Billy Garrett, Director of Sport and Events, Glasgow Life
city had a competency of events provision within its own city council team and although many moved to pastures new when the caravan left town, a core rump, in- cluding Colin Hartley, who became Director of the event, remained in post. From the ground up, an eventual 100-strong team worked to deliver a unique experience that the city can proudly and genuinely claim to be an innovative events concept that delivered 11 days of thrilling and diverse sports such as cycling, triathlon, and aquatics with a rich cultural programme running alongside. Te event – co- hosted with Berlin (which staged the athletics) and co-designed with the federations - was an unqualified success and, for many, has ‘disrupted’ the traditional model of delivering major events. Such disruption had argubaly
been necessitated by a sea change within the context of bidding for major global events; a downward pressure on budgets means cities
“IF THERE’S ONE THING WE WANT TO BE CLEAR ABOUT IN GLASGOW IS THAT THE EVENTS STRATEGY IS POLICY-LED”
Billy Garrett, Director of Sport and Events, Glasgow Life
are increasingly finding it hard to justify bidding for events, which is a costly and time-consuming process, only to risk losing out. Glasgow is no exception in that regard; next year the city faces a £41m spending gap and the ven- ues that its cultural arm Glasgow Life operates are expected to un- dergo a sale-leaseback process - as part of a way of financing an equal
rights pay claim. Tere are clearly no events pots of gold at the end of a rainbow.
BILLY GARRETT, Director of Sport and Events at Glasgow Life, is working within that financial landscape; whilst he insists the ambition to stage major events in the city remains “absolutely unchanged”, he says part of the reasoning for the events “refresh” was to try and pitch Glasgow as a slightly different proposition as an events host, both to its own civic audience and to the international market. Fresh impetus into the global events bidding scene is long overdue, and pragmatic and realis- tic event owners and rights holders have grasped that. One of the key words that will feature promi- nently in Glasgow’s refreshed strategy, which will be launched next month, will be ‘policy’. Gar- rett insists every event the city considers hosting meets the policy objectives of the city council at a
higher level, which means greater social, economic and environmental responsibility at its core. “If there’s one thing we want to
be clear about in Glasgow is that the events strategy is policy-led,” he says. “So, the idea that we are bringing events to the city for the spectacles, just so the circus rolls into town and rolls out, if that was ever the case - and I’m not sure it was - but that certainly isn’t the case now. Working with our partners – EventScotland, VisitScot- land, UK Sport – events in Glasgow will be policy-led and justified, and articulated around policy initiatives and benefits, whether that’s about the health and wellbeing agenda in the city, which is enormous, the tourism and visitor economy, pro- ductivity and economic benefit, and the culture and vibrancy around the city; whatever those existing drivers, it’s about how this event is adding to those, supporting and en- hancing them. Tat will be a clear line coming through the strategy.”
è EVENTSBASE | SPRING 2019 | 21
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