In June several new Japanese staff paid a visit to Tees Valley for two days to learn about a range of areas related to the city region’s efforts to develop its economy with a particular focus on Japan. During their first day in Stockton and Middlesbrough, staff were hosted by the Tees Valley Combined Authority (whose Mayor had just visited Japan) and briefed on the work to attract the 2021 Rugby League World Cup to the area, as well as efforts to promote its legendary ‘parmo’ as an EU-protected status food. Hosting matches during the 2021 tournament would enable the sport to develop outside its traditional M62 and Tyneside hinterland as the area is ideally placed to bridge this, staff were told. It could also contribute more than £5m to the local economy. As Darlington Mowden Park’s experience of the New Zealand All Blacks training base during the 2015 Rugby World Cup shows, engagement between visiting teams and the local community can have lasting benefits both sporting and economic, as the once-beleaguered stadium now has a thriving range of activities during the week and outside of sporting fixtures as a regional music venue.
The group also visited the Materials Processing Institute in Middlesbrough, which has since 1944 served as a global R&D facility for the steel industry, including as far afield as Japan. There staff learned about the institute’s work to stimulate the local SME economy and transfer knowledge between sectors. Afterwards, a short visit was paid to Middlesbrough’s Boho Zone, which acts as a council-led series of premises devoted to housing and nurturing tech-based businesses, particularly spin-outs from Teesside University. There staff were told about the successes and approach of the council in seeking to embed the city region as a key hub for the digital economy in the North.
The following day staff were able to see for themselves the facilities of not only Mowden Park RFC in Darlington (hailed as “one of the best in the world” by the All Blacks) but also Rockliffe Hall, the New Zealand star players’ accommodation at a luxury resort alongside the training ground for Middlesbrough Football Club. Staff were fortunate enough to hear from club officials on the success story of the Mowden Park Arena, which had been built as the new ground for Darlington Football Club at vast expense and pushed the club into bankruptcy. Shortly after converting the stadium into use for the town’s expanding rugby club, it was announced as a training base for the All Blacks in the 2015 Rugby World Cup and has since gone on to generate new business and legacy opportunities for the railway heritage town. The visit was capped off by discussions with hosting staff of Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Trust (a recent participant of CLAIR’s Japan Study Tour) around services for an ageing population, including a presentation by Sporting Memories, an award-winning social enterprise which uses sport to engage referrals from the NHS around sporting reminiscence to help tackle dementia.
Connections between Tees Valley and Japan go back over 100 years and since the 2016 inception of a wider area Combined Authority the link, with a significant Japanese manufacturing footprint across all five boroughs, is now in the hands of a body which can further develop and support this, not least between common interests in economic regeneration and the visitor economy. JLGC would like to thank Clare Jones (Tees Valley NHS), Paul Taylor (MPI), Danny Brown (Mowden Park RFC), Geraldine Brown (Tees Valley CA) and Daniel Watson (Middlesbrough Council) for their coordination of the two days.
