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NVA Speed of Light
APPENDIX 3: CASE STUDIES
NVA – SPEED OF LIGHT
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Introduction
NVA’s Speed of Light was a fusion of public art and sporting endeavour, which took place on Edinburgh’s Arthur’s Seat in August 2012. The iconic peak was brought to life in a mass choreographed act of walking and endurance running, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival and the London 2012 Festival. A visual performance unfolded each night on the ascent to the summit as hundreds of runners wearing specially designed light suits took to the intricate path networks. As members of the walking audience, the general public became part of the work, carrying portable light sources set against the dark features of the hill. Each individual performance was created by collective action, landscape and weather, offering a rare perspective on the cityscape, night skies and the sea and hills beyond.
The audience generated their own light through the movement of bespoke walking staffs as they ascended the summit to witness the remarkable moving tableaux below. One of only four national projects commissioned by the Legacy Trust UK’s Community Celebrations programme, Speed of Light aimed to build a lasting legacy from the UK’s hosting of the Games. The project also explored the physical and emotional aspects of endurance running, testing the physical limits of the human body and the extent to which the power of the mind can overcome physical suffering. Speed of Light hosted a series of partner events working with eight of the Edinburgh Festivals in a unique programme collaboration inspired by its themes. The project included 20 performances and offered 120 sessions for education, training or taking part.
Project funding was made up with significant partnership funding with £750,000 from Legacy Trust UK, £280,000 from Creative Scotland, £130,000 from Edinburgh International Festival, £150,000 from the Dunard Fund, £50,000 from EventScotland, £30,000 from the Scottish Government and £5,000 from Paths for All. The project set additional income targets and some of these were achieved and some slightly under expectations: £98,920 from ticket income (adult and concession tickets); £34,042 from runners registration fees; £3,405 from merchandise sales; £6,000 from the Space; £7,000 from LOCOG and Creative Scotland (2012 Festival specific branding); £8,900 from EventScotland / VisitScotland for target TV advertising campaign.
Although NVA’s Speed of Light had ambitious objectives under all six case study headings, the focus here is on its key achievements in quality artistic production; audience participation and development; and legacy and sustainability as these were the key drivers identified by the project and Creative Scotland.
QUALITY ARTISTIC PRODUCTION AND EXPERIENCE
KEY DRIVER: The creation of a significant new artwork for Scotland and the UK whilst providing an innovative and forward looking profile for contemporary public art practice and outdoor events both in a UK and global context.
One of the objectives contained within Scotland’s London 2012-Glasgow 2014 Cultural Plan was to ‘present an inspiring programme of cultural activity that resulted in meaningful cultural experiences’. Though difficult to measure, there are a number of indicators to suggest that Speed of Light exemplified quality artistic production in its Arthur’s Seat spectacular. The inclusion of Speed of Light as part of the Edinburgh International Festival programme and its signature contribution to the London 2012 Festival programme, demonstrates external recognition for the quality of artistic production involved.
Media coverage of Speed of Light was substantial and it secured 72% positive stories and 12% mixed reviews from an analysis of the UK and Scottish press. Speed of Light was mainly discussed (in 40% of articles) from the viewpoint of the quality of the cultural offering, with a high proportion also praising its artistic excellence. Additionally, there is evidence that the relationship with the BBC (including a substantial slot on The Culture Show, a 30 minute Artswork documentary and radio features on the World Service, The Review Show and Late Junction) all cemented the credentials of the artistic output of Speed of Light for both a national and an international audience.
The quality of artistic production as part of Speed of Light can also be gauged by its national and, increasingly international impacts. Since delivering the project in Edinburgh, NVA has formed new international partnerships and delivered new but related projects. For example, members of the Speed of Light team travelled to Japan to present Speed of Light Yokohama: 3 Movements, which was developed with the British Council Japan and ‘Smart Illumination’ – a light festival that celebrates low-energy technology, in particular LEDs. The presentation in Yokohama took place 3rd and 4th November 2012, used 100 local runners and paved the way for a potential further collaboration in 2013. This was the first in a series of presentations through which NVA will collaborate and respond to cultures and environments across the UK and internationally. Talks are currently underway with new partners in Germany, Brazil, England and in Scotland with Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park.
AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION AND DEVELOPMENT
KEY DRIVER – Introduce a large sector of the population to new cultural opportunities which they had not previously experienced leading to long term engagement and to increase the number of people participating in walking and jogging in Scotland.
Another of the objectives contained in Scotland’s London 2012-Glasgow 2014 Cultural Plan was ‘creating new artistic, cultural and creative experiences for Scotland’s diverse communities, encouraging broader and deeper engagement and participation’. A key driver for Speed of Light was its level of engagement with runners and walkers for the project. Just fewer than 4,000 people participated as endurance runners and wheelchair athletes. The level of attrition of runners was quite high, between 18%-48% each night, which led to planning and forecasting difficulties. Despite all communication with the runners suggesting the need for hill training, many were still shocked when they saw the hill. People came from all over Scotland to participate in the event, dedicating training time as well as time to the three weeks of the event itself.
The engagement and sense of commitment between the teams of runners was a highlight and one that was managed by the runners. Through their engagement with a wide range of artists, academics, arts professionals and arts organisations there is evidence of a wide range of positive responses to Speed of Light. As an integral part of the development of the project, NVA devised a programme of events, commissions, and discussions that set out to explore the wider culture of endurance running. A number of these were aimed specifically to engage professionals from the arts and other disciplines in contributing to the discussion around the work and the question of ‘why we run?’ The output of these creative interventions is being made into a book.
Engagement with partners like Historic Scotland allowed the work to be created in response to a unique landscape and allowed for the image of Scotland to be promoted globally, showcasing the artistic, geographical and technological innovations being championed by Scottish creatives at NVA. The company worked with the Edinburgh International Festival and the Science Festival to promote and present science, art and sport as concepts that can be brought together to engage and inspire audiences and participants. NVA now has interest in replicating Speed of Light around the globe and their innovative practice of creating work in the public realm is now well documented.
The collaborations with six of Edinburgh’s key festivals resulted in: 2 artists’ commissions for Katri Walker and Alan Spence; seventeen public events - talks, guided walks, or seminars; sixty schools workshops across Scotland as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival; two publications (The Inner Runner, Sri Chinmoy Centre and Journeys and Evocations: Arthur’s Seat, Luath Press) one interactive installation within EISF In Motion exhibition; and exhibition related to the commission of Katri Walker to be presented in 2013
In terms of audience, over three quarters of the tickets purchased by walkers were purchased from the Edinburgh International Festival website, with just 8% buying their tickets at the Speed of Light base itself. An estimated half a million viewers saw Speed of Light on BBC Artworks and The Culture Show and 143,310 viewed the event online. A real success for engaging audiences and participants of Speed of Light was the use of social media by runners, especially the use of Facebook as a networking tool. Participants were empowered to set up Facebook groups to share information about their training progress and teams and to stay in touch during the event. These were mainly set up as private groups but encouraged bonding between the runners and performers. There were also people ‘checking in’ to the Speed of Light site, sharing their location with their Facebook friends and Twitter followers. 203 people ‘liked’ the location and 494 people on Facebook said that they were actually there. The hashtag #nvasol was used to tag content on Twitter, Flickr and Instagram for people to share their experiences of Speed of Light, which could have been as a runner, walker or viewing from a distance. There was no official Speed of Light Twitter account as NVA already had an active following on Twitter (2187), allowing for wide dissemination to their followers. There were also a number of user-generated videos produced and shared on YouTube, which attracted attention beyond the scope of the event’s promotional materials; indeed some of these were very creative using edited footage, music and collage. From the press content analysis 38% of articles focused on NVA’s capacity to engage audiences and communities with discussion being mainly dominated by it being a mass participation event.
LEGACY AND SUSTAINABILITY
KEY DRIVER –Support to maintain and develop the core staff team, to allow time and continuity in researching and developing plans, related to the underlying themes of Speed of Light and develop further events that bring culture and technology together using low carbon solutions as alternatives to nuclear energy.
Speed of Light has laid the foundations for a sustainable future because it had a high partnership formation. Ten new arts/cultural partners and ten new other partners were reported, compared to an average of 4.6 and 2.17 respectively for the participant cohort in the impact evaluation of Scotland’s London 2012 Cultural Programme. NVA developed a rich partnership base and were enthusiastic in their response about working with partners again, ‘The project provided a fantastic opportunity to work with new partners and enhance existing partnerships. We would certainly consider working with new partners established for this project in any future development of Speed of Light. In 2013 NVA hope to work again with Edinburgh Art Festival in the presentation of work arising from the Katri Walker commission as part of EAF 2013’.
Another of the programme objectives for Scotland’s London 2012-Glasgow 2014 Cultural Plan emphasized the objective to ‘create new contexts, sites and settings for artistic, cultural and creative practitioners to develop and deepen their practice’. The site and the context for Speed of Light was key to demonstrating new light suit technology for visual arts and outdoor events and using low carbon solutions as alternative energy sources. The event hoped to attract participants from throughout the UK, drawing interest from the unusual nature of the light suits and the iconic image of Arthur’s Seat, affirming Scotland’s sense of place. NVA now has available a hugely varied and artistically rich archive of photographic imagery and film which is emblematic of Scotland’s landscape and culture. In attracting runners from the whole of the UK, and internationally, the event garnered interest worldwide. three per cent of the runners were from Europe, Australia and the USA realising the ambition of the project to go beyond Scottish borders. NVA conducted surveys with the runners and walkers after the event to assess the impact and relationship to EIF and London 2012 Festival.
The monitoring that NVA conducted with the walkers afterwards suggested that participating in the event had given over half of them a greater appreciation of Scotland’s landscape and over two thirds of them revealed that they had a greater appreciation of art and culture as a result of participation in the event. Just under a third indicated that the event had increased their enthusiasm for sporting activity. Nearly all of the runners participating in the event said they were a new audience to NVA and the wider cultural sector with over a third of them saying the event had increased their enthusiasm for arts and culture. Over three quarters of the participants were runners prior to taking part in Speed of Light indicating the marketing of the event to established runners was a success.
NVA have managed to maintain their core team with new commissions resulting directly from participating in the London 2012 Festival. However, this is believed to have been from the strong relationship that was developed and tied to the Edinburgh International Festival. The connection to their history, networks and marketing and PR meant that the Speed of Light was marketed and promoted for them as part of a major international festival. The NVA team believes the success of their event would not have been as strong had they not been part of this partnership and had the benefit of their mentoring. From the content analysis of the press this revealed that there was also some discussion on the event’s potential legacy (6%), governance issues (10%) and economic impact (4%).
Learning Legacies
The event targeted new audiences to engage with art and sport both as participants and as spectators (active and passive). The event saw able bodied and wheelchair athletes come together in teams to animate the central path of Arthur’s Seat. Fewer disabled participants took part than had originally been planned but a lack of resources and high targets of ticket sales prevented more effort in this area. Just over 6000 people participated as walkers over the duration of the project though 15,000 were targeted. The strategy had been to recruit the runners first as the project needed them to realise the creative vision. Recruiting the walkers came afterwards and this would be something that would be reviewed in future as this dramatically affected the ticket sales and income associated with that.
Being able to appoint their own media and PR team would also have been useful as they were reliant on the Edinburgh International Festivals team. While, NVA learned a significant amount from this relationship, and secured much greater publicity from being attached to Edinburgh International Festivals, at times it would have been useful to have more control over the timing of key messages about the project. For example, there were two main media press releases; one on the first night of the Speed of Light and one showcasing it as part of the London 2012 Festival and driven by the Festival agenda. The production team would rather have had a ‘drip feed’ approach to the press to stress the ability to buy tickets from the venue on the night rather than from the “the hub” or the EIF office alone. Very few tickets were sold from the venue itself and this is something that they would look at in future.
The artistic team believes that they are now be in a better position to run large outdoor art installations and understand the high levels of attrition that can occur. They had not anticipated this at the time and despite positive surveys with both the walkers and runners afterwards, they would need to take account of potentially high drop-out rates in the future. Equally, a key learning experience for the production team was the importance of the anticipated experience of the runners. Some of the runners had expected it to be a challenging run whilst others were shocked at how difficult it was. The artistic team had anticipated that each team of runners would run at the same speed, meaning many of runners had to slow down to the speed of the slowest runner. This was not well received by some of the runners. Again, the creative and production teams at NVA will use this learning for future events when planning the timings, scale and production of the overall event experience. Overall, the team at NVA feels better placed to run high quality large outdoor art/sport installations aimed at engaging a mass participatory audience.
