Ljs: Edinburgh festival 2011: help us visualise the impact

Monday, May 23, 2011

Edinburgh festival 2011: help us visualise the impact

A new report has quantified the economic impact of the Edinburgh festivals. See what it says - and explore the data
? Get the data

Every August, the arts world focuses its attention on one city: Edinburgh, home to the largest and most famous arts festivals on the planet. The Scottish capital plays host to opera, jugglers and acrobats, comics, baroque quartets and alternative rock.

Yet Edinburgh is host to more than a dozen festivals through the year, from a vast open air Hogmanay street party every New Year's eve, an international film festival now staged in June, a science festival in March and the storytelling festival in October.

A new study has calculated the full economic scale of the eleven largest festivals, producing a flood of statistics about how many tourists visit each event, the money spent by every festival-goer and where that money goes.

The Festivals Impact report by BOP Consulting, commissioned by the Festivals Forum and funded by agencies including the umbrella group Festivals Edinburgh, Creative Scotland and Scottish Enterprise, has found that visitors spend �261m every year in Edinburgh and in Scotland as a whole. They questioned 15,000 people in 50 surveys.

Four million tickets are sold (or don't exist when it comes to the 250,000 people who congregate near the castle for the free open air festival fireworks display each August). Of the �261m in additional spending by visitors, �41m went to hoteliers, B&Bs and Edinburgh residents who cash-in by letting their flats, and �37m was spent in bars, cafes and restaurants.

Earlier sets of related data ? such as the number of visitors to the city's best-known venues ? were turned into digital and animated visualisations when the Edinburgh Festivals Innovations Lab organised a 24-hour "culturehack" in early May. Justin Quillilan's Footfall clock is one.

The raw data released today in Festivals Impact study could be used to create exciting visualisations, such as the figures setting out how wealthy or generous each festival's visitors are, and which attracts the most from outside Scotland. The military tattoo wins hands down on both. There will be other figures and greater detail in the report.

The main significance of the Festivals Impact study is political and financial: the festivals hope its findings will help defend unprecedented levels of public subsidy for the festivals at a time of deepening cuts in spending, by arresting or greatly slowing down future cuts.

One key figure ? not explicitly set out in the new study ? is that the festivals generate nearly �35 in spending by visitors within Edinburgh and Scotland as a whole, for every �1 in public subsidy.

The Scottish National party government, which in early May won a landslide victory in the devolved parliament elections, has championed the Edinburgh festivals. It has invested �5m in new work for the festivals, through the Expo fund and Made in Scotland fund.

An investigation by The Guardian Datablog last August into the total level of funding for 15 of the city's festivals ? that data included four events not covered by the BOP report - found they had enjoyed unprecedented amounts of subsidy, from the SNP government, the arts agency Creative Scotland and City of Edinburgh council. In 2009 and 2010, their total funding hit around �7.5m a year, compared to �5.3m in 2006.

Combining that data with the figures released today could also produce fascinating visualisations: which festival needs the subsidy to survive? Which festival generates the most income or employs the most artists and staff for the least support?

Creative Scotland has pledged to protect funding for the festivals until 2012 and the government has protected Expo and Made in Scotland funds only this year. What remains unclear is future funding. The festivals hope this report will prove that continuing public subsidy is a very shrewd economic move.

The key data from the report - plus the detailed footfall figures from last year - are downloadable below. What can you do with them?