Local artist and CovSoc member, Mary Courtney, has taken a look at the evaluation report on Coventry’s City of Culture year. This is what she writes….
Here is my response to the Coventry City of Culture Impact and Evaluation Report, published by the University of Warwick and Coventry University.
Coventry City of Culture Trust had a total income of £44.5 million, of which £31.4 million was public sector funding. What was it spent on, and was it worth it?
First impressions: the report has the look of a beautiful, glossy promotional brochure. The photographs are fabulous, telling the story that: “Coventry City of Culture was marvellous, diverse, fantastic”. Smiles suggestive of an overly long wedding album.The jargon of “co-creation” and “engagement” littered throughout. The best-looking statistics placed in the prominent Executive Summary and first few pages. This is not a warts-and-all report of the good, bad and the ugly. It is heavily skewed towards a positive spin on the City of Culture year.
The report, published on 2nd November 2023, is VERY long indeed –212 pages – and together with the 5 annex reports it is almost 500 pages. This monstrous size pretty much guarantees it will be unread. Anyone venturing inside is likely to read the Executive Summary and Concluding Thoughts, maybe skim a few other pages, and leave it at that. But this is the officialrecord of Coventry City of Culture, and questions need to be asked about what is in this report and what has been left out.
It cannot claim to be independent. Warwick University and Coventry University are lead authors. These universities were partners of Coventry City of Culture Trust, how can they not hold a favourable bias? Lead author Jonothan Neelands was on the Board of Trustees of the City of Culture Trust until 2019.
The report emphasises success. I agree that there were some positive aspects to the City of Culture, such as the City Hosts. I thought the procession on the last weekend, the drone show at Memorial Park, and Choir of Man at Assembly Festival Gardens were excellent. But it certainly wasn’t short on problems. However, unpalatable aspects of the City of Culture are buried deep and given very little coverage, not least of which is the £1 million ‘loan’ from the Council and the financial collapse of the Trust with £4.25 million of debt.
Only one quarter of a page is given to “Learning Insights.” Which would more typically be referred to as problems. One such insight stated, “significant communication problems that ranged from difficulties maintaining partner relationships to a lack of timely communication of the programme” (p10). This vague statement refers to the fact that the programme booklet went out so late to households that months of events had already happened! What was in fact hugely significant to residents is glossed over in such a way that you would have to have knowledge of what happened for the sentence to make sense. No mention either of all the problems people had with the website and online ticketing. Another “Insight” highlighted that “…the Trust was not able to sufficiently embed itself in the city to gain necessary trust and goodwill” (p10). The truth was that many hundreds of emails people sent to the Trust were never answered. This is not the way to build trust or goodwill.
Questionable headline figures are used to indicate success. “700 events. One million points of engagement. £183.1 million investment in the city.” The number of events attributable to the City of Culture Trust is much less. Events regularly held at Compton Verney, The Belgrade and Warwick Arts Centre and the Council Bands in the Park, together with many unfunded freelance creative events, were drawn upon to manufacture this figure. “One million points of engagement” is both inflated and largely based on TV/video views. It included in-person attendance, 395,090 tabled in the annex, from the likes of Radio 1 Big Weekend, an event unrelated to the CoC Trust, which provided an artificial boost to the figures. An inflation of 112,635 attendances! The further headline figure of “£183.1 million investment in the city” is related to the award of the title of City of Culture and is unrelated to the activities of the Trust. This figure is also questionable as in June in Parliament the figure of £170 million was cited. As well as dodgy figures, important costs are missing. There is nothing in the report on spending for specific events, staffing, marketing, travel and external consultancy. Costs cited for artists is also contradictory.
There is no mention of social media comments, positive, negative, or indifferent, that referred to the City of Culture, a major omission in the evaluation data.
The report states that over 50% of the City of Culture Trust core staff left, 69 leaving between May 2021 and May 2022. Alarm bells should ring at this figure. Whilst 47% of employees of the City of Culture Trust were from Coventry, they were not in senior positions (p69). Little wonder then that directors and producers from outside the city and with little knowledge of Coventry, had little interest in putting on Coventry-centric, heritage and history focussed events. What does the world, the country, and the people of Coventry know about Coventry that it didn’t before? From what I heard on the ground, many people felt the events weren’t relevant to them, that “culture was done to us”.
Deep in the annex is acknowledgement of the huge financial benefits that flowed to local universities as a result of the City of Culture. “£1.6million related to research activities and sector development by the universities” (Annex 5, p75). The universities massively benefitted, though ultimately, surely, they will have caused themselves long term reputational damage and lose credibility, through their (mis)reporting here.
The report does acknowledge that “The Trust’s entry into administration has left local creatives and cultural organisations disappointed, and without access to promised and expected commissions and legacy funds” (p154). I personally find the word Disappointed barely captures the views of creatives and cultural organisations. It is very inappropriate and weak. Enraged is more like it.
The Concluding Thoughts (p161) states that “the year of events was overshadowed by the pandemic”. Yes, the pandemic made things difficult. But the pandemic cannot excuse everything! There is no mention in the conclusion of the big shadow that the Trust and Trustees cast due to poor leadership/management and wilfully ignoring local communities and local freelance artists who wanted to contribute. Next to nothing is explicitly reported about the way in which the Trust duped Coventry City Council into providing a £1m loan that could never be repaid, and the massive negative national media coverage following the collapse of the Trust. Blame everything on Covid! Nice try, but No!
The report falls far short of being a credible, honest evaluation of Coventry City of Culture. It fundamentally misrepresents the events, the organisation/management, oversight and outcomes. It gives almost no attention to the concerns of residents. Today we have a better-looking Precinct and new murals, but no What’s On Guide, and fewer permanent exhibition and creative spaces than before the City of Culture happened. What is left is a bitter taste in the mouth because of the missed opportunities for the city. What’s your view on it all?
Mary Courtney, November 2023
Report link:
https://coventry21evaluation.info/strategy-reports/final-evaluation-report/