Two Nominations, One Town: Why New Brighton Keeps Punching Above Its Weight

Both myself Rory Wilmer (New Brighton Creative Futures CIC) and Jamie Lee Carter (Wirral Pride) have been nominated for the BBC Radio Merseyside Make A Difference Awards 2026 — a quiet but telling moment for a small seaside town that keeps showing what community-led work can do.

When the shortlist for the BBC Radio Merseyside Make A Difference Awards 2026 started circulating, two names jumped out at the same postcode. Both, as it happens, belong to people who have spent years quietly pulling New Brighton in a better direction.

I’m one of them — nominated for the work behind New Brighton Creative Futures CIC and the wider community projects we’ve been chipping away at across the town. The other is Jamie Lee Carter, the founder and driving force behind Wirral Pride. Two very different projects. One small seaside town. And that, to me, is the real story.

The BBC Make A Difference Awards are a national programme run through every BBC local radio station, designed to celebrate the people quietly making places better. Across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, listeners nominate the friends, neighbours, volunteers and organisers who, in the BBC’s words, “go above and beyond” for their community. Winners will be announced at regional ceremonies later this year.

For one town to land two nominations isn’t impossible. But it is unusual. And it says something.

The Nomination I Can’t Stop Reading

Being honest, the recognition itself isn’t really the point. But there are two lines from my nomination that I keep coming back to:

“He listens to people, especially those who feel overlooked, and finds ways to include them.”

“He has made people feel proud of where they live again. That is not a small thing.”

That second line, in particular, is the one that’s stayed with me. Because that’s what New Brighton Creative Futures has always tried to be about — not the murals, not the events, not the column inches. The murals are just the visible bit. The real work is helping people feel proud of where they live again, and then trusting them with the keys.

Over the last year that has looked like new murals along the trail, beach and street clean-ups, public-space ideas, town-hall talks, partnerships with schools and local businesses, and a long list of small things that probably won’t ever make a headline. None of it is mine. It only works because residents, traders, artists and volunteers keep showing up.

If the nomination means anything, it means that part is being noticed.

Jamie Lee Carter and Wirral Pride

The other New Brighton nomination belongs to Jamie Lee Carter, who has been building Wirral Pride from the ground up since 2022 — back when it was still called New Brighton Pride, run on goodwill and graft, and very obviously needed.

Four years on, the event has outgrown its original name. From 2025 it became Wirral Pride, reflecting a borough-wide audience, a packed Pride Market, BSL interpretation across the day, and a main stage that has become a genuine draw on the summer calendar. This year’s event lands on Saturday 9 August, again in the Victoria Quarter and across the prom.

What Jamie has done, in plain terms, is take a town that hadn’t always felt like the most obvious home for a Pride event and turn it into one of the warmest in the UK. That takes a particular kind of stubborn optimism. Anyone who has stood on Victoria Road on Pride day and felt the noise of it knows exactly what that looks like.

A nomination for that work is overdue, and entirely deserved.

Why It Matters That Both Are From Here

I keep getting asked whether New Brighton’s “renaissance” is real or whether it’s a press cycle. Two BBC nominations, in two completely different categories, for two completely different community projects, in the same small town, is one of the better answers I can give.

Because the through-line isn’t murals, and it isn’t Pride. It’s the same thing in different colours: people who looked at a place they care about and decided it was worth doing the unglamorous work — the funding applications, the volunteer rotas, the late-night WhatsApp groups, the unpaid hours — to make it better. New Brighton has quietly become a town where that kind of work is expected, supported and replicated.

There are bigger places in the UK. There are louder ones. But on the question of whether a community can still shape its own future when enough people care enough to get involved, New Brighton is, increasingly, the answer.

A Thank You and a Nudge

To everyone who put my name forward, and everyone who has stood behind the murals, the clean-ups, the events and the ideas — thank you. I’ll never get tired of saying that. And to Jamie: well done. Whatever happens in September, New Brighton is lucky to have you in it.

Head to bbc.co.uk/makeadifference for more info.

Whatever happens at the ceremonies later this year, New Brighton has already won the only thing that really matters: a town full of people who haven’t given up on it.