The SA Cultural Observatory has announced
the official release of its new training video on the South African Festival
Economic Impact Calculator.
The South African Festival Economic Impact
Calculator (SAFEIC) is a free, online calculator developed by the SACO
specifically for cultural festival and event organisers to help them can track
and quantify the economic impact of their events. It was designed to produce a
calculated estimate the economic impact of a festival or event on a host
economy.
“We are very excited to announce the South
African Festival Economic Impact Calculator training video. We realised after
giving a couple of workshops on the calculator, that while we have a robust
guide for the calculator, people really benefit from some ‘facetime’.
“Obviously we cannot reach everyone
everywhere, so we decided to develop a training video which can,” said Prof Jen
Snowball, SACO Chief Research Strategist.
Snowball, a professor of economics at
Rhodes University developed the SAFEIC with Prof Bruce Seaman from Georgia
State University, Atlanta in the United States, for the SACO and the Department
of Arts and Culture.
“The video is a step-by-step guide to the
calculator and explains everything from what economic impact is, to what data
is needed and why for the calculator to provide the best outputs; and gives a
visual tutorial on how to input the data and read the results,” Snowball added.
The SAFEIC itself has been carefully, and
conservatively, designed so as to produce results that are as reliable and
valid as possible for a wide range of events – provided the data that is
inputted is as accurate as possible.
The SAFEIC is driven by event data. To run SAFEIC,
a festival or event requires a minimum of seven pieces of information
including:
1. the number of days the festival or event
is run over;
2. the population of the host city or town
(obtainable from Stats SA);
3. the total number of attendees;
4. the average visitor spend on
accommodation per night (obtainable via visitor survey or data from SA Domestic
Tourism);
5. the average visitor spending on items
other than accommodation (also obtainable from a survey or SA Domestic
tourism);
6. funding or sponsorship received from
outside the host town or city; and
7. earnings derived from tickets sales.
When this data is inputted, the calculator
then provides an overall estimate of the economic impact of the festivals or
events that can be used as part of the monitoring and evaluation process.
Results can be used internally for event planning and management, or as part of
reports to funders and other stakeholders.
“We are extremely proud of the SAFEIC and
the value that it will bring to large and small event and festival organisers
alike. Events are big economic drivers, especially for smaller towns, but we
don’t know the real extent of the value-add.
“It is important to emphasise that the
value of cultural events goes beyond the financial or economic impact of the
event. A complete impact study would also include the unique intrinsic and
social impacts of the event. The Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, also
developed by SACO, provides some guidance on how to measure these non-market values,”
she said.
“What SAFEIC does is to help cultural
festivals to measure the economic impact of the event as well, which can be a
powerful additional argument for their support as part of South Africa’s
creative economy.”
The training video is available on the
South African Cultural Observatory’s YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=aVB9myGDWXM. For more
information on the SAFEIC, visit the online calculator site:
https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.co.za/safeic-intro
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