Since the closure of the Art Gallery and the Music Hall, Aberdeen has had to find new, and perhaps unusual, ways to display art to the public over the last few years.
As part of the city centre masterplan partners agreed to provide the region with an event, big or small, 365 days of the year bringing the likes of NuArt, Spectra and Look Again to our streets.
But what impact has this had on our businesses and the city centre economy?
I sat down for lunch this month at the recently reopened Silver Darling restaurant with three people who know all too well the effect the festivals have on helping Aberdeen thrive.
Council Leader Jenny Laing joined me along with Duncan Cockburn, chairman of Culture Aberdeen, and Elaine Farquharson-Black, partner at law firm Burness Paull who sponsored NuArt.
As part of the firm’s commitment to the festival they also provided the side of their office building, Union Plaza, for this year’s signature piece.
Mrs Farquharson-Black said one of the reasons Burness Paull has invested in NuArt so heavily is so they can help the city become a more exciting and vibrant place to live, which she hopes will ultimately help the business attract new talent.
She said: “From a business point of view it’s about differentiating the city. All businesses have to try to attract employees. As a city you are trying to attract the businesses but as a business we are trying to attract the people.
“Aberdeen is a great place but having an extensive cultural offering helps to persuade them there is more to the city than oil and gas and that there is something to do every night of the week or there is something new round the corner.”
Mrs Laing agreed and said she felt the region was historically not good at shouting about how good it is.
She said: “We are too quiet. It is not just about creating a place for people to come and visit for a few days it’s about creating a place where people want to come and live and work. In the north-east we don’t like to shout about things very often here and usually we are very understated when we talk about things but words like fabulous, fantastic and wonderful were being used quite frequently when I heard people talking about NuArt. We need to start talking ourselves up.”
Now in its second year in Aberdeen the street art festival has drawn in audiences from across the globe with two paintings being listed as being in the top 10 pieces in the world.
Mrs Laing added: “It was a risk, there’s no getting away form the fact that Aberdeen Inspired had a few questions about whether it was the right fit for Aberdeen at the time.
“For us as a council it was quite a significant investment and it’s something that hadn’t been seen out of Norway before but we could see the enthusiasm in those who had been working with the NuArt team to try to persuade them to come and we realised it was something that had to be discussed further.
“I think the first year we were blown away by the impact it had and the response from the public. Others have seen that and that’s how they develop. No one would have ever expected Union Plaza to have one on it but this year we had people coming forward and asking us how do we get our wall involved because you can see the movement and the footfall around the city centre.
The council leader said the drive to provide a diverse range of festivals was to ensure enough was being done to diversify the economy.
She said: “It grew up from the city centre master plan we realised we needed to diversify the economy in Aberdeen. We had been looking at it prior to the downturn in oil and gas but we wanted to look at other areas of strengths.
“Tourism is one we probably haven’t exploited to the degree that we should have given the natural beauty that surrounds us. The Union Terrace Gardens aspect, we had obviously rejected the project but we wanted to create something in the city centre that would encourage regeneration and I think that’s why it’s been so successful.
“Part of the input from the public was that they wanted to see a more pedestrian friendly city centre in affect so that people would move about more freely but they wanted to see more events and festivals within the city itself. Not just for the visitors but local people as well.”
Mrs Laing added: “It is vitally important that we get that link with business. What we don’t want to do is spend a lot of money on festivals and not get a lot of return from it. That’s why it is important that the chamber is involved, Aberdeen Inspired are involved and the business community as a whole. If we have that footfall coming to the city how do we maximise the return for the economy.”
Mr Cockburn, who is involved in the running of the Look Again festival and who sits on the board of Aberdeen Performing Arts, said: “I think there are two dimensions to this. Footfall is one there is no doubt about that. And one is making Aberdeen a more attractive and vibrant place for people to live. If you look at footfall statistics that Aberdeen Inspired publish on a monthly basis there is a distinct correlation between the number of weekends where the largest number of people are present in the city and the festivals that are on. If you look at Look Again, held in April last year, that was the largest weekend of footfall that year. So yes that’s a key element.
“The other thing about festivals is it helps put Aberdeen on a map. We now have the highest quality and highest range of festivals that Aberdeen has ever had. Over the last few years both the Music Hall and the Art Gallery have been shut so we have had to rethink how we display contemporary art and as a result we have more art outdoors in the city centre than we have ever had before.
If you look at the Glasgow International festival for art. It’s footfall and public engagement is much smaller than the public engagement from Spectra, NuArt or Look Again. And there is a reason for that and it goes back to what we are trying to celebrate and encourage with those festivals. I wouldn’t say there was anything in the Glasgow festivals that wasn’t of the quality that we have in Aberdeen given that two of the NuArt pieces were named as two of the best in the world.”
