imagine! belfast festival of ideas & politics
Belfast
The 8th Imagine! Belfast Festival proved to be a successful offering involving
147 events and 359 speakers & performers during 21-27 March 2022. The eclectic
week of talks, workshops, theatre, poetry, comedy, music, exhibitions, film and
tours attracted an audience of 9,210 online and in-person attendees. Most of the
events (82%) were free as the festival returned to live events after two years
operating online. Although Covid continued to impact on our programme with 17
events cancelled due to illness, we were still able to roll out a huge range of
events including headliners such as Michael Ignatieff, Tom Robinson, Helen
Thompson, Michael Longley, Ece Temelkuran, Bill Neely and a host of exciting
arts and cultural events – with many sold out or oversubscribed. We have
conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the festival through an audience
survey(3.5% sample). Our survey found that 95% of respondents felt the festival
satisfied their expectations. It was particularly pleasing to find that 60% of
audience members were attending a festival event for the first time and 37% of
the sample had never been to a festival venue before, which suggests that we
were able to reach new audiences and introduce them to new venues and partners.
Other outcomes included: 12% of attendees came from outside Northern Ireland. Of
these, 13% stated the festival was the main reason they were visiting Belfast.
Audience spend: Our sample spent an average of £35 attending our events Number
of festival partners: 52 Number of international participants: 40 with 27 events
organised by participants from outside UK & Ireland Number of free events: 121 –
82% of total events Average ticket price: £7.8 Number of workshops: 14 Number of
venues used: 35 Media coverage: Total number of items: 98. Reach: 4,022,796.
AVE: £181,881. PR value: £545,644 Positive feedback was also elicited from
survey respondents, detailed as follows: 95% of respondents felt the festival
satisfied their expectations with only 1% reporting dissatisfaction (increased
from 94% in 2021) 95.3% of people answered the question ‘after attending the
festival, would you be more likely to attend other politics-related events’ (88%
last year) 97.8 of respondents stated they were more likely to recommend the
festival to family and friends after attending one of our events with 1.6%
stating they felt the same When asked whether the festival promotes Belfast and
Northern Ireland in a positive way, 98.4% said yes, with 1.6% responding as
‘don’t know’ People appeared to be reasonably well informed about the festival.
92% of the sample stated they were either well or somewhat informed about the
festival prior to attending an event Respondents overwhelmingly found the
subject matter of the event/performance as the main reason for attending the
festival. However, familiarity with the speaker/performer was also cited as a
factor. We also asked whether respondents considered themselves to be
disadvantaged and found that 21% of the sample considered themselves to fall
into this category which suggests were able to significantly engage with
vulnerable and less well-off sections of the community. We invited the public to
suggest and organise events in November 2021 and received a record 98 proposals,
most of which we were able to support. This was a higher than expected level of
public participation in the festival which resulted in more events than planned
taking place in the 2022 programme. We also had a greater variety of events with
more place-making events, exhibitions, music and discussions/workshop events
compared to previous years.
