AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 113

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Carl von Clausewitz
(1780-1831). Though
Clausewitz’s Vom Kriege
‘seemed outdated’ to a
young Bob Dylan, the
older singer has since
written of Clausewitz as
a prophet, from whom
one could ‘understand a
lot about conventional life
and the pressures’ (Dylan,
Chronicles, Volume One,
2004, p45)
In 2030 councils won’t just respond quickly and sympathetically to
applications for event licenses. Events will be too critical for that.
Councils will have a whole and forward-looking policy on events.
In Glasgow, City Council Leader Susan Aitken has already done
much here, opening her own talks with events leaders and fostering a
climate in which the City of Glasgow Licensing Board has proposed a
pilot scheme in which local nightclubs can stay open till 4am.
For councils, being proactive like this is the way ahead. Yet as Aitken
observes, a strategy for events is also essential. For when a council
licenses and helps a particular event, it adopts a tactic. However, if
they’re to prepare properly for 2030, Britain’s local authorities will
now need a coherent strategy with regard to events, plural.
Nowadays, of course, everyone in business claims to be ‘strategic’;
nobody boasts about being just tactical. Yet that skewed vision only
underlines just how clear councils need to be, when thinking about
events, about the difference between strategy and tactics.
For Clausewitz, the historic theorist of war, tactics were the use of
force in a particular engagement; strategy, the use of engagements for
the object of the war (On war [1832], Oxford University Press edition,
2007, p74). Of course, events aren’t war – even if, very occasionally,
licensing processes can be a bit warlike. Yet just as Clausewitz is still
relevant to defence matters today, so councils can still learn from him.
Strategy is harder to theorise, and more testing of the will, than
tactics. Moreover, strategy involves the selection of engagements, and
assigning an aim to each – all in the higher purpose of winning a longer-term goal.
In this light, the need is for councils to:
1. Discriminate between different events, and help each event
in content, organisation, technology and control
2. Give that help in ways which contribute to wider objectives.
What then should event strategy consist of? Each council differs from
from the next. However, good event strategy shouldn’t just cover the
next electoral cycle, but rather the whole period till 2030.
One starting point for event strategy lies in the World Bank’s
web pages on urban regeneration. The pages contain a World Bank
decision tool for urban regeneration, and a brief guide on how, within
that process, to draw up a master plan for any particular site.
Of course, regeneration around a single site isn’t the same thing
as a strategy for a series of events in different locations. Yet since the
World Bank’s master plans are meant to guide future growth and
development and concern ‘the connection between buildings, social
settings, and their surrounding environments’, local authority event
strategy can properly begin from them – even if, obviously, it will need
to adjust them to the world of events, as well as to local conditions.
From this start, in its event strategy for 2030, the progressive
council will, first, tap the creativity of its citizens, and of all its
departments – including that charged with economic development.
It is in the nature of events to involve many considerations.
Learning about all these, from every quarter, isn’t a chore, but a
chance to synthesise a compelling narrative around events.