New research from Belong into findings from the Spirit of 2012 archive on the impact of events on social cohesion and connection finds that co-design is essential in the events organising process to maximise the benefits to communities.
The events in the archive cut across arts and culture, sport and physical activity. They are an important source of data about how many of these events have created a lasting impact for people and places across the UK.
The report emphasises the need for event organisers to take an intentional approach to planning and delivering events that promote social cohesion and connection asking them to ‘consider how to actively promote social connection throughout the event.’
Twenty-eight projects were selected for analysis from Spirit’s extensive archive for the learning they provide on ‘what makes an event that results in people feeling more connected to their communities and that builds social cohesion.’ Based on these learnings the research makes recommendations, including that:
- co-design approaches are used to ensure buy-in from local communities and groups, linking to existing social infrastructure in each location
- all events are evaluated using measurement techniques that are fully accessible e.g. for disabled people or people with English as a second language and monitoring is designed to capture the wider community benefits and organic developments that contribute to social cohesion
- exploring barriers to participation and how they can be overcome is carried out at both design and delivery stages and that this involves both economic and physical barriers
- that other funding bodies open their archives to share learning
- local events are a great way for people to commit a limited amount of time to volunteer, allowing them to engage in their local community and encourage social responsibility and the values associated with giving something to their community
Ruth Hollis, CEO of Spirit of 2012 said:
Events are a powerful way of bringing people together and helping to form more cohesive communities. Spirit of 2012, with our funded partners, have been working for the last 10 years to show how events can bring people together and bridge divides, and to understand how this happens. We were delighted to open our evidence bank to Belong to improve our understanding of the link between events and social cohesion. This first output from our learning partnership explores the evidence base and will be developed into tools for event organisers and commissioners to achieve cohesion outcomes with their events. We hope this learning will be useful for a wide range of organisations through Spirit’s closure and beyond. We are grateful and excited to continue working with Belong.