Body of creative work with lasting legacy

Figure 12: Reported benefits, by number of projects

Source: ICC/DHA Cultural Olympiad Project Survey; Creative Scotland funding data. (Base 36 projects)

5.10

5.11 Fourteen projects indicated the beneficiaries experienced ‘opportunities for creative learning’. Predominantly, this related to young people, as part of the performance or, more frequently as an outcome of the learning and community engagement elements of projects. Fourteen projects cited being involved in shared community activity as a benefit. Predominantly, projects cited community engagement events and workshops as the mechanism for achieving this shared community activity. The nature of performances also emphasised shared community activity.

Nine projects indicated that training and skills development were benefits. These included opportunities to work with an international composer, come together with their peers, be mentored and develop new creative outputs for the first time. Five projects indicated that increasing awareness of disability was a benefit (all of these except one were Unlimited responses) and a further 5 projects indicated that hard to reach young people benefitted. Get Scotland Dancing, for example, received resources from the proceeds of crime to work with young people at risk. Finally, Big Concert targeted and worked with isolated young people to build confidence and social skills.

5.12 Several respondents perceived benefits to be deeper engagement with particular groups and engaging new participants or audiences. However, with a snapshot in time it is difficult to assess whether operational planning was put in place to identify and establish the mechanisms through which those impacts would be achieved. There is anecdotal evidence that projects did put in place plans to secure benefits but in the future it is crucial that delivery partners, funders and Creative Scotland are able to consider what is required to ensure that individual projects and organisations understand what is necessary to achieve their objectives.

Body of creative work with lasting legacy

5.13 Creative Scotland’s mandate is to provide strategic leadership and co-ordination across the cultural sector, and related sectors, to develop, facilitate and deliver a coherent and meaningful programme of national activity in the context of London 2012 and Glasgow 2014. This translated into an approach to funding and curation that emphasised the lasting legacy of the body of creative work produced.

5.14

5.15

5.16 As part of the Programme a number of projects contained plans to look forward to 2014 and the Commonwealth Games, in line with Scotland’s London 2012-Glasgow 2014 Cultural Plan ambitions. The intention to secure a lasting body of creative work or legacy can be associated, in particular, with the following projects:

Sea Change 2012 (this climate change project was supported in 2012 as part of a four year plan working up to Glasgow 2014)

Culture Kitchen (this food and culture project was awarded incubator funding for 2012 to develop in the lead up to Glasgow 2014)

VeloCity (a Glasgow project, it was funded for 2012 to produce an operational plan which will form the basis of significant activity for Glasgow 2014).

Scotland Can Make It! (souvenirs for commercial sale produced for 2012 and 2014)

Get Scotland Dancing (This project will continue on until 2014, including elements of Michael Clark’s

Barrowlands project)

Ceilidh-Amba (cultural connections with Rio and Glasgow 2014, though rooted in the North East).

CitizenRelay (proposal for 2014 to develop capacity for citizen journalism activity has successfully secured a Big Lottery Fund grant for 2014 delivery)

Conflux (has already secured additional funding for 2013/14 to develop its physical performance activity)

Curious (as this project is embedded within Glasgow Life’s Museum service, it will continue to 2014, dealing with intercultural exchange)

Poetry 2012 (has plans to follow up to 2014 and some of the funds dedicated to setting up a project to enable this to happen).

Additionally, projects that have no clear intention to continue (in the sense that they were one-off events for 2012) have also produced a body of work that will be available beyond 2012. So, for example, Human Race produced a series of online resources and Scottish Medical Collections that will contribute to understandings of sport/art in the future. Poetry 2012 has also left a legacy of poems for the Scottish Poetry Library and educational resources that will be accessible for years to come.

In Scottish returns from the UK Evaluation Survey and Creative Scotland End of Project Reports 198 new products or commissions were reported by projects (though only by 20 projects). These ranged from 1 or 2 for most projects to 24 for another. Whilst the definition of a new product or commission was quite wide, there is some evidence that involvement in the Programme has helped facilitate additional creative outputs that will continue to have resonance beyond the London 2012 timeline.

Conclusion

5.17 It is difficult to confirm whether or not the Programme met or exceeded its ambitions with respect to participation because of the absence of clear benchmarks and baseline against which to measure, either at the project or programme level. However, audience figures were significant and taking into consideration broadcast and online viewing, it can be said that the Programme engaged with large audiences during the London 2012 Festival period. It is, however, much more difficult to make claims about the number of new audiences attracted, the composition of these audiences and, crucially, whether this audience was additional to expected arts and cultural participation in the same period in any other year. In order to assess whether event-led cultural programmes produce additionality in cultural participation, more systematic audience development work needs to be conducted to ensure that more informed claims about audience can be made for the Glasgow 2014 Cultural Programme (see Chapter 7 for detailed discussion).