Coventry's history - let's get it noticed

Those tacky attractions open up as a side effect of places having a lot of sightseers. Coventry has very few tourists these days and can't even support a coffee shop with them. We have a decent gallery in the Herbert, and no need of tacky animatronics and

I think you're wrong. I think it's that type of thing that families will go to see. Add in the Herbert or the Car Museum, or an afternoon's shopping and you've got a day out for everyone.

I can only speak for myself but the people I used to meet in town I'd often met elsewhere, be it school, sports, work or just locally. There would be people I'd recognise but didn't know walking around or on the bus because we had to be there everyday. Now a great deal of those have moved into out of town business parks so very few of them remain. This would have been the same for ages, first with the factories and then the offices. Most of that has now gone and for it to return the city centre once again needs to become a place of regular employment, which means attracting business which in turn means building stuff they want to use. Things are different now I admit - lifestyles are much busier, working hours are more changeable and with phones you are always contactable even walking down the street which can make people and places seem a bit unfriendly. I don't think many people like it, but it's an unfortunate necessity. I was aware it was Leamington and was being used to show how clean the streets are, I was just using the photo to illustrate a different point. Admittedly Leamington may be able to afford greater resources for civic pride stuff like clearing litter. It's smaller and has a more affluent population meaning it doesn't have to spend as much in other areas, although it is also much more likely the people drop less litter in the first place. I'm not saying the buildings haven't changed, just that in their overall density and size there's not much difference. You mention the SkyDome, but the factory that used to cover this area was just as big, if not bigger, and the brickwork covered in the dirt from its industrial use would have been a lot less airy than the current SkyDome facade. A lot of the taller buildings, such as the AXA House and Friar's House you mentions reflect a lot of light and thus seem less imposing than some smaller brickwork structures. We had to bring in clean air laws because the place was so dirty. The soldier statue is actually Frank Whittle btw. I'm not saying there isn't a great deal of post-war stuff that isn't terrible, just that in many cases it's not that much worse that what was there before. Had Jerde etc happened it wouldn't be long before people were reminiscing about the post-war stuff, even the towers.

I wonder how much advertising the city gets around the country! Recently we stayed in a Premier Inn in Luton, Bedfordshire, and browsing through the leaflets in the entrance hall, amongst the local places to go and the National Trust info, I saw that there were leaflets about Great Yarmouth I passed 'O' level geography, so I know that Great Yarmouth is not close to Luton (or even that easily accessible) so I wondered why there was no publicity about Coventry (only an hour away down the M1)

We all share a sense of local pride but Coventry isn't particularly interesting to most outsiders. This is true of most provincial towns and cities. What's memorable about Bradford, Ipswich, Norwich, Carlisle, Leicester, Swindon etc. etc? Even the Coventrian Poet Larkin cleverly damned both cities to obscurity by referring to Hull as "Coventry on Sea". The city certainly hasn't enough to support an ongoing or sizeable heritage industry. The topic heading is Coventry's history - let's get it noticed. A more realistic aim might be to concentrate locally. The local education authority could go a long way to get it noticed by teaching it as a core subject in primary schools. This would give Coventry kids real information, a sense of place and perhaps the foundations of true citizenship. I recently watched a DVD called "Of Time and the City", a film by Terence Davies (who, incidentally trained at Coventry School of Drama) about his native Liverpool. It consists mainly of archive material recording the development, or otherwise, of that city since the mid 1940s. The images with Davies' commentary and the musical additions have a powerfully emotional and nostalgic effect for anyone with memories of Liverpool. The film was made under the auspices of several artistic and cultural bodies at a grant cost of some

I totally agree that any promotion should be focused locally, or regionally at best, focusing on local pride and reducing problems such as the littering hopefully as a byproduct. I don't think that many people would be willing to travel much further than that with Coventry's offering. I think the Motor Museum posibly deserves wider praise and coverage, but other than that... The Midlands overall seems to shout a bit queiter about its history and achievements than most places especially places like Liverpool and Manchester (shut up about the Beatles and Britpop already!) but I often find people who shout about their achievements the most are often the most insecure. I think the Midlands just feels secure about its past and where it is and doesn't feel the need to be crass and boastful about, but this in turn hinders it a bit in attracting people. The one other place I would consider advertising is America. They LOVE old stuff. I think a promo video could be helpful, but these can be tricky. The infamous Telly Savalas promo for Birmingham is a warning on how to approach these things. Education is a good way of getting people interested early, but with a move to being more global the history syllabus has tended to move towards bigger topics and looking at stuff beyond our own shores, or at the very least other perspectives of it. One of the problems with history in the past is it focused on British stuff and from a very British perspective, and helped generate a subconcious xenophobic trait in kids, as it basically said we were always right and good and everyone else was wrong and bad, which necessarily always the case. If it were to happen I'd aim it at primary level as it's accessible history on their front porch as it were.

Don't know if it would work but how about an app that links to old pictures of the city and snippets of info as you pass the point where the photo or painting was taken from? So as you ramble about the streets you know what happened there.

What a potentially brilliant idea Helen F - that would be fantastic. With so many people now having smart 'phones, that could bring our history to a huge audience, and in a very "modern" way that should appeal to young as well as old. So.... does anyone know how to make such an App, and how to make it interact with a locality? If I had some idea myself I'd be tempted to have a go!

Hi all The very nature of Coventry's industrial past meant that with the exception of motor cars, so much of what was produced here went into the production of something else. Many of our then huge companies embarked on a programme of advertising in the sixties & seventies, showing where & what their products went into. Most of this advertising remained inside of industry, but Dunlop decided to break out with theirs. Do any of you remember a tele' advert where an agricultural tractor was being driven along & suddenly the tractor & its lady driver lost everything made by Dunlop? The tyres were obvious, but it was fun when the lady lost half of her clothing. Courtaulds produced similar industrial marketing films, to show the same with plastics, paints, filters & the myriad of absorbent materials that went into nappies & such like. Can we produce a video of normal life, & then animate the Coventry content away in the same way now?

Very interesting point Philip . I always have some John Betjeman to hand, he strikes a chord with so many of us. He describes St. Pancras Station Hotel, a magnificent Gothic brick structure in some detail. Designed by Sir Gilbert Scott for the Midland Railway, he used Midlands materials. Bricks made in Nottingham, cast iron from Derby, slates from Leicester and decorative ironwork for lamp standards, staircases and grilles "by Skidmore of Coventry, who also designed iron screens for some Cathedrals..." Indeed, much of Coventry's heritage must lie elsewhere .

Hi Rob, I'd have thought the first thing is to keep doing what you've done here. Locate the pictures and locations and put them on a map. I've used your camera map many times while trying to work out what picture fits where. Then try to link information to locations too, either by finding a link or by writing something new. Then create walks that start at a place of interest or somewhere easy to find (eg Ford's Hospital or end of a road) and finish a reasonable distance/time later, preferably at something worth visiting (eg Herbert Art Gallery). Once you've got some decent walks the Council might be interested and a) fund an app that would be based on gps location or b) one that would have those square bar codes dotted round the city (sort of a blue badge plus). Even simpler, you can have an app that shows the next point of interest as a modern day image and once you get there you opt to read/hear/see the history of it. If you've ever been to one of the exhibitions at the British Museum you'd know what I mean. Alternatively you could have downloadable guide books that people could print, with - then and now pics. It could be funded by local businesses being included in the trail (eg start or finish a walk at a restaurant or pub). Ultimately the museums could have displays specific to each walk. Themed walks could be:- Blitz. Medieval Coventry. History of cars/transport. Textiles. Religion. Schools. Guilds. Pub trails Gathering the info to put in the app is the first step. I am trying to collect a series of images that show every medieval building and its location on a modern map but it will take many months if not years to finish. It makes locating view points much easier. Much of the work links to images that belong to the city and I've been very impressed how many images there are. Makes me want to see them at the gallery even though the real thing has gone.

Hi again Helen, You've compiled some marvellous ideas there - obviously a lot of thought has gone into it. Like you've inferred though, it would be a massively time-consuming project. Maybe a collaboration would be a good idea - someone could solve the technical side of how to make an App recognise your location by GPS - and others could compile relevant images, old and new, plus some history, etc. I wonder if other cities have anything like this? Wouldn't it be great to have a first for Coventry.... like in't olden times, eh!

I have a feeling that London had an "App" very similar that was released prior to the Olympic Games? I seem to think you pointed your phone at a landmark and it gave a description and an image overlay to the user. It may even have been advertised on TV.

I don't begin to understand how all this would work but I'm sure it's a laudable idea But . . . . don't you have to entice people into the city first? I travelled on several London Midland trains last week, and inside each carriage I used were posters (four of them, one either side of each end) advertising a two-for-one offer at attractions in Liverpool when travelling there by LM Their website shows similar offers for London, Birmingham and Stratford-upon-Avon There is no such offer for Coventry although they do have a page in their destinations guide referring to our city (although whether their list of "attractions" is very attractive I'm not too sure!)

Witchcraft!