1. Context
Midsumma is Victoria’s annual LGBTIQA+ arts and culture festival, drawing over 250,000 attendees. In 2018, the board and executive team engaged an impact consultancy to benchmark cost structures, outputs, and economic value with those of similar festivals. This initiative aimed to strengthen funding strategy and advocacy across diverse revenue streams, including earned income, sponsorship, philanthropy, and government grants, emphasising the festival’s resilience and the value of varied support sources.
2. Observations
Capital: This case highlights a sector with thin margins and high sensitivity to changes in public and philanthropic funding. Organisations often need to commission tailored studies to demonstrate legitimacy and secure funding. For Midsumma, benchmarking and economic value analysis improved grant writing, partner engagement, and provided a unified narrative for multiple funders.
Measurement: Arts and culture are typically evaluated using activity or audience metrics, such as visitor numbers and economic impact through tourism, job creation, and local spending. In contrast, inclusion and wellbeing funders require evidence of social outcomes, such as community cohesion and improved mental health. This reveals a shared evidence and narrative gap, especially for organisations like Midsumma that operate across multiple outcome areas, including arts, culture, disability, and LGBTQIA+ communities.
Governance and Scalability: This raises structural questions about measurement governance and the infrastructure that supports it. Who defines shared standards? How can these standards be aligned across arts, inclusion, and wellbeing frameworks? How can reporting burdens be reduced across jurisdictions? Establishing shared standards can foster trust and a sense of collective responsibility among stakeholders.
3. Research Considerations
The case reveals an evidence infrastructure gap that requires a workaround at the festival level. This bespoke effort takes resources away from delivering public value. This raises key coordination questions:
- Which institutions should steward shared metrics and updates?
- How should the costs of common data infrastructure be shared among funders and festivals?
- What is the minimum viable metric set that preserves credibility while enabling scalability?
