2014 will see the opening of a new £100m factory in Ashington, a former mining town in Northumbria, UK. The global paint manufacturer AkzoNobel wants to ensure its investment creates not only regeneration through employment but also broader, long-term health and wellbeing improvements, through the life-enhancing qualities of colour. Committed to transforming lives through colour, they are continually striving for innovative ways to engage local communities in transformative application of colour to the built environment. This paper describes successes of the firm’s global Let’s Colour programme, as well as the Northumberland project, its methodology, preliminary findings and proposals. The best will be developed and implemented over three years from 2014
