The second Citizens Forum was held at The City Wall at Vine Street. Blog post here.

As I've explained in the blog post, I've used an artificial intelligence transcription app to generate a report of Paul Martin's presentation. I'm checking with Paul whether it is good enough, and will correct if not.

Below is an uncorrected transcript created from an iPhone audio recording using the Notta artificial intelligence app. It was an experiment, and as such it should not be taken as a faithful account of Paul Martin's speech. The summary and Q and A were generated automatically.

The meeting was an interview with Paul Martin, an independent consultant hired to review the City of London's Destination City program. The program was launched to help the Square Mile recover economically from the pandemic. Key topics discussed included: an overview of Destination City and its focus on events and promotion so far; the need to define a strategy and priorities going forward; and potential areas of focus like culture/heritage, public realm improvements, marketing, addressing the change in visitor patterns during the week. Input was sought from residents on what they think should be the focus. .

Q: What is Destination City?
A: A program launched by the City of London Corporation about a year ago to aid economic recovery from the pandemic, with a focus so far on major events and a promotional website.

Q: What were the major events and website?
A: The Golden Key event in early 2022 and Bartholomew Fair in 2022-2023 were major Destination City events. The website is cityoflondon.gov.uk.

Q: Why is a review being done of Destination City?
A: To get input on what the future strategy and priorities should be.

Q: What are some potential priorities discussed?
A: Focusing on cultural/heritage assets, improving public spaces, marketing what exists, addressing the change in visitor patterns during the week, and exploring partnerships.

• Submit review report to committees on 18 March
• Reflect resident input in review report
• Continue conversation with residents at reception upstairs

You can hear from my accent, I'm a Londoner. I was born in the East End of London. I'm ashamed to say this is the first time I've ever been in this building. And in a way, you know, that's kind of the sense of some of what I want to talk about, which is how we can in the City of London, how we can extend the knowledge and awareness of the fantastic incomparable assets of the City of London to people who live and work here and to people from further afield.

But let me say a few words, first of all, about… What Destination City is, because probably some of you have, I know some people in this room and I've met and talked to some people in this room, but others not, so I think I should just make sure that we've all got kind of a reasonable base of knowledge as to what we're talking about when we talk about destination city.

So I'll say something about what Destination City is, how it was first launched, and then I'll go on to say something about the Corporations decisions have an independent view of Destination City. While you ask me, I'm not a member of staff of the Corporation, I've been hired to do a specific piece of work, this review, and when I've done that then that's it.

I'll pass it over to the decision makers in the City of London. So I'll say something about that, and I'll talk just a little bit, I'm conscious that people are standing and maybe you'd rather continue the conversation upstairs afterwards.

But I'll say it in a bit about some of the… sort of choices that the Corporation has got, some of the things I'll be thinking about in the work that I'm doing. And the reason that you're here this evening, and we're really grateful to you for coming out on a Monday evening in February to listen to this, the reason that we're so keen to have this conversation is partly because the City Corporation wants to hear the views of as many residents as possible about what your experience has been in the fascinating city, but most importantly, where you think it should head in the future.

And I think also that what I detect from the City of London is that the Corporation is really keen to be engaging with residents. And what I hear is that the feeling is that they haven't always got that right, and they're keen to, you know, to strengthen and improve dialogue on all things that impact and matter to residents.

So that's the reason that I've been asked to come along here, and hopefully that's a pattern of working, a way of working that will be embraced in the future. So let me start next week. Destination City.

It was launched, the Destination City was launched about a year ago in the context of the recovery from the pandemic. And it involved it to use the impact pattern that the lockdowns, the various lockdowns, had transformed the Square Mile from what it had been up until February, March 2020, to something, you know, very different that it had become, in many ways, a ghost town during the lockdowns.

And the Corporation knew that it was going to take an enormous effort. to get that footfall back in Square Mile, to get workers back, and to get the spending and the economic biomass that the Square Mile is actually based on.

So Destination City, I think, was at the Corporation's flagship program to say that we're back and we want people to come back to the Square Mile. Not only is that looking for this area, but for London, the country level.

So that was the ambition. It was a big question to recover from the lockdowns and the pandemic. Potentially, it was necessary in a way that only then could there be various initiatives prior to the Destination City, important initiatives that are in a similar area.

Some of them are very noticeable about all the time before. So, there was, in fact, nothing exactly before. There's a lot of different work, and bangs are really important in interviews, but Destination City was launched specifically in that context.

So, what was the result so far? What did the corporation do in Destination City? Well, they created a Destination City team, which is based in the Yorn Hall. They signed a bargain to Destination City so that things would happen, activities, and a programme could be developed.

And I think that really, in the last two years, there's maybe 50 focus on two main events. The first was about events. And, again, you're most likely familiar with this, but they ran in the first instance in the beginning of 2022, an event called the Golden Key.

So, I'm guessing that some of you are aware of that, or maybe even went over the Golden Key events. And then, in the following year, they organised an event called Bartholomew Fair last year in the 2010 -2023.

And Bartholomew Fair, of course, was utilising the historic tent of Bartholomew Fair and then repurposing it in a different way for events around the square mile. So, that was one set of interventions around major events intended to highlight and profile the whole of the city's bottom -up.

And the second intervention is a website, which is aimed at visitors in London, nationally, and is actually promoting the square mile as a visitor destination. I found, actually, some inconsistent level of awareness.

I noticed actually it's on your card, the website address, so if you look at the reverse of that nice postcard, I think yes, there it is, thank you very much. So you can see the website address there is thecityofldn.com, and so that's the main event, the independent person in the city profile, a website intending to promote the square mile.

So I guess the fact that I'm the RT, so to review what the Destination City is about, what it should be doing in the future, is a signal that they're very thoughtful, I think, that the corporation is very thoughtful now.

One of the last three years, there have been some different responses, you'll get to everything. So some people might answer, other people do, so they'll be, you know, it's important to you. But the most important thing is going forward, what should Destination City be about?

What should the Corporation of London focus on? And what I'm finding in my work so far is that, you know, almost everybody who I've talked to has now had in excess of 160 meetings with people, including in this group.

So this is with residents, with elected members, of course, and officials, with business people in the Square Mile, with cultural organisations, importantly, heritage organisations. Almost everybody says that ambition to get people here and to develop and enhance the economic vitality of the Square Mile.

That's very well done. So the integration is very well done. Where people tend to have different views and really tend to hear what your input is, you know, what can you see? See the whole purpose of the evening, so hear your perspective on this.

Where people differ is what that means in practice. So what should the city of London with limited resources, what should it be doing, how should the programme evolve to advance this vision of the Square Mile being a destination for all kinds of people from business perspective as well as in the cultural perspective and leisure and tourism?

What does it need to do in practice? And if I give you a few examples of the sort that is about the book, so I'll give you a few examples, but then you can't say where it was taken. So it would be remiss of me in this amazing venue not to say that the first was taken.

is to concentrate on culture and heritage. So we know, and you know better than anyone, that this historic city of London has the most amazing resources and actions about the history of London of any other part of the country.

And the city of London, the back of that, is the only global financial centre with a history and a heritage that we can be standing in a place like this via a Roman wall. There is nowhere like this in the world.

From a financial point of view, the city of London might say what our histories are. They might be Singapore, or it might be Wall Street, or other places, but nowhere has this. And it is our name, because the idea is that this is the art of it.

There are numerous extraordinary cultural and heritage actions in the Square Mile. And it seems to me the work that I'm doing, that that's continuing to develop, in an amazing way, the re-location of the London Museum to Smithfield Market being a standout example of that.

So one area, one way which the city of London could perceive would be the same crucial thing is to make sure that we maximize on these fantastic heritage and cultural assets of the corporation. My work is in dual reports to the communities.

It reports both to the Policy and Resources Committee and also to the Culture and Heritage Committee and in the device chair of the Museum. I notice the fact that the Museum is here with us to see.

So the fact that the disorder of a resort to the Museum is an indication that the culture of Harrison High is seen as a really important feature of Destination City. So that's one area, a possible area of focus.

A second would be, you know, what I've broadly described as the public realm. And I don't know if that would be a job or a benefit or whether it would be, everybody knows what I'm talking about. But the public realm essentially is the external environment in which we live and work and visit.

It's outside of the buildings, it's the roads and the streets and spaces between buildings, it's the only spaces, it's the public, we are an asset of the City of London. Of course, the corporation has significant responsibilities, in fact, in those areas, and sort of secondary focus, we say, what we really need to be working on is aspects of the public realm, where we think much more could and should be done to improve the public realm for businesses, indeed, for residents and businesses.

The third possibility might be, this isn't an exhaustive piece, I'm trying to give you an indication of the sort of choices the corporation might have. The third one is about marketing and promotion.

So, you know, there might be a sense in saying, we want to focus our effort on making sure that these in -gen, specifically lovely, paths, that they're better known and promoted. And I hear all the time, I'm sure you have probably heard of the greatest example, and say our guess.

I have no idea where this was here. I hear that constantly, so, you know, this is the third area, should we be thinking that Destination City really is a marvellous and promotion accuracy of that, which is here in the red, rather than putting it on a new basis.

A fourth might be around days in a week. Now, just bear with me for a moment. The data that seems to be coming from us, if we look at the visitor numbers and the spend, now, in 2024, relative to 2019, the spend in city has recovered.

That's great news. So, over a period of time and by now, the spend levels are up and indeed, it seems, where we're going in 2019, very important. The visitor numbers are still not actually back to 2019 levels, so there are fewer, there's fewer football.

Let's not go into it right now than there was in 2019. But more importantly, the distribution of that football has changed in the week, in the same way we've, has changed remarkably. So, you know, we all know why this is, but the football is focused on Tuesday to Thursday because city workers are generally in the office Tuesday to Thursday and it is much less on Monday than particularly Friday.

And it is, by the fact that on a Thursday evening, a lot of the hospital settings freeze really busy because, you know, that's the, if I can use the phrase, end of the working week or the very easy end of the working week in town.

And Friday is much wiser. So the weekend is interesting. The weekends now are busy as they were in 2019. So in this new distribution, weekends are busy over 2019. Friday is much less busy than they were for Tuesday's, Thursday's, and Christmas package.

So what can we do about it? You can take a different view on this. You can say, well, this is just kind of a rule that's changed and we just need to sex it and deal with it. That would be a point where you don't have to do anything about it.

Alternatively, we could say it is important because the possibility is that businesses, particularly in foster taxi, food, beverage, and so on, but other businesses as well, might start closing Friday, maybe already happening.

The possibility or risk is that businesses say, we don't have a football anymore, it's not economic. Rather like a weekend when, you know, faces flow, it doesn't always happen. That's the only thing.

That's the only thing that's happened. But the possibility or risk is that they start to shut the Friday as well. But I don't think we would want that. So we might say, well, now what can we do to try to…

visit to numbers particularly on that day and actually a really good example and the only example in public politics that I can think of at the moment on this is the mayor of London's recent initiative where he may have seen the announcement for an experiment here a bit from March to June in his flat period it happens to overlap with the mayor election.

So hopefully it won't be mayor again. So for an experimental period the travel is offbeat. So with the imagination and flair of the CFL democracy they call you offbeat drivers. So offbeat drivers are travel offbeat level.

And I think it's an important initiative because it just says to the rest of us, you know, maybe we need to be thinking about priorities in a different way, possibly we should be thinking about how we can stimulate visitors, whether that's workers or anybody else.

You know, places and visitors wherever it is to get out of their homes where they seem to be spending most of their time on a Friday. And then the final thing, the fortress of the time, the deed was to sort of have a proper cross -section of just any seat.

The final thing I think we need to be thinking about is how the corporation of London works in March and with others. So it's a very sophisticated and quite complex ecosystem that the corporation works in here.

Where you've got, you know, these, I would say a ton of house workers, you've got residents, businesses to work with, cultural organisations and entities. it's a complicated ecosystem, how could the Corporation of London work in that and provide a sort of strategy and a sense of direction and sense of prioritization.

So this sort of sense of, I think two years ago, the keenness by the City of London was to get going and do something, let's put on some events, let's just do something, let's not spend too much time on strategy.

Let's get on with it. But it is important, I think, to have a sense of what the strategy is and to recognize that one of the incredible things about working here is that you've got leaders, professional leaders, opinion holders, of such significance in swear mind.

People who, you know, whether they're running far enough or the Museum of the International League is in their own right. So, you know, how can we work with them and everybody else to maximize their passion and the opportunities in front of us, as well as having our answer back for money.

So that's what I'm looking for. I'm going to just pause in a couple of minutes and see if there's any more feedback. The first thing we might do is get some immediate feedback from people if there are either questions you've got to ask me or what points you want to raise.

And then when you're understanding it, please get upstairs and relax after that, and ask why. When you continue the conversation up there, my timetable is I'm working to a report going to both of the committees that I mentioned, the Policy and Resources Committee, the Cultural and Heritage Committee, on the 18th of March, which is a month today.

So plans that my report will be written and submitted at that point. My responsibility, having talked to so many people, is to do my best to reflect what I've learned in that report. So I'm keen that, you know, whatever it is that you say and how you see things, that that's all in the report that I was able to submit.

That's my intention. And in the political exercise, I don't really know what you're saying, that Brendan, you've given residents some hope for it, or hope for it to be undertaken here. So there's an exercise there.

What is the one issue that poor market should include in this event report? So it's an effort to make sure that you can't open stuff after we've had the decision to do a review of what we want to see in that report.

And that could be anything that I've already described, it could be drawn from the remarks away so far, or indeed it could be something else that you think is important to have in the article. So that's really what I've got to say.

I'm very keen to be a good friend. It's the best thing that you need to do in this article, and do you want to do that? Yes.