July 21st, 2025
Heritage PR Specialist Announces Exciting Winners
As a Lancashire-based PR agency and heritage PR specialist, amongst other specialisms, Catapult Public Relations has more than made good on its offer of free PR and content support for a heritage tourism business. We are now not just offering full specialist heritage PR support to one visitor attraction but also offering free consultancy to another.
Working with our heritage PR specialist team
Our heritage PR specialist team received fantastic support from Marketing Lancashire, who promoted our ‘free support’ offer to its membership. The Marketing Lancashire team also helped identify some great businesses that could benefit. As a Marketing Lancashire supplier member we were delighted with the actions of the ML team. Thanks to their involvement, we received some really worthy applications.
After reviewing these, we decided to offer the four months of free heritage PR and content marketing to the brilliant Spitfire Visitor Centre – Hangar 42, based at Blackpool airport. Their application really struck a chord and we recognise that we can use our specialist heritage PR expertise to the attraction’s advantage.
Introducing the Spitfire Visitor Centre
For those who do not know of this attraction, it is a truly hidden gem in Blackpool. It is located on Squires Gate, in south Blackpool, and has stood there since 1939, when the floor of the hangar was laid. If the walls of the hangar could speak, they would undoubtedly reveal many secrets and a truly rich wartime story. Luckily, the attraction has a wealth of committed volunteers who can do just that and speak for the hangar. These volunteers bring the whole dramatic story of RAF Squires Gate – and RAF Blackpool – to life, as lucky visitors view iconic Spitfires and many more engaging and nostalgic exhibits and features.
Another attraction benefiting from our heritage PR expertise
However, we also received a worthy application for specialist heritage PR support from The Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery in Rossendale. We have, therefore, decided to offer some 1:1 marketing mentoring sessions, to try to inspire the team there to follow some new approaches and ideas.
Criteria for the PR and content support
The criteria for this free PR and content support was that applicants needed to have a heritage element to their tourism offering. We wished to celebrate 25 years of winning PR and content awards for heritage attractions and offer our specialist heritage marketing expertise to businesses that need extra help.
Aims of the heritage marketing support
Despite celebrating 10 years of success, the Spitfire Visitor Centre – Hangar 42 is a wholly volunteer-run attraction in every regard and not just the storytelling. The volunteer committee believed they could really benefit from having a fresh pair of external eyes on their marketing. They also wanted to try new approaches. The aim will be to help them build on their success in becoming the Small Visitor Attraction of the Year in Lancashire and to drive visitor numbers.
Our aim will be to tell their story in compelling ways – online, through PR and editorials and through podcasts. Our Poodling Around travel and leisure podcast will come into play for this.
Most of the centre’s promotion, to date, has been through affinity relationships, social media and spin-off publicity from filming that has taken place at the hangar, for a variety of top programmes and shows. The visitor attraction’s enthusiasm for trying new ways of marketing their heritage experience is truly refreshing. They really do wish to increase their footfall.
The Whitaker is an attraction much-loved in its local area but one that is evolving and needing to attract new first-time visitors, whilst still appealing to its existing visitor base. Catapult PR is offering suggestions of how the art gallery and museum can achieve both objectives and make the visitor experience relevant to all. We have already had our first 1:1 session and will our heritage PR specialist will be visiting the attraction soon.
Why we want to help heritage visitor attractions
The outcome from all of this, 25 years after scooping two Gold PR awards for a campaign for a heritage visitor attraction in Cumbria, is one that has been truly uplifting. Our support is greatly appreciated by both visitor attractions and we believe that working with both of them will enrich our own day-to-day PR lives, as well as helping them.
As a PR agency, we have always tried to give something back, whether that has been through mentoring, sponsorship of Thornton Cleveleys cricket club back in the Noughties, or by providing free resources to help guide businesses with their marketing.
Further specialist marketing support for heritage attractions
On that note, we shall have a new heritage PR specialist resource very soon, which will offer additional food for thought for those in charge of stately homes and gardens’ marketing, museum promotion and historic houses.
This is well worth looking out for – as will be the initiatives we create for the Spitfire Visitor Centre and the Whitaker Art Gallery and Museum. Watch this space and do talk to us about your own heritage attraction marketing brief, if you need help from our heritage PR specialists.
Why not call us today, on 0333 2424062, or email jane@catapultpr.co.uk?
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Article by Jane Hunt (https://linktr.ee/JaneHunt), managing director of Catapult Public Relations Limited, which she founded in 1998 and which has gone on to win 69 top PR and marketing awards at the time of writing, including a large haul for heritage PR and travel PR campaigns. Jane has been a PR and copywriting specialist throughout her long career in marketing and has been recognised for her contribution to the industry through several personal awards. She has also been a judge of the national CIPR Excellence Awards and a two-time judge of the former NWDA’s sustainable tourism award.
