Gemma Thomas, Director of Appetite, the creative community arts programme in Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme, looks at how their programme of events is benefitting business by attracting footfall and spending, and how organisations can volunteer to take part.
“On Friday 25 and Saturday 26 August, Appetite’s The Big Feast is back in Stoke-on-Trent City Centre (Hanley) in partnership with Stoke-on-Trent City Centre BID and Stoke-on-Trent City Council.
2023 is our 9th event! This annual event has offered people the chance to see their city streets brought to life with free, awe-inspiring performances from a whole host of sensational artists. This year you can feast upon a performance about tea; a scratch and sniff performance about smell and memory; an engineered hour-glass contraption for dance-circus artists and see home-grown talent across the Fountain Square and Piccadilly Stages.
Appetite is led by the New Vic Theatre, in partnership with Partners in Creative Learning, 6Towns Radio, Staffordshire University, Newcastle Business Improvement District (BID), Go Kidsgrove and Keele University, and works closely with Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Newcastle Borough Council, Staffordshire County Council and Aspire Housing. Funded through National Lottery by Arts Council England, we’ve worked with residents, community organisations and all sorts of interesting partners in Stoke since 2013, officially expanding our work into Newcastle-under-Lyme in 2019.
Appetite aims to get more people in our area to experience and be inspired by arts and culture. And we invite local people to decide what’s in our programme alongside our team, as part of the Appetite Supper Club. The Big Feast is our longest running example of this – everything you see on the streets on Friday 25 and Saturday 26 August has been handpicked by people who live or work in the city, and absolutely love Stoke-on-Trent!
We’re working in the City Centre (Hanley) with Stoke-on-Trent City Centre BID team (formally with the City Centre Partnership), to bring people into the city centre and help them see these streets afresh. The Big Feast is a chance for people and businesses in the city to imagine together how a place can be refreshed and reinvented. Recently I heard Joseph Rowntree Foundation talk about the fact we’re in a poly-crisis (the simultaneous occurrence of catastrophic events) and one of those is a crisis of imagination and by feeding our imaginations, that could be one of the ways to emerge from where we are.
Imagination is exactly what we all need right now, whether it’s about creative problem-solving within your business, or to come up with new ideas for what the future of a city looks like. A spark of imagination can start by seeing something extraordinary on your doorstep.
So, what benefit do things like The Big Feast have for our town centres, parks, tow paths or streets they take place in?
Well, for many years now Appetite have been measuring the impact of our events, and we know they support the changing perceptions of place and support the development of local pride. Last year, The Big Feast attracted 10,880 people to Hanley over the two days, with audiences spanning all ages, backgrounds, and make up – from groups of friends enjoying a day out, to families of all sizes attending together.
- 65%* of people interviewed gave a ‘positive’ or ‘very positive’ perception of the area due to the event.
- 66%* of the audience said they specifically came to the city centre to experience the event.
People spend more too; last year people reported in our surveys to have spent an average of £15.45 on food, drink and shopping during their visit, with mean spend within the event being £20.92, which includes travel, and accommodation.
We also spend directly with businesses in our area; commissioning local businesses to support with accommodation, catering and transport for our artists, volunteers and audiences.
We operate hosted visits with people we’d love to see at our events, or with groups who’d like to attend but need additional support to get there. This is where they have a host from our team who assists and supports them with on their visit, touring the group around the streets and tackling any barriers they may face to attending.
In Newcastle Town Centre with our Appetite partners The Philip Astley Project, Newcastle BID and Newcastle Borough Council, Astley’s Homecoming brought new investment into the area from Arts Council England. For this event we attracted, approx. 9,000** people to the event with 1,795 being new visitors to the area that day. This was a 7.6% increase on footfall from the previous week. All working towards creating tangible outcomes for businesses and the town centre on the day and for the long term.
Appetite events can kickstart new use or users of an area. A recent event we staged in Kidsgrove, with our partners Canal & River Trust and GoKidsgrove, reimagined this place. The canal is on the doorstep of residents in a unique intersection with the railway station and the town centre. Many of the attenders were people who live in the area but don’t use the historic green and blue (or orange) space right in the heart of the town and community. 33% of attenders said it was their first time and 33% said they would use that space more often.
We believe that by working with artists, with the arts and cultural sector, and with people from the local area, holistic, collaborative or complementary solutions and ideas can be thought up and established to support the flourishing of places and spaces within our area.
Interested in supporting? Here’s how can you help:
- Share the cultural events happening in our city with your employees, business partners, suppliers and customers. Share the love for Appetite led events, but also for the other arts activity happening all across our local area (Sign up to our Appetite newsletter to keep up to date with what’s going on!)
- Attend events and tell us what you think, we love knowing what you liked and what we can do differently.
- If you can offer financial support, make a donation towards our activities and events or fund a specific hosted visit with a community close to your heart.
- Become a partner or sponsor for the events or projects you’d like to play your part in – contact us at [email protected]
- Volunteer! Our volunteers are an invaluable part of our team and we can offer individual opportunities as well as opportunities for corporate volunteering too.
Join me and the team at The Big Feast 2023 on Friday 25 & Saturday 26 August and see for yourself the difference that the arts can make to a place! Go to https://appetite.org.uk/whats-on/ for full details including line-ups and a digital brochure.”
*Results from the 2022 Audience Survey for The Big Feast
**Footfall counters used to take attendance numbers
