Agenda item

Mayflower 400 Wrap Up

Minutes:

Councillor Mark Deacon (Cabinet Member for Customer Services, Culture, Leisure and Sport), Adrian Vinken and Amanda Lumley (Executive Director, Destination Plymouth) presented the report which highlighted the following key areas –

 

(a)

Mayflower 400 project success which included -

 

 

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The Box opened to significant acclaim with 75% of reviews rating it as good or excellent and almost 40,000 tickets sold for the Mayflower 400 Legend and Legacy exhibition;

 

 

 

 

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Illuminate 2019 Plymouth had attracted 50,000 visitors and had reached an online audience of over 400,000 people;

 

 

 

 

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a total of 50 organisations were commissioned through the Mayflower 400 Community Sparks and successfully delivered grassroots activity, engaging over 46,000 people across different communities and geographies of Plymouth;

 

 

 

 

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the Mayflower Autonomous Ship had attracted substantial attention in the media with national and international coverage worth over £105m;

 

 

 

(b)

key insights included -

 

 

 

 

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Mayflower 400 had demonstrated how investing in a cultural programme had numerous benefits for the city, not least Plymouth’s positioning as a hub for cultural investment had supported wider income generation, including £16m for National Portfolio Organisations;

 

 

 

 

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Mayflower 400 had presented an opportunity to not only develop new and diverse partnerships but also to build on existing relationships across a multitude of sectors which had opened up new avenues and possibilities for Plymouth and its cultural offer going forward;

 

 

 

 

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the programme engaged over 400 Mayflower Makers, who dedicated 7,000 hours, worth over £100,000 to supporting events and activities across the partnership;

 

 

 

 

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Mayflower 400 provided Plymouth with an opportunity to change the way it engaged with its own history and its position as a modern city; whilst it took some time for the programme to become fully comfortable in tackling the challenging elements of the Mayflower narrative, the city had now matured and was much more capable of discussing sensitive topics;

 

 

 

(c)

key national visitor project outputs -

 

 

 

 

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a total of 241 travel trade contacts were made during the project period; largely made at key national and international travel trade events;

 

 

 

 

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a key element for the partners involved had been the sharing of best practice, networking and facilitating of conversations and relationships that would not have happened otherwise; partners also had a bid in for further funds to support the development of their Mayflower offer.

 

The Committee –

 

(a)

sought clarification on -

 

 

 

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whether there were any areas of Mayflower 400 that could have been improved upon;

 

 

 

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what measures would be put in place, in order to build upon the success of Mayflower 400; (a city wide programme needed to be put in place which need a dedicated team).

 

A discussion took place with regard to the Look 11 sculpture which had been commissioned as part of the ‘Making It’ inaugural exhibition at The Box. Whilst the sculpture had dividend opinion in the city, as to whether this had been a waste of money, it had also opened up the wider debate on public art. The sculpture had been successful in generating £867,695 of media coverage for Plymouth.

 

The Chair took this opportunity, on behalf of the Committee, to pass on its thanks to Adrian Vinken and the whole team that had been involved with the Mayflower 400 project over a number of years and that had worked tremendously hard to achieve this phenomenal success.

 

 

 

The Committee agreed the following recommendations to –

 

(1)

endorse the evaluation completed by SERIO at the University of Plymouth;

 

 

(2)

note the ‘insight’ learnings included in the evaluation;

 

 

(3)

Write a ‘thank you’ letter to Adrian Vinken and the team for the tremendous work undertaken with Mayflower 400.

 

 

Supporting documents: