By Pepper Parr
November 9, 2015
BURLINGTON, ON
As a city that hosts three of the top 100 Festival and Events in Ontario city hall wants to improve the way these events are managed.
The Sound of Music and RibFest come close to taking over the city and Canada Day gives everyone to celebrate who we are as a country. The city has been recognized for the excellence of these three events
Festival and events of all sizes take place which leads to connectedness and civic pride. The City directly delivers a small number of events with the majority of events being delivered by the community for the community.
Ribfest Burlington – said to be the biggest in the province.
The City supports festival and event’s organizers because they activate the community, achieving two of the three strategic goals; Vibrant Neighbourhoods and Prosperity. In addition, Festival and Events have been identified as a cultural resource in the City’s Cultural Action Plan 2013 and key to the activations of the Downtown Core Commitments.
The current event process is complex as it touches various departments within the corporation and the Region of Halton. To address these complexities, a staff team was formed, represented by various departments in the organization. In the fall of 2014, the team conducted a Business Process Management Review (BPM) of the Eventing Management Process.
The purpose of the process review was to:
1. Determine and implement process efficiencies
2. Reduce duplication of work
3. Streamline sub processes as necessary in each service area and across the organization
4. Increase role clarity for the staff and event organizer, including internal corporate events like facility openings
5. Increase event organizers satisfaction
The top action item identified through the BPM process was to develop a corporate strategy for event management inclusive of the service perspective of sport, recreation & culture.
The strategy will:
• Provide linkages to existing Service Business Plans
• Set a vision for events in Burlington by determining why we allow events to be hosted in the City and what is the City trying to achieve through event hosting, strategically seeking certain types of events
• Guide the development of a new events process; providing criteria and a process for considering new events and/or eliminating duplicate or less desired events
• Outline the approval requirements and risk assessment process
• Define different event types
• Outline the guiding principles for funding support from the City
A Staff Direction issued earlier in the year directed the
Director of Parks and Recreation to work with the Sound of Music event organizers to develop a policy that addresses city funding allocations and alignment within the strategic plan, in order to inform future budget considerations.
When the Sound of Music is good – it is very very good.
The Sound of Music has wanted the city to increase its grant and align it with the grants it gets from the federal government and the province. There was a point at which Sound of Music did not want to open their accounting records but still wanted an increase in their grant – that got worked out.
The implementation of the Results Based Accountability (RBA) Business Process Management (BPM)and Service Based Budgeting (SBB) that are now standard procedures for the administration has resulted in better managed programs. With specific staff members now responsible for the effective delivery of programs the move to taking a more strategic look at what will be done in the future was a logical next step.
What does the city want to do with the festivals it funds? Are these the right events for the city or have they passed their best before date? Everyone wants to use Spencer Smith Park – is the space being used in such a way that the city and its citizens benefit or are their organizations that use the space with little real benefit to the city and the brand it is in the process of creating?
The development of an event strategy will help guide the community and staff on what the corporation is trying to achieve through events. This visioning exercise is becoming progressively more important as there is increased interest in hosting events in the Downtown Core and in particular at Spencer Smith Park.
Spencer Smith Park has reached its capacity for hosting events. Currently there is a historical approach on what events are hosted in the park. Just because an event has taken place for a number of years does that mean it should continue?
At some point, perhaps in the distant future, there will be a different park to the west of Spencer Smith – it might even have some private homes in it – this might be a good time to talk about the kind of events hat should take place in what will be called the Beachway Park
In addition some business and residents have suggested expressed that the downtown roads have also reached their capacity for event hosting and that there is a need for balance.
There is a desire to expand eventing outside of the downtown core. Currently there is limited infrastructure to support this interest. If expanding eventing is the key outcome of the strategy, it is anticipated there will need to be an investment from the City to make this feasible.
The city has had some difficulty getting events that are focused on Spencer Smith to work their way up Brant Street and into some of the streets to the east that have something of a commercial base.
To initiate the input /engagement phase for the development of an overall Events Strategy, it was decided to use a Committee of the Whole format to allow for dialogue in more of a workshop format on the vision for eventing in Burlington. Pamela Hubbard has been retained to guide committee through a focused conversation on events.
Following Committee’s input facilitated sessions will be conducted with:
• Festival and Events Organizers
• Businesses
• Residents
• Staff
Representation from downtown and city wide will be sought.
Using the information gathered from facilitated sessions, and baseline data gathered through the BPM process, a team comprised of staff from various departments in the corporation will review the feedback and build a vision for events in Burlington.
Culture is getting more play in the city; it is getting m,ore attention in the draft of the Strategic Plan. How can the Culture Days events get tied into the Festivals and Events more tightly – and can the Performing Arts Centre and the Art Gallery be brought in as well?
The team will also outline an action plan to achieve that vision. This draft strategy will be presented to Committee in 2016 for support and endorsement helping to guide the community on eventing in the future.
Included on the staff team is the Downtown Coordinator and the service owner for Culture to ensure that there is interconnection between Core Commitments and the Cultural Action Plan.
Festival and Events bring energy, smiles and enjoyment for residents and visitors and are a large part of the way the city is seen by the rest of the world. Are we satisfied with the image we are projecting?
The development of an event strategy will help guide the community and staff on what the corporation is trying to achieve through events. This visioning exercise is a very good opportunity for the public to make a comment.
A little more notice would have been useful – and holding the discussion in the evening would have let ordinary people take part in the meeting.
A good hard look at what we do with the magnificent waterfront property we have is just good corporate governance – open it up and let some of the ideas the citizens have make it to the table.
The route we are talking allows the vested interests to lead the parade. Not in the long term best interests of the city.
You may not have time to get to the meeting – Councilor Jack Dennison is the chair – he is pretty good at listening to people and is always open to new ideas – send him a note if you have comments.
