Go To Town

A creative communications professional with a 22-year career history in programmes and events with the BBC, Harriet Roberts has recently become well-known and respected in placemaking. This is due to the work that she did in Blackburn, Lancashire where she was instrumental in building business partnerships, developing a perception changing events strategy, brand narrative and marketing strategy for the town centre. This included creating festivals and partnership activities, driving footfall and leading the multiple stakeholders to victory in the prestigious Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government’s Great British High Street of the Year competition in 2016.  In the same year she was nominated as one of three finalists for the title of Lancashire Tourism’s Tourism Superstars.

Harriet has recently led two national PR communications campaigns involving locally curated celebrations of place: Heritage Open Days (National Trust) and Love Your Local Market (NABMA) supporting communities to tell and share the stories of where they live in grass roots festivals promoting civic pride and economic, social and cultural regeneration.

She is now creating Time Machine, a pilot placemaking tool with Heritage Open Days which piloted in Rochdale in 2019, Warrington in 2020 and will roll out across the UK in 2021 and 2022.

Harriet is part of the Re:Source charity set up to rescue, restore and revision the Cotton Exchange, an £8 million project to develop a town centre multi-use community arts and wellbeing hub. She was CEO of the Empire Theatre in Blackburn between 2007 and 2010.