Context 156 - September 2018

C O N T E X T 1 5 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 8 31 IHBC ANNUAL SCHOOL Titanic Experience: heritage-led transformation with local people and a global brand Speaker: Kerrie Sweeney, chief executive, Titanic Foundation Kerrie Sweeney introduced the Titanic Foundation, the charity established to develop Titanic Belfast to preserve and promote the city’s maritime and industrial heritage.The trust has dealt with public sector agencies, the private developers setting up and running the destina- tions and the people of Belfast. The Titanic Quarter has become globally recognised, being named as the World’s Best Visitor Attraction in 2016. It has become wholeheartedly embraced by local people. Belfast had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants in the late 18th century. At its peak as a manufacturing centre and important seaport, Harland andWolff alone employed 50,000. The project has been so well embraced by the people of the city that nowadays certain events can attract volunteers and others exceeding that number. It is pleasing for Northern Ireland that more than 60 per cent of its visitors come from beyond the UK. The Titanic Experience embraces not only the iconic multi-prow Titanic Centre and the elegant drawing office and other spaces of Harland and Wolff ’s fine office complex, now operating as the bijou Titanic Hotel, but also the world’s first hyper-radial Fresnel lighthouse lens and the last surviving White Star liner, SS Nomadic. This elegantly furnished ship, opened in 2013, now attracts 270,000 people annually. A key feature of the development has been the involvement and engagement of thousands of former employees of the dockyard and the young people of today’s Belfast. Sweeney invited attendees to register some key statistics of this complex project. Opened in 2012, the Titanic centenary year, it has been funded by government and the private sector to the extent of £76 million to date. The HLF Enterprise Fund contributed £5 million in 2013–2015, and private developers have invested £23 million. Over 4 million visitors have attended to date, contributing £160 million to the local economy in the first five years. The project has met its objectives and exceed- ed all its targets: not bad for an eroded dock- yard having several significant buildings on the buildings-at-risk register since the 1990s. The two giant cranes Samson and Goliath may look down on the changing waterfront– the Maritime Mile – and rejoice in the success created by and for the people of their city. John Copping The last surviving White Star liner, SS Nomadic, in its dock at the Titanic Quarter Kerrie Sweeney: not bad for an eroded dockyard