Edinburgh is world famous for its arts festivals and these festivals make a huge contribution to the city and to Scotland as a whole. Adrian Trickey examines how this effect can be quantified.
Who benefits from arts festivals? And is it possible to quantify the benefits? These are increasingly important questions for public bodies giving financial and other forms of support to arts events in their areas. As a sector, we have very imperfect methodologies for measuring the power of the arts to change participants and audiences. It is very difficult to quantify their effect on individuals, let alone assess the benefits to whole populations. We know how many people attend events but we have no figures that indicate how much they gained by being there.
We value the impact that artists can have on us and on others. A great performance can change a person?s view of the world, and sometimes the course of their life. We need to experience the creativity of exceptional artists or scientists to begin to understand what we ourselves might be capable of. Many of us have made the arts a part of our lives precisely because we were lucky enough to have had such experiences. But those who have to decide whether to support the arts from the public purse need a different sort of evidence. They require demonstration of quantifiable benefits to persuade them that their allocation of resources is justified. Does having a festival in a city make those who live there richer in measurable, material ways? Recent research shows that it certainly does and, cash being more quantifiable than joy, economists can measure the scale of the benefit ? the ?economic impact?.
Year round impact
Research into the impact of the Edinburgh Festivals has been carried out for the City of Edinburgh Council and its partners throughout 2004/05. In addition to the summer festivals, the survey has covered festival events through the rest of the year. Edinburgh hosts Science, Children?s Theatre and Storytelling Festivals in autumn and spring, which, together with Hogmanay, spreads festive arts events round the calendar. The International, Book, Film and Jazz Festivals, the Mela, the Tattoo and the Fringe, all in August, represent the annual peak of activity.
Data from the survey are already available for the summer festivals. In the summer of 2004, 2.6 million attendances were recorded at festival events in Edinburgh. With an average of just over three events per person, there were an estimated 845,000 separate visits to the Festival. Of these 36% were by local people (living in Edinburgh and the Lothians). Of the 64% who were visiting from outside the local region, 15% were from outside the UK, 27% from the UK outside Scotland and 22% from Scotland outside the local region.
Where the visitors live is a very important factor in assessing the economic impact of a festival. The festivals generate new economic activity and employment. The biggest chunk of new spending is by audiences and participants on goods and services ancillary to their main purpose, which is to see and hear some great artists. It is the cash they pay out as they satisfy their needs for accommodation, food and drink, while also indulging a propensity to buy other things beyond their basic needs, that contributes to economic impact. Clearly the net gain to the city?s economy is greater when this spending is by visitors ? by people who would not have been there but for the festival. Locals, on the other hand, would have spent some of their money in the city anyway. The economists take great care to exclude from their calculations spending that is simply displaced normal expenditure.
Cash impact
So what was the impact of all those people spending all that cash? There are various answers, depending whether you are looking at the City of Edinburgh or at more extensive pieces of geography, but they are all staggeringly large. After allowing for the displacement factors, the summer festivals generated an additional £127m of expenditure in the city (£135m in Scotland). £31m of that was additional income to wages, salaries and profits in the city (£38m in Scotland). And much of that new income represents jobs that would not have been there but for the festivals ? 2,500 full-time equivalent jobs in the city, 2,900 in Scotland.
It takes public investment to sustain this activity. The Edinburgh Festivals could not happen without the support of City and Scottish government. But the returns are demonstrably worthwhile in economic terms alone. I sometimes feel uncomfortable when justifying the case for supporting the arts by these very powerful economic arguments. It is necessary to remember that the economic impact is only there because the festivals themselves are good enough to draw the visitors. In the case of Edinburgh, that means having the quality to attract an international audience that can choose where to go for its annual injection of cultural creativity from all the arts events in the world.
Relevance of scale
How relevant are the data to other, smaller festivals? There is evidence of proportionality of investment to return at other scales. Research around the Brighton Festival of 2004 (403,000 attendances) showed that it added £20m to that city?s economy. Surveys of smaller festivals are sparse, but one would expect similar results. Even festivals that are essentially for and about the local community, rather than for visitors, will have positive economic impact because they retain leisure spend in the community that would otherwise be directed outside.
Adrian Trickey is Administrative Director of the Edinburgh International Festival and a member of the executive committee of the British Arts Festivals Association.
w: http://www.artsfestivals.co.uk
e: adrian.trickey@eif.co.uk