RESEARCH ON RESEARCH PROJECT
MAKING RESEARCH ACCESSIBLE
reports, academic research and theses, expert articles and magazine features, white papers, books, and other materials.
Tony Rogers Managing Director Tony Rogers Conference & Event Services
What is the value of the UK events industry? How many conferences and business events take place in the UK each year? Which are the key growth sectors within events? Which are the leading UK festivals? How much do delegates typically spend?
These are just a few of the many questions asked on a daily basis by those working in the events industry and by students preparing for a career in the sector. But where can the answers and information be found? And what are the gaps in the existing provision of research data? What do we know about the events industry at this point in time and what do we want or need to know about our industry in the future?
In order to provide a centralised library or register of events sector research and intelligence, BVEP initiated a unique project in Autumn 2015, to be undertaken jointly by Glenn Bowdin of Leeds Beckett University and Tony Rogers Conference & Event Services. The project seeks to catalogue all publicly accessible industry and academic research and related resources and make them available as a searchable database via the BVEP website. It covers industry research
By June 2016 over 250 discrete items had been added to the database, with each item including: title, author( s), year of publication, short description of content, keywords, web address or other access details, and cost to purchase or free of charge. Items cover all sectors of the events industry including business events, sporting events, cultural events, musical events and festivals. While much of the listed material has a specific UK remit, other items with a more international focus have been included where these are relevant to UK events businesses. Further items are still to be added and a mechanism needs to be established to ensure that new research items continue to be added to the database as these are published.
The next steps are for the research and resources register to be uploaded to the BVEP website and then made available and promoted as a searchable tool for events professionals, academics and students to use. BVEP’ s Research Group, chaired by John Gallery, will also be using the register to identify gaps in existing research and thus the priorities for new research activity and potential funding sources for these.
The continuing challenge for all industry research is that we are always reliant on people taking part in interviews, surveys and other forms of research so that, collectively, we have a more robust set of data and deeper insights into the characteristics and trends of the events sector, enabling us to move forward from what is happening( descriptive facts and stats) to why things happen and what we can learn from this.
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