A year-long festival of culture boosted Fife’s economy by almost £8.2 million last year, it has been claimed.
Billed as Fife’s Year of Culture, Celebrating Fife 2010 saw 53 flagship events and 326 other community events held as the region aimed to herald its “culture” and improve sport, leisure and cultural opportunities.
The extravaganza was not without its detractors, with some opponents chastising Fife Council for putting up £1 million of the festival’s eventual £2.2 million budget at a time of austerity, while the council was also criticised for spending £10,000 commissioning Queen Margaret University to carry out a study examining how happy residents were as a result of the events.
Despite the concerns, an evaluation into Celebrating Fife 2010 has concluded the council’s financial input was money well spent, suggesting the festival has made a “significant and positive” contribution to Fife’s economic and cultural life.
Residents and visitors were said to have spent over £15 million at Celebrating Fife events, although the net impact on Fife’s economy was put at just under £8.2 million after taking into account factors like the proportion of spend likely to have benefited businesses outside Fife and the extent to which events caused spend simply to shift from elsewhere in Fife.
More than 903,000 people attended events throughout the year, which were organised by more than 12,000 people across Fife, while between 82 and 99 full-time equivalent jobs were created.
The QMU study also found that more than 92% of people participating thought the festival benefited their wellbeing.
Brian Goodall, the chairman of Fife’s housing and communities committee, commended everyone involved with Celebrating Fife 2010 for their efforts and hailed the impact of the festival insisting it will also have a long-lasting legacy.
“It has been an extremely positive year both in cultural and economic terms,” he said. “It’s been even more successful than we initially thought and that’s extremely positive for the future.”
Almost half of the community events funded were new ideas, which councillors said shows an increase in the capacity for event development in Fife.’Platform to shine’Around £2.6 million of additional cash was put into events throughout the year from other funding streams, with £1.2 million of in-kind support also generated.
Councillor Gerry McMullan congratulated the organisers and added, “It provided a platform for voluntary groups and organisations to shine and show local people and visitors alike what we have in Fife.
“There was some criticism levelled at the amount of finance used but when you see what was brought into Fife, it was clearly well worth spending.”
Nevertheless, while also congratulating all the staff and volunteers involved in making Celebrating Fife a success, Labour councillor David Ross said he remained sceptical about whether the money was used in the best way.
Mr Ross suggested some of the money talked about would have been spent anyway and highlighted the fact that the split of funding was three to one in favour of the bigger flagship events perhaps where it was “least needed”, he argued.
“We’ve put a lot of effort into this to do things and I’m concerned that won’t be there in the future. I’m concerned a lot of these groups will now be left high and dry,” he added.
However, Mr Goodall said he was “amazed” at Mr Ross’ suggestions, while Levenmouth councillor Alistair Hunter was of a similar vein.
“I’m very disappointed that some of my colleagues still view the world through the lens of a half-empty glass,” he said. “We had fantastic artistic content, we had fantastic participation and we had financial outcomes that were frankly astounding.
“The fact we’re still talking about negatives is absolutely incredible. It’s about more than money, it’s about active participation and rather than doing things to people we engaged with them and said to them: ‘We want to listen to you’.
“They dreamed big dreams, we went with them and the benefits are clear to see.”