FRY Creative go in-depth on what an events data observatory – one of the cornerstones of our Inquiry actions – could look like.
Events Data Observatory
In January 2023 Spirit of 2012 published the findings of our Inquiry into the Power of Events. In it, we called for the establishment of an events data observatory to better capture and track long-term impacts from public events and improve knowledge transfer.
Spirit commissioned FRY Creative to help explore the reality of an observatory. FRY produced two reports: a feasibility study for an events data observatory and an events data aggregation report to understand how to best aggregate and understand the quantitative data from major events.
1Events Data Observatory Scoping Study
Monitoring, evaluation and research – when delivered well – enables us to answer important questions about events legacy. Where we could do better is moving from evidencing the impact of singular events in isolation, to displaying the connected, long-lasting and contingent value of events as an ecosystem.
We believe that an Events Data Observatory can play a role in shifting this dial, and in doing so not only improve the storytelling, evidencing and evaluation of events, but also their capacity to achieve their intended outcomes in the first place.
An Events Data Observatory will not solve all issues associated with events. It will not ensure everything goes to plan at events. It will not even always succeed in articulating all facets of their magic.
What it will do however, is ensure the events we deliver keep getting better; that we keep getting more efficient and effective at achieving our aims; that when a positive impact is achieved, it is robustly and rigorously evidenced and articulated. Via centralising pre-existing tools, models and data; via collaborating to collectively improve them; via fostering open communication about failure and learning – an Events Data Observatory can begin to grasp at the true power of events, helping to secure their place at heart of the UK economy, and in the minds of policymakers guiding it.
2Events Data Aggregation Report
This research brings together audience data from three major events from 2022: the Birmingham 2022 Festival which took place over six months as part of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, Coventry 2021 City of Culture (which ran May 2021-April 2022) and Unboxed: Creativity in the UK.
The report focuses on if and how you can bring together data from different festivals, similar in content and objectives, but deploying different data collection methodologies.
We know there is strong appetite to understand the collective impact of events, and to make comparisons between them. But we are currently not making it easy for policymakers, event organisers or researchers to do this work – and that reduces our ability to apply lessons learned to events in the future.
The report finds that:
- We are asking questions in slightly different ways, meaning we can only bring together a minority of the data between different events;
- Access to data is not easy and is often contingent on pre-existing relationships;
- Where we can bring information together, we can strengthen our understanding of who attends events, and who is left out, and make events more inclusive in the future.