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#LiverpoolCalling

Posted on by Heidi Bellamy Posted in Blog
Zsuzsi Lindsay – CLOA Executive Committee Member

Zsuzsi Lindsay, Cultural Placemaking Officer, Reading Borough Council and CLOA Executive Committee Member reflects on the impact of Eurovision on Liverpool told through evaluation.

On October 26, I was honoured to attend the Liverpool Calling event on behalf of CLOA. Liverpool is a city that I hadn’t had the pleasure of visiting in the past, so I was blissfully unaware of how culture and creativity were so deeply embedded into the fabric of the city’s sense of place.

Rewind just over a year, October 7 of 2022 Liverpool was successful in their bid to become the host city for Eurovision 2023 on the Ukraine’s behalf. This meant that they had 7 months to plan and mount an event that honoured the Ukraine and that would be broadcast to the world (live) from Liverpool.

Because there wasn’t enough to do in just the delivery of the event, this amazing city also decided to include a huge community engagement piece to ensure that the joy of Eurovision would be felt across the city. And would honour the idea of “People coming together and living for each other and for kindness.” Community Member

As an outsider looking in at Liverpool’s final evaluation of Eurovision it wasn’t just the numbers I was interested in, but the ‘HOW was this possible’? How did Liverpool achieve such incredible outcomes in such a short period of time?

This is what I took away as the city’s pillars to success.

A strong confident vision

A theme that kept emerging throughout the day was the speed of delivery. When an event must be delivered at breakneck speed, there is no time for one person to control every aspect of the outcome. It relies on a strong vision, setting direction, appointing the right people, and then trusting in what the team will be able to deliver.

This vision was key to Liverpool being able to engage such a large network of delivery partners and funders, the vision informed, energised, and catalysed partners. Without strong partnership networks, the task with which they were faced would have been almost insurmountable.

Communication of this vision was king, bolstered by the continuity and regularity of communication. The infrastructure for communication was clearly set out with regular updates, and they had some of the most beautiful flow I think I have ever seen.

 “…lots of different individuals in a very condensed period of time, that may have taken years to achieve” Participant

Roles and responsibilities were clear from the beginning as well as the what and how. They did this by breaking the gargantuan task down into 7 strands with a team responsible for each:

The message I took away was – whatever happens be bold, be ambitious, be clear and get your partners and stakeholders on board – have confidence in their ability to lead and deliver.

Be ahead of the curve

Evaluation for many projects can be an afterthought. It came as a surprise to know that previous Eurovision contests had not been extensively evaluated. I can imagine that having limited time to organise this ‘super event’ might have been a factor, but this was a challenge that Liverpool wanted to overcome. The leadership team could see the immense opportunity that had presented itself for the UK and the world to demonstrate on a global scale many of the things that we in the cultural sector repeat almost on a daily basis, around the benefits of cultural and creative activity on society, the economy and beyond.

Apart from the stunning impact figures that Liverpool has achieved, here are some of the key takeaways for me on evaluation:

  • As a rule of thumb spend between 1% and 10% of the total project budget on evaluation.
  • Understand what it is that you want to achieve by running the event – create a Story of Change with Stakeholders to ensure everyone is on the same page.
  • Know what it is you want to measure before the event starts.
  • Do as much pre-event work as possible so that you have comparable before and after numbers or base rates. 

Create projects that foster belonging and ownership

‘What I’m really interested in is what is going on outside of this room…a lot of what was delivered I didn’t know about.’ Clare McColgan CBE

The people of Liverpool were excited and invigorated by the chance to host Eurovision. The research conducted showed that people’s wellbeing in Liverpool went up in anticipation of the event coming to the city. This shows the importance of having something to look forward to and be excited about.

There was a huge amount of pride around Liverpool being the host city, with 80 per cent of residents noting how important it was for Liverpool and a further 93 per cent saying they were pleased with how the city delivered the event.

Of those questioned, 74 per cent were enthusiastic about Liverpool hosting on behalf of Ukraine and 71 per cent felt that the city’s leading role promoted positive feelings across all of the participating nations.

These fantastic outcomes will have been further catalysed by the huge effort that went into Liverpool’s community and education engagement programmes.

The EuroGrant, EuroStreet and EuroLearn initiatives provide a blueprint for increasing the impact of large-scale events beyond economic value. They enabled Eurovision to impact communities across our region, including involving groups and minoritized individuals who may typically engage in such activities. The tens of thousands of people actively involved in these events were empowered to be involved in an historic version of this world-famous festival. [1]

This tireless dedication helped contribute to the figures listed above, but also foster that feeling that that Eurovision was something everyone had a right to be a part of and contribute to.

“Every single human being has the desire to belong and I thought this event was absolutely that. Everyone could belong to it, no matter who you were, where you were from, what you were doing or what role you were in, didn’t matter, you just belonged to it.” Focus Group Participant

This feeling of belonging, ownership and pride was reflected in the conversations that I had with Liverpool residents. Some who had volunteered, performed on stage, or even taken a break from their job to help make Eurovision happen.

One young person explained how their music events business had taken off and that a huge network of young music event producers was now working together in Liverpool catalysed by the event. The volunteer I spent time with explained how he enjoyed and took pride in telling visitors about the history of his city. The employee I spoke with spoke with enthusiasm how she had been seconded from her job to support the recruitment of over 400 volunteers (whittled down from 4000 applications).

These stories were shared over and over again, and this was just a micro glimpse of what happened across Liverpool for Eurovision.

The overwhelming message that I took away from the community engagement, was commission and empower the people who know your community best to achieve the biggest impact. In doing so, you will activate your cultural scene, create a sense of pride, promote place, create lasting legacy and have the power of word of mouth behind you to help spread the city’s message.

“I wanted to get that message out to the world that this city is tolerant, its welcoming and its, I just spread that message, and also that we are again making a stand against what’s happening and saying as a city we are saying this is not okay and we want to welcome, you know…” Focus Group Participant

The End

Liverpool hosting Eurovision on behalf of the Ukraine, can be seen as a huge success. Not just because of how well the Eurovision event itself was received, because of course that is important. But also, for what Liverpool has done for the cultural sector as a whole, with robust evaluation of this nature it is hard to continue to overlook the impact that culture can have on community, economy, education, partnerships and (although I didn’t touch on it) international relations. It also shows the value of engaging your community, how their word of mouth can bolster the short, medium and long term success of an event.

I will end with a quote from Clare McColgan CBE as I think it summarises what Liverpool achieved by producing the event ‘Eurovision created memories for people that they will hold in their hearts for years to come.’ The memories will remain in hearts and the power of culture robustly evaluated will (hopefully) be held in minds across the world for years to come.

An overview of the event in video format can be found here.

Further Reading and Information

Social impact of ‘super-events’ – Inquiry into the Power of Events – Spirit of 2012

Full evaluation – Eurovision 2023: The Results Are In Eurovision 2023: The Results Are In- Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place – University of Liverpool

The full line up from the event – The Symposium – Culture Liverpool

Get young people involved the ‘Eurolearn’ way, access to all the education packs here –

[1] UoL,Community,and,wellbeing,final,report,24.10.23.pdf (liverpool.ac.uk)

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