Great Exhibition worth the cash, insist bosses
GREAT Exhibition of the North bosses have defended their claims that the cultural festival engaged visitors to the North East and boosted the region’s profile.
Nearly two months since the event ended with a visit from Prince William, questions have been raised over how visitor numbers were calculated, to show the impact the event had on the region.
Great Exhibition organisers and the Government say they’re happy with how the figures were worked out, and insist the Great Exhibition of the North (GEOTN) has left a lasting legacy for the city.
They claim it led to a “boost to the economy of £184m” and further opportunities for big events for the city. After winning a bid in October 2016, the city received over £5m of Government cash, boosting its budget with sponsorship deals.
A spokesperson for organisers the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative (NGI) said Newcastle Gateshead welcomed at least four million visitors over the summer, with visitor surveys conducted during this period showing that 32% of visitors to Newcastle Gateshead over the summer cited the Exhibition as the primary reason for their visit, while 75% engaged with the Exhibition’s content.
Around 45% of visitors were from the wider North.
Furthermore, hotel bookings in Newcastle Gateshead reached record levels with more than 505,000 hotel rooms occupied during the exhibition.
Many of the Great Exhibition venues saw record footfall, with four key venues (Great North Museum, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Sage Gateshead and Discovery Museum) welcoming significantly more visitors (an average of +55%) over the summer period (compared to summer 2017).
NGI said the vision for Great Exhibition of the North was “incredibly ambitious” and compared to other events of the same scale, scope and ambition, Great Exhibition’s budget and timescales were “dramatically smaller and shorter”.
They cited the Water Sculpture as one example where budget and timescale curbed what could be achieved.
NGI said they managed to increase the budget from £10m to £14m through sponsorship deals and funding bids, adding that “with an estimated boost to the economy of £184m this is an excellent return on investment.”
The investment has benefited Northern businesses, creative talent and museums, they added.
NGI said if it wasn’t for the Great Exhibition, government investment and other public and private sector funds wouldn’t have come to the region.
GEOTN engaged with hundreds of businesses throughout the 80 days, insist NGI, with events such as the Northern Powerhouse Business Summit, the Emerging Tech series of events and the Great Exhibition of the North: Building a Legacy for North East Businesses collectively attracting more than 1,000 business delegate attendees.
NGI also said the Exhibition affected the way the region was seen by the rest of the country, with Newcastle Gateshead named the number one place in the world to visit in 2018 by Rough Guides. They cited GEOTN as a key event to visit.
GEOTN shone a spotlight on North, attracting high profile visitors, Government and Ministerial engagement and national media, and NGI maintain “the number of visitors, scale of positive media coverage and digital reach can’t fail to have impacted perceptions of the North positively.”
However, they accept perceptions need to be measured over a period of time, and GEOTN research will continue to measure the impact through surveys in the coming months.
As for changes in the region since the Exhibition, organisers say they now have the confidence to bid for other large-scale projects.
“Confidence in bidding and winning GEOTN grew out of the work undertaken by NGI in developing its major events pipeline and there are a number of opportunities coming up in the future – in 2019 we are looking forward to a year of sporting activities such as the World Transplant Games,” said NGI.