The Edinburgh Cultural Venues Group (ECVG) is a consortium of the city's key publicly funded cultural organisations, which came together in 2013 to maximise the effectiveness, appeal, and reach of Edinburgh's richly diverse year-round cultural offer.
The Group currently includes eight leading organisations – the Filmhouse, Festival City Theatres Trust (the Festival and King’s Theatres), National Museums Scotland, the Queen’s Hall, the Royal Lyceum Theatre, the Traverse Theatre, the Usher Hall, and the National Galleries of Scotland. In addition to delivering their individual programmes of work throughout the year, all these organisations enable an even wider range of activity – working in collaboration with Edinburgh's festivals, arts and heritage organisations, community organisations and schools.
The group aims to present an authoritative collective voice for the city's year round cultural provision, serving residents and visitors with a high quality programme of theatre, dance, exhibitions, music and film. Going forward it also aims to support joint programming and promotions, business efficiencies and skills sharing, and to partner other umbrella initiatives (including Festivals Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group, Desire Lines and Culture Counts) in championing the importance of the cultural sector in maintaining Edinburgh’s overall success and prosperity.
Today ECVG announces the findings of an Impact Study funded by Scottish Enterprise into the social and economic impact of Edinburgh’s larger, year-round cultural providers.
The Study documents the collective social and economic benefits of these organisations for the first time. It outlines the scale of participation in educational activity at the venues, as well as their impact on employment and talent development, and their wider commercial value to business suppliers and the tourism and hospitality sectors.
The Study highlights that participating venues deliver:
*5,000 FTE jobs and £194 million Gross Value Added (GVA) in Scotland as a whole - of which over 3,200 FTE jobs and £156 million GVA specifically benefits the Edinburgh economy
*6.2 million visits to the arts venues collectively
*1,600 events and productions - with over 6,100 individual performances
*almost 150 collaborations with co-producers and event partners
*and brings an additional £129 million spent by venue visitors to the wider Edinburgh economy
In terms of return on investment, for every £1 invested by the City of Edinburgh Council, the Scottish Government and Creative Scotland the group generated £4.62 for the Scottish economy and a total of £194m of economic benefit.
The study also illustrates how investment in the arts delivers wider curriculum benefits, helps to create the artists of tomorrow and builds future audiences for the arts. Participation figures across ECVG show high levels of engagement with schools as well as with young learners outside school, and with adult learners:
Acting Chair of ECVG, Duncan Hendry, said: “…This study highlights the wide range of activities that Edinburgh’s cultural venues undertake throughout the year and the tremendous benefits, both cultural and economic, that this brings to the City and to Scotland.”