Communicating UCLan’s £200 million Masterplan

The University of Central Lancashire is a leading and internationally renowned university in the city of Preston that has undergone huge transformation in recent years.

This investment has seen the creation of new facilities and centres of excellence including an Engineering Innovation Centre to showcase its capability in diverse engineering fields to prospective and existing students.

Our brief

We were asked by UCLan to manage a communications strategy in the lead up to and the opening of the new £200million Student Centre.

What we delivered

Freshfield created a plan which incorporated all areas of communications including acting as a central media office and helping to communicate with a wide range of stakeholders, including the media, development teams, local businesses and the public.

The new masterplan involved major public realm works which resulted in some road closures and changes to traffic flows in the city. Communicating these changes to the public to minimise disruption was a major part of the project.

During the construction of the Student Centre, Freshfield arranged a media day to open up the centre for the media to see and experience the new facilities. This media visit included facilitating regional broadcast media with filming and interview opportunities.

Impact

The campaign resulted in widespread coverage in regional and local media throughout the project.

This included updates on key milestones, advance warnings of traffic disruption and visuals of what the development would look like.

Local businesses praised UCLan for timely information, keeping them updated on the development.