Big events boosted city’s economy by more than £36m in 2017

A special report into Liverpool’s 2017 cultural programme has revealed it attracted more than one million visitors to the city and boosted the local economy by a whopping £36.4m.

An end of year report will be presented to the city council’s culture and tourism select committee in January, and analyses the work of the city council’s Culture Liverpool department which is responsible for staging events, along with the operation of St George’s Hall, the Town Hall, Liverpool Cruise Terminal and Liverpool Film Office.

The events alone generated £18.2m, and the report found the key event highlights for 2017 were:

Sgt Pepper at 50

A festival which resulted in 13 new commissions influenced by each track on the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.

In total, 140,000 attended the 13 events, 7,371 people participated in the project and the economic impact of the project was nearly £781,000.

Armed Forces Day/Mersey River Festival

More than 320,000 people attended the joint National Armed Forces Day celebrations and the annual Mersey River Festival. Liverpool was the national focus for the celebrations and the Saturday consisted of parades, fly-pasts, demonstrations and naval vessels which were open to the public – the Iron Duke alone attracted 5,000 visitors.

The weekend brought in around £7.7m to the city, and £360,000 to Wirral.

Liverpool International Music Festival (LIMF)

Some 100,000 music lovers descended on Sefton Park to enjoy the Summer Jam element of the festival whish saw more than 350 performances across the main stage, itsLiverpool stage and the Academy stage.

Acts included Gorgan City, Naughty Boy, Cast, Corinne Bailey Rae as well as a world premiere of Garage Classical which saw a 45-piece orchestra perform garage hits with original vocalists.

A new VIP area generated 1,100 ticket sales and the overall economic impact of Summer Jam was £1.15m.

Clipper Around the World Race Start

Drawing crowds of around 220,000, this week-long event in August brought in £7.5m to the local economy as 12 clipper vessels took over the Albert Dock.

River Of Light

The firework spectacular returned to both sides of the Mersey on November 5. Pre-show entertainment ensured the 110,000-strong crowd (in both Liverpool and Wirral) were more than ready to see the main show created by one of the UK’s most successful firework companies – Titanium Fireworks. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and the economic impact for both sides of the River was more than £1.5m.

Remembrance Sunday

This years’ service attracted around 17,000 to the area around St George’s Hall cenotaph. As the event focused on Passchendaele and the role of horses in the First World War, the National Theatre allowed ‘Joey’ – the main puppet from the production ‘War Horse’ – to be part of the ceremony. National coverage was secured and more than 100,000 people were reached on both Twitter and Facebook.

Assistant Mayor and cabinet member for culture, tourism and events, Cllr Wendy Simon, said: “This has been a stellar year for culture in the city and I’m hugely proud of the quality and diversity of the 2017 offer.

“Sometimes it can be easy to take for granted the incredible events which take place, some of them for free, on our doorsteps. You’d be hard pushed to find many other cities in the UK, or even Europe, who annually invest in this sector and ensure that people of all ages can access and experience the arts in some form.

“It has been one of our busiest years since 2008 and I know some of the events will live-long in thousands of people’s memories – whether it was the incredible firework spectacular at Camp Hill as part of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, seeing those beautiful Clipper vessels line the Mersey or standing in the beautiful surroundings of Sefton Park singing along to some of the best live music around.”