How do you explain Telford?
When you find yourself on holiday, on a course or even if you, God forbid, move away, you will be asked ‘where are you from?’. You’ll answer ‘Telford’ and they’ll say, ‘where’s that?’. You’ll then select from a number of answers, dependent upon your assumptions about the person who you are engaging with. ‘Ironbridge?, Wolverhampton? Midlands?’.
If none of those are moving the conversation along, get some inspiration from Rhys Morrow (@rhys_morrow), who left Telford for University in Leicester, and wrote an article for the national student paper and website, The Tab, giving his account of our town for those less fortunate than us.
You’ll be familiar with some of the references, and no doubt surprised by some of the others. A Greggs Crawl? Go take a look.
Telford may be a bit grim, but we love it anyway – The Tab
Sadly this blog sums up aspects of the Telford ‘vision’ – A failed experiment of trying to amalgamate 3/4 historic market towns (with their own identity and attractions) into a ‘modern’ consumer driven shopping centre with no heart. At the same time these market towns were totally neglected and have been allowed to deteriorate into ghost towns. Also the current vision seems to forget that any decent town needs some ;cultural identity’ – (apart from Ironbridge which is really outside Telford) where are the museums/art galleries/theatres/independent cinemas? Unfortunately Greggs and MacD……. seem to be the height of the local aspiration!!