The Lake District, Cumbria Sense of Place Toolkit
Welcome to Cumbria's ‘Sense of Place' toolkit
Perhaps you're wondering what this means to your business, but ‘sense of place' is all about using local resources to improve your marketability. Every locality has particular distinctive qualities that make it special in some way. By recognising and valuing these qualities, tourism businesses can use them to improve their marketing and promotional activities and enhance their customers' experience of the area.
Cumbria Tourism commissioned the collection of detailed information on the history, culture, heritage, natural environment and local produce of Cumbria on an area-by-area basis, with the specific intention of bringing out the distinctive attributes of each locality. The result is a fantastic resource of information that Cumbria Tourism is able to share with visitors and tourism businesses alike.
What is Sense of Place?
‘Sense of place' can be hard to describe, but essentially it covers all those attributes that make a locality special and unique and give it a sense of identity. It is relatively easy to see that Ambleside is very different from Alston, but on a local level ‘sense of place' enables you to recognise that Ambleside has special characteristics that differentiate it from the neighbouring villages of Grasmere, Hawkshead, Troutbeck and Windermere, and that in turn each of these villages have distinct qualities that set them apart from their neighbours.
The county of Cumbria covers 2,600 square miles of varying landscapes from flat coastal plains to mountainous interiors; empty wildernesses to vibrant urban areas. Whilst many visitors merely associate the county with lakes and mountains and outdoor recreation, in reality there is much more to be discovered about Cumbria than first meets the eye. The county has an incredibly rich and diverse heritage that has been created over centuries through the dynamic interplay between the natural environment and human activities.
Cumbria Tourism is committed to developing ‘sense of place' as an asset for visitors and tourism businesses to use. This toolkit provides you with the means of accessing the rich environmental, cultural and historical facets of Cumbria for yourself. Discover woodlands brimming with wildlife, upland hay meadows awash with wild flowers, sandy expanses of beach backed by rolling dunes, ancient prehistoric stone circles, Roman forts, Anglian and Norse art, Norman churches, medieval abbeys, classical Georgian elegance, Victorian architecture, not forgetting the distinctive flavours of traditional and modern Cumbria foods. The historical, cultural and environmental resources of Cumbria are just waiting to be tapped to enhance your customer's experience of all the county offers.
