Executive Summery
This report looks at and investigates the Public Policies that effect Glasgow’s Merchant City Festival, which is held every year in July/August on the streets of merchant city. The main aims of the event are to create new opportunities for social and cultural interaction, to showcase Scotland’s and other countries local and fresh food produce and to Showcase Scotland’s talents in a family friendly environment. The report outlines the background of public policy and the current policy environment, and then explains how these policies effect the event managers and event stakeholders that would be involved in the planning and organising of an event.
The report looks at the public policies in the different policy domains that are relevant to the Merchant City Festival. and how they have an effect on the planning process. The Festival has many public policies that are relevant for it and in which it has to adhere to, however this report looks at two main Public policies which are; Sustainable Glasgow and The Glasgow City Councils food safety policy. These policies are in line with the initial aims and goals that the Merchant City Festival sets out to achieve, which looks to have a positive impact on the city socially and culturally. As the event takes place outdoors it also has a major responsibility under the suitable Glasgow initiative to look after the environment and try to produce a positive environmental impact through the event, which will positively impact the public’s health and general well-being.
The success of the event will be measured by the impact that it has on the local community socially, the local environment and the culture of the city.
Introduction
This report is going to look the Merchant City festival which takes pace in Glasgow city centre on the streets of Merchant City. The report is going to look into the public policies relevant to the event in which the stakeholders have to obey and adhere to when planning it. The relevant policies are Glasgow City council lead, and are there to ensure that’s events held in Glasgow produce positive impacts on society. The Merchant City festival is a major social and cultural event that takes place in the heart of Glasgow’s city centre. The events usually last over 4 days the last weekend in July, however due to high demand and attendance in recent years, this year the event was extended to a 9 day event period starting on the 24th July to the 2nd of August. The streets of merchant city are each year transformed into an animated scene, with many street stalls which serve different types of street food and offer handmade crafts from all around the world, pop up dining areas to eat the food, a live stage featuring musical performances, street art, street performances and cinema screenings on a giant projection screen. The event and the stakeholders focus largely on the health and safety of the people in attendance and the environmental impact the event has, as the festival takes place outdoors.
Event Development Report
Public Policy
Public policy is far from an easy thing to describe as scholars have many different definitions. This is because public policy has many key attributes, which makes it’s impossible for one definition to be determined and agreed upon. As taken from Getz(2007,p328) he states that “‘Public policy’ consists of a goal-directed process by governments and their agencies, manifested in laws, regulations, decisions (both actions and inaction) and intentions of governments regarding specific problems or general areas of public concern.” Or to put it more simply, Public policy broadly is the actions that the government does or does not do, to address certain issues or problems in society, these could be regarding the public wellbeing, the environment or the economy. These policies can be in the form of laws or regulations that the general public, including events managers, will have to apply by and adhere to, in order for any actions they undertake, to benefit the greater good of the public, this comes under the public good argument and ideology. Getz (2007, p330) states that “The key to this powerful argument is to demonstrate important benefits from events that accrue to society as a whole – or to the economy (which should clearly benefit us all), and to the environment (everyone supports a healthier, safer, more sustainable environment).
Public policy is split into a number different policy domains these include, economic, social, cultural and environmental. Event managers are drastically effected by public policy as they have to ensure that their organised events obey and adhere to all of the policies relevant to their specific event, in order to ensure that the event can take place. These policies can affect events managers in a positive way as they result in positive impacts being produced for society by the events that they organise. However these policies can also act as a hurdle for them and their abilities as they will have to limit or change some of the initial ideas that they have in the planning process of their events. With regards to the Merchant City Festival the event and all of the event stakeholders have to obey and follow the public polices produced by the Glasgow city council, Scottish authorities and the UK national authorities as a whole.
Stakeholders
Stakeholders are all of the individuals or groups of people that help to make events happen, without them the event evidently cannot take place. Stakeholder’s actions ultimately affect and have an effect on the events that they are involved in. Stakeholders all have to work with and support each other by providing information and receiving input from all of the people involved in the event and the planning process. The Festival has a large number of stakeholders who contribute to the event taking place each year.
The Rational-comprehensive’ model is a model that the stakeholders of any events can use as a framework to analyse and undertake a public policy development. It allows them to identify the problem, and determine different approaches and compare them with each other to overcome the problem. The figure below shows how this model work.