UNBOXED: Audience profiling, evaluation and willingness to pay for a cultural mega event

‘UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK’ was a programme of public activity intended to celebrate the creativity and interconnectivity between science, technology, maths, engineering and the arts (“STEAM”), delivered through ten large-scale projects, which took place across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and online in 2022. The estimated budget for delivering UNBOXED was approximately £120 million. Programme monitoring data shows that UNBOXED engaged a total audience of 20.5 million across the four nations of the UK.

At its core, UNBOXED aimed to bring people together and celebrate creativity. This is reflected in its two strategic objectives, agreed by all four Governments:

1. “To bring people together to celebrate our strengths, values and identities, and boost pride throughout communities.”
2. “To celebrate our offer to the world, supporting our brand and helping attract new inward business and investment.”

UNBOXED was funded by all four Governments of the UK: the UK Government through the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS); the Northern Ireland Executive; the Scottish Government; and the Welsh Government (‘the UNBOXED Funders’).

UNBOXED was eventually made up of ten commissions:

• About Us: An exploration of our connections to everything around us through cutting-edge projection mapping, poetry, animation, music, and more, bringing together multiple organizations and individuals across the UK.
• Dandelion: A major creative program across Scotland encouraging people to “Sow, Grow, and Share” food, ideas, knowledge, and music, with festivals, events, installations, gardens, and a schools learning program celebrating sustainability through community growing.
• Dreamachine: A reimagination of artist Brion Gysin’s 1959 invention by Turner Prize-winning collective Assemble, musician Jon Hopkins, and other scientists, technologists, and philosophers, as a kaleidoscopic experience of light, music, and spatial sound.
• GALWAD: A dynamic story of contemporary Wales and its vision for the future, created in collaboration with more than 400 performers, writers, artists, and other creatives, and inspired by the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.
• Green Space, Dark Skies: A project involving thousands of people becoming “Lumenators” and creating outdoor artworks with special lights in the UK’s natural landscapes, celebrating our right to roam and responsibility to take care of it.
• Our Place in Space (OPIS): An epic-scale model of the solar system in the form of a 10-kilometer sculpture trail, with an interactive augmented-reality app and Minecraft Education adventure, created by a team led by the Nerve Centre and including artists and astrophysicists.
• PoliNations: A magical super-garden in Birmingham planted and grown by more than 1,000 people from 60 different community groups, featuring giant trees, workshops, garden tours, and the Sunset Shift sound and light show, celebrating the UK’s diversity.
• SEE MONSTER: A retired North Sea offshore rig transformed into a 450-tonne, 35-meter-high art installation and visitor experience showcasing local innovation and the creative use of renewable energy, hosted in Weston-super-Mare by NEWSUBSTANCE.
• StoryTrails: A project by Story Futures inviting people to explore their towns and cities through augmented and virtual reality portals to experiences that remix the archives of the BBC and the British Film Institute.
• Tour de Moon: A cosmic-themed celebration of the relationship between Earth and the Moon through music, film, zines, talks, visual art, and more, curated by Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian and a team of collaborators, including young creatives aged 18-25.

Methodology

We undertook a mixed-method quantitative approach including approx. 5,000 F2F surveys at events, ~6,000 online surveys post-event, and interviews with schools and Commission partners including volunteers and freelancers.

We provided advice and consultancy on survey design and delivery, including designing a Contingent Valuation experiment to value the impact of the cultural programme which was been reviewed and signed off by DCMS for use in the final evaluation report.

Where relevant, we also provided Welsh speaking interviewers on the ground, as well as working to deliver BSL-trained teams at key events focussed on the Deaf/deaf community.

Our role was the end-to-end management of both the logistics and actual completion of:

• such a large number of surveys (around 60 different specific survey specifications – one for each audience across the ten Commissions)
• across such a wide and geographically varied number of events (around 200 individual events, including in the far north of Scotland, in Brecon, and in rural Northern Ireland as well as in towns and cities across all four Nations were delivered successfully)
• whilst providing the flexibility and responsiveness to react to very short notice changes in programming or proposed activity, as is the case with live events
• and whilst ensuring sampling was undertaken to ensure a respresentative sample across events and Commissions, to achieve minimum sample sizes per audience per commission

Outcomes

We worked with the UNBOXED team for approximately a year and subsequently undertook additional strands of research within the wider portfolio, for instance – Brand Awareness tracking in specific locations. We believe our involvement has been integral to the overall outcome of the evaluation and this was echoed by the project team at UNBOXED.

“MEL have the full range of methodologies available and have been highly flexible working across 10 different partners and approximately 60 audience groups across all four nations of the UK. They have also helped to develop and deliver Willingness to Pay questions using contingent valuation to allow us to see the value audiences place on the UNBOXED projects. They have felt like an extension of the UNBOXED team and have provided advice and challenge as appropriate throughout the project.”

UNBOXED: Head of Evaluation

The evidence from conducted surveys and engagement data suggests that UNBOXED successfully brought people together through its events and activities, which aligns with the program’s first strategic objective. A significant number of surveyed attendees and participants (90%) confirmed that UNBOXED gave them an opportunity to unite and share experiences. Furthermore, around 2/3 of respondents felt more connected to others, while the majority (78%) agreed that the program enabled them to interact with people they typically wouldn’t. The survey also revealed that participants, compared to attendees, benefited more from the co-creation activities, workshops, and volunteering. UNBOXED also brought communities together by staging the creative program in local areas across the UK, as more than half of the surveyed attendees lived directly in those areas. In addition, almost 80% of surveyed attendees and participants who lived locally reported that UNBOXED made them feel connected to their local area and proud to be living there.

The evaluation estimates that the monetisable benefits realised through UNBOXED total £175.5 million up to December 2022.