ORGANISERS of the Scottish leg of the UK wide Unboxed festival have told auditors that more than 1.2 million people engaged with the project during its six-month run.
However, The Herald understands those figures include viewers of
the BBC’s Beechgrove gardening programme.
Dandelion, launched in spring 2022, and described as a “reimagining harvest for the 21st century” was an £8 million “creative celebration of growing, music and community.”
While the money came from the UK Government it was run by EventScotland, a Scottish Government agency.
Its reach was impressive, with 1,056 events in 556 locations.
According to a report, published by the National Audit Office on Thursday, they had an audience of 1,210,000, far more than the 740,000 predicted in the organiser’s key performance indicators.
Of those, 28 per cent, 336,927, attended live events while the other 72%, 869,960, engaged with “digital/broadcast”.
This included “specially commissioned digital short films marking the start of its programme, inspired by an experiment in off-grid sustainable living in the Outer Hebrides” and a series of “special broadcasts” on Glasgow radio station Sunny Govan.
These figures also include viewers of BBC Scotland’s Beechgrove.
Dandelion featured twice on the programme, with both episodes being initially broadcast on the BBC Scotland channel before being repeated at a later date across the UK on BBC2.
In its report, the NAO said the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) had “overstated” the financial benefit of the UK wide £120m festival, nicknamed the Festival of Brexit soon after it was launched by Theresa May.
DCMS modelled levels of public engagement across the UK and estimated 23m people would take part. Their worst-case scenario was just 8m, while their best-case scenario was 64m.
In the end, 18.1m engaged.
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