven other long-standing attractions, including the iconic Blackpool Tower, Madame Tussauds and SEA LIFE.

“We can’t wait for our guests to experience all we have to offer this summer – as Nigel would say, there is plenty to squawk about in Blackpool!”

Leader of Blackpool Council, Cllr Lynn Williams, said: “We are delighted to be showcasing everything that Blackpool has to offer through the eyes of Nigel, our very special new ambassador.”

 

The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has officially opened Blackpool’s new £30m conference and exhibition centre.

Mr Johnson unveiled a plaque in the reception hall of the new building, which is situated within the historic Winter Gardens, on the second and final day of the Conservative Party Spring Conference.

It is the first time the Conservative Party has staged a major conference in the resort since 2007.

The new state-of-the-art conference centre has been designed so that it seamlessly integrates with the Winter Gardens complex.

With 2,400sq metres of dedicated space set over two floors and equipped with cutting-edge audio- visual technology, the new build adds a unique contemporary twist to the Winter Gardens, which first opened in 1878.

With a direct link into the Empress Ballroom, Opera House and Empress Buildings, the new centre has created a hub of 12 distinct venues, giving a total capacity of 7,000 delegates and almost five acres of connected conference, meeting, event and exhibition space.

Built on the site of a former car park, the scheme was facilitated by £17.8m of funding from the Government’s Growth Deal, which is managed by the Lancashire Economic Partnership (LEP), almost £3m from the Coastal Communities Fund and the remainder from Blackpool Council and the Blackpool Entertainment Company Ltd (BECL).

It is the first major building development at the Winter Gardens since the construction of the Opera House in 1939.

After officially opening the centre, the Prime Minister said: “It was an honour to open Blackpool’s new conference and exhibition centre in the historic Winter Gardens for the first Conservative Conference here in 15 years.

“This initiative is at the heart of our levelling up agenda, this new conference centre will make a real difference to boost economic growth and bring opportunities to this great coastal town.

“I hope this will be the home to many events for years to come, bringing people together from across the UK in the heart of Blackpool.”

Since being acquired by Blackpool Council, the original Winter Gardens buildings are undergoing a multi-million pound upgrade with a new air-conditioning system, improved digital connectivity and extensive refurbishments to restore rooms such as the Floral and Spanish Halls back to their original splendour.

A spectacular programme of marketing and events has been unveiled as Blackpool looks to celebrate its first full tourism season for three years.

At the annual season launch, the first to be held since 2019 because of COVID disruption, VisitBlackpool and resort partners showcased a myriad of new attractions, shows and events for the year ahead.

The plans were revealed to an audience of around 300 hoteliers and other tourism businesses at the launch event in the newly-opened £30m Conference & Exhibition Centre in the historic Winter Gardens. The plans include:

• A glorious parade of heritage trams along the seafront to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June
• The unveiling of Odyssey, the biggest light installation ever created for the annual Illuminations display, which will once again be extended by two months
• The staging of the annual Switch-On concert in the iconic Blackpool Tower Ballroom in association with MTV with the event live-streamed to an audience around the globe
• New attractions including the Peter Rabbit-themed play zone on the Golden Mile and the much-anticipated return of the award-winning Valhalla thrill ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach
• A full calendar of free events including the two-day Blackpool Air Show with the Red Arrows performing on both days, as well as the return of Ride The Lights, World Fireworks Championship Blackpool and the two-week Lightpool Festival
• Publication of a bumper entertainment guide containing hundreds of shows, musicals and concerts running from Easter to the end of the year

It was also revealed that a major new TV ad campaign is being developed in partnership with Merlin Entertainments. It will be aired from late May onwards as the resort seeks to capitalise on domestic staycations and maintain its place as the UK’s most popular seaside destination.

Cllr Lynn Williams, Leader of Blackpool Council, told the audience that the resort was committed to building on the success of last year when a £1m Council investment to kick-start the post-pandemic recovery resulted in record visitor numbers.

Cllr Williams said: “This is our first full year of tourism since 2019 and we are determined to make it a year to remember. Over the past two years we have worked extremely closely with our resort partners to ensure that Blackpool could emerge from the pandemic in a position of strength.

“Our substantial investment in marketing and events last year resulted in a spectacular recovery with some of the highest visitor numbers we have ever witnessed over the final part of the year.

“This year we will look to build on that with new events, the welcome return of some old favourites and one of the most ambitious TV campaigns we have run for many years.”

The Winter Gardens has begun the removal of the final 654 seats for re-upholstering in its Opera House Theatre as part of ongoing restoration works.

The 654 chairs from the balcony is the final group of seating to be removed, re-upholstered and reinstalled over a two-week period.

The completion of these works will mean the whole Opera House seating configuration has now been reinstated with the investment of the restoration levy, introduced in July 2021, at a cost of £45,000, raised solely by ticket sales.

The Opera House seats were originally installed in 1939 following the redevelopment of the Opera House that year. Over the years they have seated over 45 million guests including the Her Majesty The Queen.

The levy was introduced to ring-fence £1.50 of every ticket sold to directly fund some of the restoration costs of the Grade 2 listed building.

Each year, the routine maintenance bill is £500,000 and with essential repairs and the impact of COVID that cost has increased dramatically.

Michael Williams, Managing Director of the Winter Gardens said: “The levy has been a game changer for the theatre and is money raised by our theatre lovers that directly improves the theatre and the experience for generations to come.

“We know that tickets are an investment for people and so to capture this work happening is a great way of showing people how the levy is helping.”

The works are expected to take three weeks and then the newly re-upholstered seats will be reinstated before the main season gets underway in early April.

Blackpool’s tourism industry bounced back in spectacular fashion last year with record-breaking levels of footfall.

Newly-released figures show a huge upsurge in visitor numbers over the final part of the year on the back of a two-month extension of the Illuminations season and the most ambitious Christmas campaign ever staged in the resort.

Today, Cllr Lynn Williams, Leader of Blackpool Council and tourism portfolio holder, hailed the figures as “a total vindication” of the decision to invest £1m in events and marketing to kick-start the tourism, retail and hospitality industry as it began to emerge from COVID lockdowns and restrictions from May onwards.

Footfall figures for the town centre and Promenade show exceptional increases across all four months of the autumn/winter season.

The Christmas By The Sea campaign, which ran on the Tower Festival Headland from November 19 to January 3, and included a free skating rink, artificial snowfalls, light projection shows, log cabins, large-scale light installations, and the Star Flyer ride as part of the Winter Gardens Wonderland event, resulted in a 75% increase in footfall on the seafront compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.

The additional Winter Wonderland activity around St John’s Square and the Winter Gardens, combined with a heavily-discounted parking offer, resulted in town centre footfall increasing by almost 28% over the same period compared to 2019.

The footfall figures are supported by record amounts of visitor interest recorded on the VisitBlackpool website over the extended Illuminations season with all four months showing huge increases over 2019 (the last full year of tourism activity) and December more than three times the volume of 2019.

There was a similar picture on parking usage during the Christmas campaign with both town centre and Promenade showing large increases in patronage. For most of this period, car parking was offered at a special rate of £1 for three hours across most Council car parks.

Cllr Williams said: “We witnessed extraordinary volumes of people coming into the town centre and on to the Promenade over the final part of the year, and particularly during the Christmas By The Sea campaign.

“As we came out of the pandemic restrictions partway through last year, we were determined to put in place a tourism recovery plan that was of sufficient scale and quality to give our businesses the best possible chance of recouping some of the losses they incurred over two years of COVID disruption.

“The overall results are a total vindication of our investment. The Christmas By The Sea event over several weeks on the Tower Festival Headland clearly captured the public’s imagination and gave us the best Christmas visitor numbers we have seen in living memory.

“What we now need to do is work with our partners to not just replicate what we delivered in 2021, but build on what was a remarkable campaign.”

The Council has already announced that this year’s Illuminations season will once again be extended by two months, starting on September 2 and running through to January 2, 2023.

Discussions are also underway with private sector partners, including the newly-established Tourism BID, to look at a return of the highly-successful Christmas events.

RECOVERY FIGURES AT A GLANCE

Promenade Footfall

	2021	2020	2019	2018
September	4,230,460	3,305,710	2,997,048	3,016,977
October	6,314,918	3,305,710	3,516,766	3,393,376
November	3,471,686	1,367,556	2,095,888	1,980,209
December	3,202,584	1,703,969	1,857,419	1,877,807
Total	17,219,648	9,682,945	10,467,121	10,268,369

 

Town Centre Footfall:

	2021	2020	2019	2018
September	2,902,003	2,278,259	2,531,173	2,527,674
October	4,145,177	2,115,648	2,894,629	2,721,229
November	2,598,018	914,430	1,970,406	1,875,572
December	2,555,608	1,383,238	1,903,537	1,995,875
Total	12,200,806	6,691,575	9,299,745	9,120,350

 

Footfall during the Christmas campaign (November 19 to January 3)

	2021-22	2019-20	% change from 2019-20 to 2021-22
Town centre	3,924,036	3,068,688	+27.9%
Promenade	4,966,570	2,835,421	+75.2%

 

Unique Website Visits on VisitBlackpool

	2021	2020	2019	2018
September	366,224	263,529	179,004	183,415
October	408,025	262,361	194,366	214,405
November	231,564	66,381	73,108	74,828
December	179,213	98,763	45,808	51,893
Total	1,185,026	691,034	492,286	524,541

 

Page views on VisitBlackpool website

	2021	2020	2019	2018
September	1,030,044	765,971	611,544	697,654
October	1,239,013	696,907	722,253	821,841
November	651,865	141,859	232,075	249,597
December	457,825	232,786	131,575	161,607
Total	3,378,747	1,837,523	1,697,447	1,930,699

Note: Some elements of Christmas By The Sea were part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

 

One of the country’s most unique wedding venues is celebrating a 10-year anniversary.

It was on 12 January, 2012, that the sun set on a spectacular day in Blackpool as Kelly Goudie and Simon Garrick tied the knot in Festival House, Blackpool’s new register office.

Mr and Mrs Garrick became part of Blackpool’s history as they exchanged their vows and shared their first kiss as husband and wife in the Tower View Room, looking out across the Promenade to the world-famous Blackpool Tower.

A decade on, almost 5000 couples have tied the knot in the Wedding Chapel at Festival House and its popularity continues to increase every year.

The eye-catching gold clad venue on the Promenade offers couple the chance to get married with a backdrop of Blackpool Tower. Alternatively couples can book the Sea View Room, for smaller ceremonies of up to 12 people. The building is also home to the town’s Tourist Information Centre and the Beach House bar and restaurant.

Joceline Greenaway, Head of Life Events at Blackpool Council, said: “We are so proud to have such a unique venue as our register office. When couples come to look round they are wowed by the building itself and also the views from the rooms and the balcony.

“Legislation surrounding weddings has changed a number of times during the last ten years so we are now able to offer evening ceremonies which has been really popular for couples wanting to get married with the Illuminations in the background.

“In 2013 The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act was passed allowing all couples to choose a civil partnership or marriage ceremony. This was such an important step for equality and couples took advantage of it the very first day the legislation changed.”

First bride, Kelly Garrick, said: “The day was magical and in my opinion the Wedding Chapel is the most magical place on earth. It has such a unique atmosphere and we were blessed with an amazing Blackpool sunset.

“My husband said it best when he told me that “it’s not every day you marry your best friend”. Walking down the aisle seeing the Blackpool Tower in the backdrop and having all my family and friends there to witness our special moment will stay with me forever. The Wedding Chapel captured our love and we continue to feel so grateful. We’re now celebrating 10 years of very happy marriage!”

Click here for more information on The Wedding Chapel

Showtown, Blackpool’s new museum of entertainment, has received a grant for almost £120k from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

The grant will support key senior staff roles for Showtown who are vital to the museum’s development.

Without these key people, the museum, which is due to open its doors in the Sands Venue Resort Hotel building on Blackpool’s Central Promenade in spring 2023, would not be possible.

Esmée Fairbairn Foundation is one of the largest independent grant-makers in the UK. In 2020, the foundation provided £53.5m in grant funding towards work in support of their aims and their emergency response to COVID. The foundation also has a £45m allocation to social investment for organisations with the aim of creating social impact.

One of Blackpool Museum Trust’s main objectives is to develop a museum that will deliver community, cultural and economic regeneration in Blackpool. With the support of funders like Esmée Fairbairn Foundation it is one step closer to fulfilling these objectives.

The New Year may have only just arrived but already thousands of aspiring ballroom stars from across Europe have made their way to the Blackpool’s Empress Ballroom to compete in the Champions of Tomorrow event.

The world-renowned Winter Gardens has been pivotal to the development of ballroom dancing and has hosted dance festivals for over 90 years that have come to define the town’s dancing heritage.

In January, The Empress Ballroom and Spanish Hall were alive with dancers from across Europe who were in Blackpool for the first dancing event of 2022.

Michael Williams, Managing Director of Winter Gardens Blackpool commented: “It is a delight to welcome dancers back to Blackpool for Champions of Tomorrow. It is the first of many dance events that we host annually here at the Winter Gardens Blackpool which sees dancers from across the globe travel to Blackpool to compete in the magnificent Empress Ballroom.”

“To our delight and despite current circumstances, the numbers attending our first festival of 2022, meant an expansion across the venue, utilising the recently renovated Spanish Hall as well as the Empress Ballroom which received wide praise from competitors and spectators.”

Champions of Tomorrow provides opportunities for dancers of all abilities to compete in categories from under six years of age right through to seniors. Featuring competitions for solos, couples, all girls and pro-am/teacher students, it is one of 10 festivals which take place at the Winter Gardens each year, attracting thousands of visitors from across the globe.

Mr Warren Bullock, who travelled to Blackpool with his dance school, Zig Zag based in Wolverhampton, said: “To see the Winter Gardens so alive again with dance was very special. It was a pleasure to see the dancers in person and live rather than on ZOOM. I loved everything about the weekend, the impressive stage and lighting, the energy and the fantastic music. Wow! We do have some brilliantly talented dancers!”

The next festival is set to take place this April and will welcome juniors from across the world to compete in the Blackpool Junior Dance Festival across 29 different competitions. To find out more visit Blackpooldancefestival.co.uk

Photos attached credit: Gilbert Wu photography.

VISION FOR LANCASHIRE

Lancashire’s council leaders have made a historic pledge to work together to deliver a bold vision for a County Deal.

For months, all 15 of the council leaders who make up Greater Lancashire have been working in close collaboration to develop a set of ambitious and forward-thinking proposals. If adopted they would represent a New Deal for a Greater Lancashire across a range of areas including the economy, transport, jobs, skills and the environment.

In a demonstration of cooperation, each of the councils that make up Greater Lancashire – Lancashire County Council, the 12 district councils, Blackpool Council and Blackburn-with-Darwen Council – are to consider setting up a new formal body to help drive co-operation to the next level to help secure a deal with government.

In July 2021, as part of its levelling up plans the government announced it would introduce County Deals as part of its devolution plans, with the aim of transferring powers from Whitehall to local areas.

As the local authorities await the much-anticipated levelling up White Paper from government, Lancashire’s political leaders are seizing the initiative to drive forward a bold set of proposals which will be considered by all 15 councils in the coming weeks.

Councillor Lynn Williams, leader of Blackpool Council, said:

“For too long, decisions that impact Lancashire have been made in London. Devolving funding and power to the most local level possible is absolutely the right thing to do.

“A strong Lancashire can ensure that the significant inequalities affecting our communities can be addressed and that the Levelling Up agenda truly delivers the investment in people and place that we need.”

All 15 councils that comprise Greater Lancashire will discuss these proposals at full council meetings in the coming weeks, where they will be asked to agree a joint report.