Ahoy!
Toby Hyam
Toby Hyam co-founded Creative Space Management in 2006 having worked across public and private sectors developing expertise in cultural regeneration, creative workspace and creative industries.
Creative Space, now an EOT (100% employee owned from 2020), pioneered establishing high quality workspaces across the north of England including Round Foundry Media Centre in Leeds, The Toffee Factory in Ouseburn (Newcastle), The Core at Newcastle Helix, The Beam in Sunderland, Electric Works in Sheffield, AMP Technology Centre, Rotherham and many others where he and his team provided long term support and guidance helping to establish communities of businesses providing high quality jobs and investment into local economies.
As Managing Director for almost 20 years Toby established an innovative business developing it from a start-up to have 40 staff and responsible for multi-tenanted building facilities across multiple cities and towns. His team also provided consultancy and advisory services across the UK including (for example) their work in Hull which led to the development of The Fruit Market on Humber Street and C4DI, or in Colchester, Essex where they developed the initial proposals for 43 Queen St, a new digital hub for the town.
With a long-term commitment to maximising economic impact on local and regional economies, tackling challenging locations and buildings not considered viable, the business successfully delivered measurable long-term impact for its public and private sector clients. During this time, Toby led Creative Space to win multiple awards for innovation, customer service excellence and creating sustainable places.
Since leaving the company with a younger leadership team, Toby has contributed to Scarborough’s Town Team and is committed to helping reactivate the high street with stronger local support and a greater awareness of its strengths. In particular, living in the town centre he has helped to activate Bar Street, celebrating its mixed uses of residential, retail, leisure and small-scale studios.
Toby is now playing a leading role in the development of This is Scarborough, an initiative to tackle the lack of place branding for the town as well as coordinating efforts to share baseline data about the town with local businesses, the public sector and potential inward investors.
Chris Sands
Chris Sands is a branding expert who, in his 20+ year career as The Good Company, has worked with everything from arts organisations to local government, the music business to regional parks, from big corporate organisations to community-led projects. Over the last decade, he has concentrated his work on town centres and high streets, winning awards and recognition along the way.
He’s perhaps best known for starting Totally Locally, a free, open source marketing kit for towns to help keep the independent high streets of the UK (and now the world!) alive and thriving. Totally Locally’s methodology and resources have been implemented by over 100 towns in the UK and many across the world have joined in – from Australia & New Zealand to France, Ireland, Italy and more. Many of these towns report huge changes in the shopping habits and businesses collaborating; creating strong local economies.
Totally Locally runs 2 national events per year which see between 60-100 towns taking part, increasing footfall and promoting collaboration between businesses, residents and local authorities.
Chris has worked on many place brand and regeneration projects – nationally – including the re-opening of award-winning The Piece Hall Halifax, The South Pennines Regional Park, Hebden Bridge town centre, Flood resilience in the Calder Valley, The Sandstone Ridge in Cheshire, Halifax Borough Market, – and internationally in the Barossa Region of South Australia and Melbourne, Victoria.
He has worked with numerous towns on projects to help build resilient local economies, including creating specialist markets, social spaces, pop up shops, events, effective collaborative working groups, campaigns and more.
Spending most of his working life in West Yorkshire, Chris moved to the Yorkshire Coast in 2022, and has since worked on projects in Scarborough including brand redevelopment with CaVCA, and, alongside Toby, to develop the structure and strategy for This Is Scarborough.
Awards & Recognition include:
The Octopus Springboard Entrepreneurs Award 2024 – for Social Innovation in Business
UK Top 100 Changemakers 2021- The Big Issue
The Happy List 2021-Covid Heroes – The Independent – for supporting high streets through Covid
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