This article follows our involvement on a panel discussing the topic of “Creating entertainment hubs and cultural meccas” at the Host City conference and exhibition in November 2017.

The debate at the conference emphasised the importance of location integrity and matching strategic local cultural goals to event goals in the creation of successful “go to” events, wherever they are located in the world.

Our experience in all we do proves these conclusions. First up, Cirque was formed from within the long-established Montreal creative street entertainment community. This gave us artistic credibility and sector integrity from day one for our Circus inspired shows. This allegiance to Montreal and the strong “alternative street-scene” there has been core to our offer as we expanded and grew.

Our Head Office is still based in Montreal. As an Englishman when visiting this HQ, it also helps when immigration officials ask, “reason for your visit”. When replying I always mention, “work with Cirque”, which causes the officials to visibly swell with pride and wave me through!

Cirque has definitely added to Montreal’s cultural reputation. It often appears on lists of ‘the World’s most reputable cities’, vying for top 10 positions with cities that are far larger.

All Canadians, (not just those handling immigration,) now see the city as what Forbes magazine has termed the “cultural epicentre of the country.”

This claim for culture may not be so easy to extend to our other important entertainment hub– Las Vegas!

We have over 3,000 staff located there, running up to eight shows more suited to the unique “local cultural goals” that only Vegas can deliver. Our ‘Michael Jackson One’ musical plays to packed houses twice a day at the Mandalay Resort & Casino.

In the decade we have been in Vegas, Cirque has definitely contributed to the city’s long established “Big Show” entertainment reputation, even if this may seem at odds with the more bohemian Montreal hub.

Another core part of the Cirque offer is our touring shows. We have between six and eight shows on the road, at any time, performing shows all over the globe.

According to our twitter feed today (January 2018) we have shows in Rio, Beijing, London, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Dubai and Panama City.  They will remain in a city for between one week and six months and continually tour the globe for up to eight years.

These are a mixture of arena-based shows, such as the Albert Hall when in London, and performances under the big top. We have recently added ice skating arenas to this roster with our newest show based on ice, “Crystal”.

Every show is a self-contained mini village – a mobile entertainment hub, if you will.

Most recently Cirque has added a new provision to our offer - one that builds on our ability to create, stage and sell entertainment that is relevant to today’s media savvy and entertainment hungry consumers.

We are developing partnerships with locations, entertainment organisations or rights holders who wish to develop their own experiences, whether branded or not.

The NFL X on Times Square in New York is our most recent example of this offer. We have developed, in close co-operation with the NFL a four story, 40,000sq foot, interactive and immersive series of exhibits. Check out https://www.nflexperience.com

NFL X confirms those panel discussion conclusions. Firstly, the importance of location integrity and secondly, matching strategic local cultural goals to event goals.

The NFL X adds to the Times Square integrity by adding to its status as a “must-see” destination within one of the World’s most famous cities. It also fits within New York’s unique cultural offer – being brash, loud and original.

Nick Prichard is part of the Cirque du Soleil Global Alliances team. He is currently developing the new Experiential provision with a number of Host Cities, Sports Rights Holders and Brands. To find out more please contact him on nick.prichard@cirquedusoleil.com

[Source: Glasgow 2018] A fund of up to £750,000 has opened to artists, arts organisations and groups who want to apply to be part of the Glasgow 2018 European Championships’ cultural festival.

Festival 2018 is part of the biggest sporting event hosted in Scotland since the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Co-hosted with Berlin, Glasgow 2018 is multi-sport event to be staged from 2 to 12 August 2018. It brings together the existing European Championships for Aquatics, Cycling, Gymnastics, Rowing and Triathlon along with a new Golf team championships. Berlin will host Athletics.

More than 3,000 of the best athletes on the continent will compete in 12 venues across Scotland including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Loch Lomond and The Trossachs, North Lanarkshire and Perth & Kinross.

The Festival 2018 Fund aims to deliver a programme of broad cultural expression ranging from grassroots initiatives to large scale international projects to involve talent from across Scotland and deliver a programme with something for everyone.

Applications are invited from all art-forms including music, visual art, theatre, dance, film, literature and performance to showcase the best of Scotland’s cultural offer. Glasgow’s George Square and the Merchant City Festival will be at the heart of Festival 2018 alongside communities close to the venue areas.

The fund opened on Tuesday 25 July 2017 and closes on 6 September 2017. Applications can be made at www.glasgow2018.com/festival2018/fund. Applications will be considered in terms of quality and impact and how they reflect the European context and Glasgow’s close collaboration with co-host Berlin, the 2018 Year of Young People and the way in which arts and culture can reference and link to sport through physical movement.

The Glasgow 2018 European Championships is delivered in partnership with several leading European sports federations with support from the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council.

Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop said: “The European Championships 2018 Cultural Festival offers an excellent platform to strengthen connections both at home and internationally. Scotland has a reputation for being a vibrant and culturally-rich nation and everyone here for the Championships will be able to sample some of this for themselves.

“As we look towards 2018 and the Year of Young People, there will also be a programme of events and activities celebrating Scotland’s many unique qualities as a great place to grow up and mark our young people’s important contribution to society. This Festival Fund will help to create new and valuable experiences for visitors and those who live here and I’m delighted to welcome this important part of the European Championships 2018.”

Leader of Glasgow City Council Susan Aitken said: “Festival 2018 will showcase and celebrate the very best of Glaswegian and Scottish culture.

“Our city has the greatest concentration of creative industries in Scotland, with more than 5,000 people employed in the cultural sector directly and more than 25,000 employed in the arts and creative industries more widely.

“This fund reflects our commitment to that sector and will help deliver a programme of activities at Glasgow’s iconic George Square; the Merchant City Festival, and many more venues across the city next year.”

Tickets for sporting events are now on sale and can be purchased from www.glasgow2018.com/tickets. Tickets are being sold on a first come first served basis, with fans encouraged to book early to avoid disappointment. 

Host City: We are very much looking forward to your participation in Host City 2016. What do you think is most interesting about the conference agenda?
John Langford: I think it’s a much needed conversation piece, realising the economic impact that big events can deliver. In particular I think there’s a growing focus on cultural events. 

Host City: Are we seeing a greater convergence of sport and entertainment?
John Langford: Yes we are definitely seeing more of that and I think there are two reasons. The first is that the lines between sport and non-sport entertainment are becoming blurred. We are expecting it to be integrated: whether it’s a Super Bowl half time show or an opening or closing ceremony of Formula 1 Rocks, it’s becoming expected. 
The second reason is that it adds value to sponsors and consumers. It brings in additional people and additional money. My wife will come with me to sport events if she knows there is going to be some kind of entertainment that she is going to be interested in. That brings in more eyeballs and more sponsors. 

Host City: In relation to your experiences as a promoter and venue manager, what do you think are the critical issues for customer experiences?
John Langford: The first thing is truly understanding what the customer experience is. In our case, the customer experience begins the moment the person starts looking for tickets, not when they arrive at the venue. 
And if you take that to a city context, it’s the whole experience that someone has. If they are a music tourist, it’s not just seeing Coldplay at the arena or the stadium; it’s the whole experience that leads up to that: the travel, the hotel, the food, the whole lot.
Secondly, we are all striving to exceed expectation and for me that’s a measure of great customer experience – we need to truly understand what the customer is expecting and then exceed that. 
Thirdly, this really means that all the players need to work in a synchronised approached and that is a real challenge for cities – how do we work better with transport hosts, airports, hotels etc. to deliver a city-wide customer experience?

Host City: How does SECC work with the city of Glasgow to achieve this?
John Langford: Fortunately, the city of Glasgow is quite progressive in the way it approaches big events, more so than most other cities around the world. It’s always had a big drive to lead on hosting events, whether that’s conferences – they’ve got a very successful conference team at the city marketing bureau – or the major events team, who we worked with very closely on events like the MTV European Music Awards and Radio 1’s Big Weekend. We’ve got the MOBO awards coming up at the end of the year – those are driven by the city as opposed to promoters. 
The real benefit of Glasgow is that there is a city strategy to drive cultural tourism. And it works both ways: the city can drive things to us, and if we have an idea we can drive it back to the city. A good example is the Ignition Motoring Festival in August, which is a concept that we came up with and the city bought into it and essentially it’s a whole campus-wide festival of motoring. 

Host City: How do you go about programming content at SECC and SSE?
John Langford: We are quite fortunate in a way in that we don’t have major competition for our size in a good 200 mile radius. And Glasgow audiences are great; they are some of the best audiences in the world and we know from the research we’ve seen that they buy about 50 per cent more tickets that the UK average for live music events. 
Typically anything that comes to the SSE Hydro is booked in the same way that the O2 is booked in London: a big artist like Madonna, U2 or Timberlake will typically book the O2 and the Hydro and then fill in the rest of UK and Europe on the back of that. So we are very fortunate in that we get a lot of proactive bookings; promoters will come to us. 
We do however have challenges outside those busy periods where we try and create our own content and that requires working with promoters and artists and festival organisers to create events. 
We are very cautious not to be promoters. Some venues feel differently but we feel we are not in the business of promoting. We would rather be in the business of coming up with concepts, taking a share of the risk, but we’d rather work with an established promoter to actually deliver the event. 
We work very closely with AEG that owns the O2 in London on a country music festival called Country to Country. We are working on another music festival, the genre of which I can’t share just yet. 

Host City: So you are moving towards “festivalisation” as well?
John Langford: Yes, I think that’s an audience trend. People are expecting bang for their buck. Way Out West in Gothenburg is an example of an urban festival, or the Great Escape in Brighton – those are examples of things that we would certainly like to see more of in Glasgow, not just on our campus. We feel that we are part of the fabric of Glasgow, just as much as Barrowlands or Hampden Park stadium.

Host City: How important is nurturing local talent for cities to develop themselves as cultural hubs?
John Langford: I think it’s all part of the same ecosystem. You need record labels, promoters, managers, recording studios; you need a whole ecosystem that creatively feeds itself. 
Some of the research that I’ve seen on developing music cities is that it’s important to have all of the aspects working together; and ideally that it’s driven by the city and I think that’s probably the biggest challenge for a lot of cities. 
It’s a bit like herding cats, particularly in the creative industries; there are a lot of entrepreneurs and independent thinkers and I think the challenge is creating an environment within which they can work. You need to lead without pushing and I think that’s a real challenge for cities. 

Host City: How important is venue planning in creating entertainment hubs – not just physical venues but also using open spaces?
John Langford: Glasgow has a good range of venues, indoor and outdoor, sports and entertainment. I think it’s key that cities have that. 
Secondly it’s licensing and I think a lot of cities need to work harder on this. You need to get all the city structures working together if the object is to bring more events into the city. Whether its occasional licenses for drinking, food or capacity, everything needs to work together. 
You need a progressive planning regime in the city. In the UK there are a lot of traditional music venues that are being squeezed by pressure from residents. The gentrification of areas is causing a lot of venues to shut down, so there is a big drive, certainly from the music industry, to protect those venues.
But what you’re talking about is going that extra step. It takes a liberal, forward thinking city to recognise that there is going to be a bit of pain sometimes, whether it’s noise or hundreds of thousands of people coming to your city for an event – the progressive cities realise that’s where the economic impact comes from. You need to take a bit of pain sometimes to get the gain.

*UK Music report “Wish You Were Here 2016”

John Langford, Director of Live Entertainment at SECC and SSE Hydro, is speaking on 22nd November at Host City 2016 conference and exhibition on the subject of “Creating Entertaining Experiences for Visitors".

London’s first Lumiere light festival closed on Sunday 17th January at 10.30pm, having transformed the city’s streets and buildings with 30 spectacular artworks. First estimates put the numbers of visitors at over 1 million attending the festival over four evenings.

Developed by creative producers Artichoke and supported by the Mayor of London, Lumiere London turned King’s Cross and London’s West End, including Leicester Square, Piccadilly, Regent Street, St James’s and Carnaby into a magical pedestrian playground and encouraged Londoners and tourists alike to explore the heart of the capital and view it in a new light.

“I am thrilled by the success of Lumiere London, which has brought a wonderful burst of imagination, colour and creativity to our city’s streets in the middle of cold, dark January. It could not have happened without the input and support of the many businesses and agencies who helped to make it happen,” said the Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

“We have been astounded by the crowds, which exceeded all our expectations and brought a boost to the West End and King’s Cross and are delighted by the response, not just from Londoners, but visitors from around the world.”

Lumiere was created by Artichoke in Durham in 2009, and has been recommissioned by Durham County Council every two years since then. In 2013, Artichoke also produced Lumiere in Derry~Londonderry UK City of Culture, commissioned by Culture Company 2013. In November 2015, the festival returned to Durham for the fourth time, attracting an estimated 200,000 visitors to the city.

“It’s been an unprecedented four nights for London and the turnout has been extraordinary,” said Helen Marriage, Director of Artichoke. 

“Over a million people came to experience something truly magical and unusual: this great world city turned into a temporary pedestrian playground.

“While the success of the festival did mean that contingency measures had to be put into place occasionally to help keep the crowds moving, the atmosphere has always been amazing. This festival has been about more than seeing the art. It’s about people sharing public space and re-discovering the city’.”

Over 200 volunteers from across the capital were recruited to support the festival through Team London, the Mayor’s volunteering programme for London.

Business boost

The festival is said to have brought a significant year-on-year uplift in food and beverage sales to businesses in London’s West End and King’s Cross, with anecdotal reports of double digit growth from restaurants, cafes and bars.

With founding support from Atom Bank, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Heart of London Business Alliance, London & Partners and King’s Cross, plus additional support from a host of partners and sponsors, including Westminster City Council, Lumiere London presented installations by 30 international artists, at some of the city’s most iconic locations. 

The creative power of Lumiere was accompanied by a boost to business in the city. Karen Baines, Heart of London Business Alliance representing over 500 businesses and 100 property owners in Leicester Square, Piccadilly and St James's said “The atmosphere in Leicester Square, Piccadilly and St James’s has been absolutely electric with footfall increasing by 18% year on year on Thursday and Friday from 6pm to 11pm, as visitors flocked from far and wide to see our globally renowned cultural landmarks transformed.

“Our vibrant evening economy saw a significant boost with West End restaurants, cafes and bars reporting double digit growth in sales as visitors made the most of what was on offer to make it a night out and an evening to remember.”

How London came to life

Audiences from across the world were enthralled by artworks including a glowing tropical garden filled with giant plants in Leicester Square Gardens and a technicolour animation featuring the faces of some of the UK’s best-loved TV and film stars, projected onto BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly. At Oxford Circus, which was closed to traffic during the festival, people lay on their backs gazing up at 1.8 London, Janet Echelman’s beautifully illuminated aerial sculpture strung between buildings at Oxford Circus.

Along Regent Street, pedestrianised for the event, crowds gathered to see Elephantastic!, a 3D, larger-than-life projected elephant stomping through the Air Street arch, while in St James’s visitors gazed at the ethereal Les Voyageurs – sculpted human forms flying high above the buildings. At Westminster Abbey, audiences stood mesmerized by The Light of the Spirit, a digital painting by French artist Patrice Warrener, who had bathed the Abbey’s West Gate in an electric riot of colour. 

In Carnaby, on Broadwick Street, visitors gathered around Julian Opie’s animated LED monolith – Shaida Walking. The piece has been commissioned as a permanent installation and will be illuminated during the day as well as at night.

Aquarium, Benedetto Bufalino & Benoit Deseille’s iconic red telephone box filled with exotic fish at Grosvenor Square, was a firm festival favourite, drawing audiences to the leafy garden square in Mayfair. The square was also a temporary home to Elaine Buckholtz’s abstract digital painting, which uses light and music to re-imagine Van Gogh’s painting All Night Café.

Hundreds of Londoners of all ages played their part in the festival: from donating a recycled plastic bottle to the glowing Plastic Islands installation by Luzinterruptus in the Trafalgar Square fountains, to appearing on film in the spectacular Circus of Light projected onto the Granary Building at King’s Cross. 500 children also took part in workshops at schools in the area to help make Joining the Dots and Litre of Light, both also at King’s Cross. 

Founding Partner Bloomberg Philanthropies and Artichoke also hosted a sold-out Lumiere London Symposium, “The Heart and Soul of the City”. Speakers including Lumiere London artists, cultural pioneers and leading policy makers, shared their visions for the public realm, and how artists and communities can transform it. 

When in 2008 the northern English county of Durham and its small historic city became a unitary council – the fifth biggest in England – it was golden opportunity to build a new events and tourism strategy for the region. 

“One of the things that became obvious was the need to change the narrative, both regionally, nationally and internationally about Durham, which was seen as a former industrial area,” George Garlick, Chief Executive of Durham County Council, told HOST CITY.

Durham put in a bid to be the UK’s first City of Culture in 2013 – a bold move for a city of less than 40,000 people. In the end, the title was awarded to Derry~Londonderry, but Durham decided to press on with its ambitious programme of cultural events anyway as a way of attracting visitors to the region. 

It was through this work that the possibility of hosting the Lumiere festival came about, a huge light festival owned by a small and innovative arts events company called Artichoke. 

“It was one of those fortuitous things. Artichoke were planning a major festival of light elsewhere in the UK and that fell through, and they’d got backing from the European Commission and Sky Arts at that stage,” says Garlick.

“So it was a fairly fully developed proposition, and on hearing that we were raising the flag for major events here in Durham, they came to see us and we said ‘yes, that sounds great’. In 2009, pretty much at the drop of a hat, the first Lumiere festival was put on.”

Durham has hosted Lumiere every other year since then, with the city investing GB£400,000 in the event for 2011 and 2013. These sums have been matched by the Arts Council, with additional funding from the European Commission and a significant amount of private sponsorship and a major grant from VisitEngland.

Lumiere had a huge impact, with 175,000 visitors coming to see the light festival in 2013. National newspapers published double page spreads on the event and the international broadcaster BBC World ran a one minute clip of the show on its rolling news coverage for 24 hours. 

“It’s a really interesting balance of something that’s working for the local population, but also being attractive to people visiting for the first time,” says Helen Marriage, director of Artichoke. “Just over half the visitors that we count through our evaluation come from the immediate city, 17 per cent from the wider region and the rest from outside.”

The increase in tourism over the period that Durham has been hosting Lumiere is impressive. “VisitEngland said we were one of the fastest growing tourism areas over the last three years – we are up 150 per cent in Durham itself and nearly 20 per cent across the county,” says Garlick.

“The increase in the visitor economy in each of the last three years means a huge increase in employment. It’s not just the people who are actually employed for the festival – the major change is the structural change in Durham as a tourism destination. 

“The festival actually generates GB£5 million directly in restaurant sales, overnight stays and so on in the local economy. We’ve seen a lot more people coming from both Europe and in particular America.”

Lumiere is a very successful flagship event, but it’s not the only contributor to Durham’s success. 2013 was a particularly big year for the city.

“We had the Ashes test between England and Australia at riverside stadium, where England won the Ashes to baying and excited crowds, which was terrific. We had the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition, which came up from the British Library – 100,000 people bought every ticket available for the three months that it was on. We had cycling events, a brass festival – but Lumiere is the jewel in the crown.”

The good news continued in 2014, with Durham County Council being named local council of the year. “It’s a city and county that really punches above its weight,” says Marriage.

“It’s tempting to think that it’s an impoverished area with a decline of traditional industry, but that’s not the impression you get when you are here. It’s a place on the up and people are making it work – and events are really part of that culture.”

Durham’s long term strategy is hinged around Lumiere, but another important cultural event is the fast-growing Durham Book Festival. “The world heritage site between the cathedral, the castle and the university has a number of display venues, so there’s a programme worked out in advance for that,” says Garlick. 

“In 2015 there will be a major exhibition of the Magna Cartas, which are in the cathedral’s ownership to coincide with the anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta.”

In October 2015 the Rugby World Cup comes to St. James’ Park in Newcastle, just 15 minutes from Durham. “I would hope, as we’ve seen in many previous large events and when we saw the Olympics were on, we’ll see a lot of people visiting Durham,” says Garlick.

“Durham hotels traditionally pick up a lot of business from anything major that’s happening in Newcastle because it’s an attractive place to stay and a 15 minute train journey, so the Rugby World Cup will be really good for us.”

The next Lumiere festival takes place in November 2015. “We’ve recently agreed a package with the Arts Council, which will allow us to do it next year and in 2017,” says Garlick. 

The city consulted with the local people and businesses before agreeing to host the event again. “The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from the public, but particularly from businesses who think this is working really well in terms of hoisting Durham’s flag,” says Garlick. 

“It’s a huge project that takes about 18 months to plan,” says Marriage. “So we are a year out and we are looking at all the logistics – traffic planning, crowd management, where the installations might go, technically what they might need.”

Helen Marriage was one of the speakers at HOST CITY Bid to Win conference on 28th October 2014, on a panel called “Bidding for the Right Event”, alongside the owner of a very different event, Peter Tindemans of Euroscience – which awards the EU City of Science. 

“It was really fascinating to begin to think about what we do from the other end of the telescope,” says Marriage. “So hearing Peter Tindemans talk about the fact that he saw Euroscience as a property that he could get cities to bid for – that’s never the way we work, we are always trying to persuade people to let us do what we do.”

Lumiere also took place in Derry last year as part of the closing celebrations for the first UK City of Culture, and there are many other events that Artichoke produces. “We are working in London, Northern Ireland, we are looking at something in Wales. We are increasingly invited to do things internationally.

“But even if cities invite us, they don’t really get what it’s going to be like and all the compromises everyone is going to have to make. Very often an artist will say ‘I really want to make something here’, and we set about the process of persuading the authority that they want to fund it and that they can accommodate it. It’s always tough the first time you go into a place.”

For more information visit www.lumiere-festival.com