DCMS outlines ‘lessons learned’ from UNBOXED festival

Branding, marketing and oversight of governance are among a number of areas where the government has identified lessons that can be learned from the management of the £120m UNBOXED festival, it has emerged.

The festival, held between March and November 2022, involved a series of events, activities, installations and creative projects across the UK, but has come under criticism over attendance figures.

A letter recently sent by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to the Public Accounts Committee, which scrutinises government spending, reveals that the department "drew on a range of sources to identify lessons learned" including an evaluation by KPMG, a National Audit Office report, an Infrastructure and Projects Authority review, as well as internal workshops.

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On UNBOXED's brand awareness, the reply – penned by former joint interim permanent secretaries at DCMS, Ruth Hannant and Polly Payne – noted: "Most one-off major events (sporting or ceremonial) hosted in the UK have a clear hook and immediate resonance with the wider public as was the case for both the Commonwealth Games and the Jubilee."

It highlighted how a strong marketing campaign is needed for new concepts like UNBOXED, adding: "To achieve mass awareness of an entirely new concept and brand, a longer lead time or more resources for marketing strategies may be required".

Festival of Media and M&M Global marketing manager Ruby Isla Cera Marle could not comment directly on UNBOXED but told Arts Professional about the challenge of marketing large-scale events and how staggering campaigns to maximise audience impact is vital.

Marle said: "Trying to encourage people to go back to attending live events in a post-Covid world is tricky. We now have to work even harder, to drum up interest. A key part of this, is ensuring you have decent lead time to foster and grow an audience, and also stagger activity to build excitement in the run-up to the event".

"For a new event, a strong brand identity to stand out and cut through the noise has never been more essential".

Further findings

Also among the ten key findings shared as lessons learned from the festival in the letter was ensuring government structures are suitably agile to respond to change and uncertainty.

In response, the letter suggests events such as UNBOXED should consider staging programme reviews to "ensure maximum clarity around roles and responsibilities".

"For a programme operating at the pace of UNBOXED, it is important to hold regular governance reviews to ensure they remain fit for purpose," it said.

Another key lesson learned states objectives for the project evolved and were not documented, making it hard to measure the festival's success and impact.

"UNBOXED initially agreed on two objectives which the programme could be measured against," the letter said, adding: "At different stages during the development phase, government, as the major funder, placed greater emphasis on levelling up, reaching new audiences and incorporating/showcasing Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths alongside Arts (STEAM). More could have been done to explicitly reflect and document the implications of these additional factors."

The letter also suggests future publicly funded creative programmes "may wish to consider options such as establishing curatorial committees or artistic advisors" to put "additional assurances around creative decision making".

"Government as a funder has a role in setting objectives and strategic parameters but creative experts are well placed to make artistic programming decisions at arm’s length, both in terms of curatorial leadership, ensuring content can truly win hearts and minds, and for practical operational reasons".

And it offered a mixed review of the decision to nest the UNBOXED company in the Birmingham Organising Committee of the Commonwealth Games.

"It could get going immediately – especially important given the tight timescale for delivery. It also delivered economies of scale by sharing back office functions, and it made the most of synergies of delivering two major events in the same year," the letter reads.

"On the other hand, it is important to consider and keep under review the senior management team’s capacity when spread across two major programmes in the same year."

Some of the key findings also reflected positively on aspects such as the event's UK-wide delivery model.

Funding for UNBOXED came across the four UK nations and the letter says that "once established, [this model] worked very effectively and demonstrates one way in which major cultural events can be successfully delivered across the whole of the UK".