For the festive season, City Centre Initiative organises the wonderful Christmas Windows Competition. Visual merchandizing is important from an economic point of view and is especially crucial for all our independent retailers. Through the use of this event, we hope to make the shops in the city centre more attractive to potential shoppers.

The retailers of the city play such a huge part in our local economy and are central to the regeneration plans for our city.

We see this project as an innovative and imaginative way to build on the positive reaction to the visual impact of our city at Christmas. We must capitalize on the creative side of retailing. This project costs very little and enables the city to demonstrate all that is special – and indeed individual – about the place we call home.

We intend to urge all our retailers, regardless of their products, to make the effort with their window displays over Christmas and make our city the one to watch.