“Celebrating 2012 – and the city status bid for Medway”

 2012 is going to be a great year for Medway – there’s a lot going on and city status is just part of that.

You might think 2012 is all about the Olympics but for Medway it’s going to be a year of celebration

We’ll be hosting the British Transplant Games at Medway Park in summer 2012 and Medway Park will be hosting sportsmen and women preparing for the 2012 Olympics too. Teams using the facility currently include Senegal, Portugal and Barbados.

In 2012 we hope to submit a bid for World Heritage Status for Chatham Dockyard and its defences, which is on the UK Tentative List.

 The UK nomination will be submitted in January 2012.

 It’s 200 years since the birth of Charles Dickens who spent his childhood years in Medway then returned as a successful author later in life.

It’s 200 years since the Royal Engineers were established in Medway.

In 2012 it will be ten years since HM Queen Elizabeth II inaugurated Universities at Medway – a pioneering venture at Chatham Maritime that has seen Medway go from having no university students ten years ago to having 10,000 today.

And that number’s set to grow to 12,000 in the coming years.

And it is of course the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

Those are just some of the reasons why 2012 is a year of celebration for Medway – and the icing on the cake for Medway during 2012 would be to be awarded city status in celebration of HM Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

It has been announced that there will be a competition for City Status as part of the Diamond Jubilee.

We think Medway has a great case for being awarded city status – and our bid is being built around Medway’s rich heritage and its great future.

We submitted the bid at the Houses of Parliament on 23 May 2011.

I often hear people in Medway discovering things they didn’t know about Medway’s past, so I would like to take a few minutes to reflect on this.

Medway has England’s second oldest cathedral in Rochester just seven years after Canterbury (founded 604AD)

The Textus Roffensis – written in Medway and still held in the council’s archives – is the most important of all surviving collections of Anglo-Saxon laws – a pre-cursor of sorts to the Magna Carta

The finest Norman castle in the country (dates back to 1127AD)

But Medway’s rich heritage isn’t just confined to Rochester and Chatham. Gillingham was the birthplace of William Adams – seafarer and first European to reach Japan – born 1564.

At Chatham we have the Chatham Historic Dockyard – the world’s most complete example of an historic dockyard from the age of sail.

The Dockyard is now one of Medway’s biggest visitor attractions – including a number of successful events and festivals throughout the year.

Down the river at Upnor we have Upnor Castle – formerly a munitions store and the high point of the Dutch raid on the river Medway in 1667.

The rural areas of Medway also form a really important part of the area’s defining heritage – the Hoo peninsula is home to wetlands which are recognised by the RSPB as some of the most important places for wildlife in the UK with huge flocks of wading birds and waterfowl. And of course these were the iconic marshlands in Dickens’s Great Expectations.

Still in Gillingham the Royal Engineers museum is a nationally-recognised collection of military engineering history

Military history is an important part of Medway’s rich heritage. As well as the Army in Gillingham, the Royal Navy in Chatham, up the river at Borstal (near Rochester) the aviation pioneers the Short Brothers developed flying boats including the famous “Empire” and “Sunderland” types. Shorts also had a factory at Rochester Airport from 1933 to 1947.

The Great Lines Royal Naval memorial commemorates the death of personnel in service in many conflicts – and dominates the Chatham skyline providing an enduring reminder of the area’s connection between the military and life in Medway.

The military connections in Medway’s rich heritage are also important in shaping our future. Former naval buildings in Chatham Maritime formed the first part of the Universities at Medway campus – now home to 10,000 students.

While the naval buildings form the heart of the new campus, innovative new facilities such as the Medway building are part of Medway’s transition from having no universities ten years ago, to having a thriving campus now.

As well as the University of Kent, University of Greenwich and Canterbury Christ Church University (CCU),  Medway also has the University for the Creative Arts campus at Rochester – providing important links with Medway’s thriving cultural scene and partners in the future development of a creative quarter in Medway. UCA is also important because of their involvement in Strood Academy – one of three academies in Medway.

And our educational future isn’t just defined by universities – the new £86m MidKent College campus in Gillingham opened in 2009 and provides a modern high quality place for learners in Medway.

So as educational standards continue to improve in Medway, it’s important that our economy continues to thrive and grow. The Innovation Centre Medway, at Rochester Airport, aims to attract innovative and advanced technology businesses and is already 90 per cent full.

Medway’s new £11m regional centre of sporting excellence – Medway Park – has already played host to the Modern Pentathlon World Cup in April 2010 – demonstrating the area’s ability to attract and host world-class sporting events. And the centre itself continues to attract local residents to take advantage of the new facilities on offer to them.

And community participation in sport is an important part of our shared future – this is our Medway Mile event – held annually in the run up to the 2012 Olympic games – with around 2,000 people running one mile – from elite club runners through to families with pushchairs and prams.

And of course we mustn’t forget that Medway is home to Kent’s only Football League club.

I’ve already talked a little about Medway’s strength in its cultural offer – we mustn’t forget that Medway has more free festival days than any other place in the south east. We have two Dickens Festivals, the Sweeps Festival (biggest folk and music festival of its kind in the country), Fuse, Traditional England, Will Adams Festival. Plus of course our Castle Concerts.

Some of the famous people who have signed our bid- Will Young, Status Quo, The Saturdays and Diversity.

So we know that Medway has a lot going for it as a place. But what makes the future even more exciting for our city is our location – thanks to the new HS1 line Medway is just 34 minutes from London by train. Being the largest conurbation in the south east outside London and being equidistant between London and the continent, we’re well placed to continue to grow economically in the future.

The regeneration of the Chatham Maritime area is a good example of this in action – right now.

All great cities are patchworks of distinct areas where the city together is more than the sum of its parts – our identity is and always will be defined by the five towns, villages and the rural areas that make up the city of Medway.

The strength of our bid is that Medway is five towns, villages and rural areas that come together to make a place that genuinely has a rich heritage and a great future.

And of course the Medway story is one that is dominated and centred on the River Medway – the geographical common thread for all the places in Medway.

Why should we go for city status in 2012?

Recognition: of how far we’ve travelled

Profile: Wolverhampton £2bn inward investment

Newport 2000 new jobs

Sunderland: Nike, Nissan and Barclays

All since City Status

Unifying

And this is true of Medway – the council’s leader Cllr Rodney Chambers often says “There is more in Medway that unites us than divides us,” and he’s right.

Celebrating 2012

• Dickens
• World Heritage
• Royal Engineers
• Olympics
• Diamond Jubilee
• Great if City Status too.