HemingwayDesign

About the partnership

HemingwayDesign is a multidisciplinary design studio founded in 1999 by Wayne and Gerardine Hemingway, who previously built the fashion label Red or Dead. Now led by two generations of the Hemingway family, the studio’s team of urban, graphic and interior designers, event producers and strategists works on placemaking, culture-led regeneration, housing and place branding. Its projects range from the redesign of Dreamland in Margate and coastal regeneration in towns such as Lowestoft and Morecambe, to large free public events including the Classic Car Boot Sale at King’s Cross and We Invented the Weekend at MediaCity in Salford.

In 2024 Crawley Borough Council commissioned HemingwayDesign to lead a feasibility study, funded through the Towns Fund, into creating a new Cultural Quarter in Crawley town centre. HemingwayDesign brought together Always Possible and Creative Crawley as partners.

Our role covered project management, stakeholder engagement, economic analysis and architectural assessment of the shortlisted sites, the last through specialist architects we brought in. With Creative Crawley we designed and ran public consultation, including a town-wide survey and drop-in sessions at the Town Hall, and interviewed local cultural organisations about what they needed. HemingwayDesign led the overall vision, design thinking and strategic recommendations.

The study, published in 2025, recommended a phased “grow it and they will come” approach. It proposed starting with flexible, semi-permanent spaces, such as a community hub near the Memorial Gardens and creative studios and gallery space in a large vacant building on Queensway, then building towards a more ambitious Cultural Quarter as demand is proven. Since then we’ve continued to work with HemingwayDesign and Creative Crawley on follow-up conversations with Arts Council England.