Policy and Research
Spirit of 2012 hasn’t just funded impactful events, we’ve developed an evidence bank about how policy makers and event organisers can use events to achieve social impact.We’ve done this by:
- Sharing learning openly from across everything we’ve funded;
- Commissioning research to address evidence gaps;
- Bringing different stakeholders together, encouraging event stakeholders to think about social impact – and social impact organisations to think about the role of events!
In the past twelve years we have:
- Championed work that puts social impact from events on a par with economic impact – an argument that felt novel when we were founded but is now widely accepted.
- Demonstrated the value of investing in activities that bring joy and happiness even in a tough economic climate.
- Helped to define what ‘social impact’ should look like through a Theory of Change approach and a focus on three core outcomes: wellbeing, social cohesion and inclusion.
- Demonstrated what an ecosystem approach to events could look like, that emphasises their catalytical power within a longer-term plan of social change.
- Focused funding and learning on ensuring the benefits from events are distributed more equitably, particularly through an emphasis on disabled people and young people.
- Identified common ingredients across sports, arts & culture and volunteering programmes that help drive social impacts – helping make the case that it’s often not what is delivered, but how.
- Encouraged people to think differently about the role events play in creating shifts in trickier longer-term challenges such as physical inactivity, sustainable volunteering infrastructure and increasing pride in place.
- Argued that cross-sector partnership working and high-quality evaluation and learning are essential, and should be resourced (and therefore funded) properly rather than expected as an add on.
You can find resources about all of these topics in the Knowledge Bank.
Check out some of our overarching policy research here:
1Inquiry into the Power of Events
In the Power of Events Inquiry, we set out how events can build happier and more connected communities. It provides evidence, case studies and 5 simple recommendations for what individual events could do to maximise their impact.
2Creating the Golden Thread
Creating the Golden Thread argues for a more systematic approach to increasing the cumulative impact of events and calls for a UK Events strategy and common evaluation framework.
3UK Events Data Observatory
Our Inquiry called for the creation of an Events Data Observatory to better capture and track long term impacts from public events, and improve knowledge transfer.
Download our scoping study for a detailed exploration of the challenges of event evaluation and knowledge transfer – and a clear proposal of how this might be improved.
4Capital of Sport
The Inquiry also called for a Capital of Sport – a new model of sporting event, taking on lessons from the City of Culture programme, and argued for a different model for thinking about health and wellbeing outcomes from sporting events.
Click the button below to see the full suite of resources from Loughborough University.