Year of Stories 2022 Evaluation Report

Headline performance against objectives

1. Promotion

Media impact was vast, with 2,760 pieces of coverage reaching people an estimated 5.6 billion times in print and online. Coverage spanned UK, North America, Europe and China, extending our reach to a global audience. In addition to print and online media, YS2022 generated 112 items of broadcast coverage. 

In addition to media reach, our marketing activity and campaigns alone are estimated to have reached people a total of 148 million times across our markets.

There were also over four million video views of YS2022 themed videos. This included promotional videos, community events videos, influencer videos and Chinese WeChat videos.

An ‘always on’ approach adopted for the paid campaigns ensured strong reach and awareness of messaging throughout the year. Our reach was also magnified by activity delivered by YS2022’s many partners.

Scotland's Witch Trail. Credit: VisitScotland / Phil Wilkinson

2. Celebration

Creating a rich and varied events programme is a central aspect of the Themed Year approach. Events animate our places and spaces, provide exciting new hooks for media as well as impetus for participation, engagement, and event-led tourism.

The YS2022 programme provided a strong opportunity for artists and creative talent to create and showcase new work.  A total of 6,620 opportunities were created through funded events for artists to reach new audiences.

There were two events funding programmes and one non-funded ‘partner’ events programme for YS2022. Across the three programmes more than 350 events/event programmes were delivered. Activity took place in all 32 of Scotland’s local authorities, in every calendar month. 

It was clear when scoping YS2022 that the theme provided an especially effective opportunity to reach diverse communities across Scotland. This led to us working in an effective close partnership with Museums Galleries Scotland, with support from National Lottery Heritage Fund and Scottish Government, to create a new Community Stories Programme.

Community Stories Programme

This new programme sat alongside the existing ‘Open’ and ‘Partner’ events programmes. It was developed specifically to support community facing organisations and community groups to take part in the Year. Groups spotlighted the unique stories that mattered to them with the creation of new events, activities, and programming.

An initial budget of £100,000 was maximised more than nine-fold to £928,000 with additional support from partners to meet demand. Funding was awarded to 180 grantees. A ‘wrap-around’ programme of promotional support and skills development was also created. 

An independent report from Wavehill evidences that the programme helped bring communities together. It highlighted Scotland’s diverse voices across a range of storytelling forms. It advanced Intangible Cultural Heritage capture, and created multiple benefits. These included contributing to community wellbeing, skills development, developing new partnerships and opportunities, and creating thriving, resilient communities.

Wigtown Book Festival. Credit: Colin Tennant

BE United Presents: Live at the Fringe. Credit: VisitScotland / Rob McDougall

3. Participation

YS2022 more than met expectations in terms of attendances and participation. More than 1.4 million people attended a funded event either in-person or online.

There were 397,284 in-person and 82,641 digital attendances across the 21 YS2022 Open Fund events. An additional 357,543 in-person and 584,518 digital attendances were seen across the 180 Community Stories Funded events.

For the 153 Partner Events, the total attendance number is difficult to confidently estimate. From those Partner Events that supplied attendance information, the reported range was between 10 people at one event to 57,250 across ten days at another event.

Overall attendance across the full programme was extremely high. Whilst many events exceeded expected attendance, some reported lower than anticipated figures. This particularly applied to those taking place during the early part of the year when COVID-19 was still impacting our daily lives. 

In terms of making participation accessible, many events took action on financial access. This included offering free tickets, operating a ‘pay what you can’ model or providing free transport.

Stories of Nairn. Credit: VisitScotland / Rob McDougall

4. Collaboration

Themed Years provide a proven and powerful platform for partnership working and collaboration across public, private and third sector organisations.

32 organisations were involved in directly shaping and delivering YS2022 through the Steering and Working groups. Hundreds of partners delivered events, campaigns and initiatives inspired by the year.

YS2022 brought together interests across tourism, events, creative industries, culture, heritage and more.

Many of the partners had not previously engaged with a Themed Year before. The addition of their input and knowledge to shape the year was hugely beneficial.

Both new and existing partners have reported benefits from the exchange of knowledge and a widening of networks. This in turn has enhanced the activity delivered as part of the year and provided strong future potential. The full evaluation report provides many examples of effective collaboration.

Credit: Publishing Scotland

5. Industry engagement

There was a loss of a year’s planning and pre-promotion time due to the impacts of COVID-19 and the roll-over of the previous Themed Year into 2021. Despite this, engagement from partners and stakeholders was strong. Hundreds of industry reps engaged with online webinars and launches.

 A core aspect of industry engagement was the creation of a free to use marketing toolkit. This was launched in September 2021 and went on to achieve 11,900 page views (target 10,000). The toolkit contained tips on how to get involved in the year. It included a dedicated image collection on our Digital Media Library and links to useful resources.

442 ‘Supporting Year of Stories 2022’ logos were downloaded from the toolkit.  There were more than 60,000 individual uses of the campaign hashtags (target 50,000). This shows how many organisations used the campaign platform and tools to create their own aligned campaigns.

There were many examples of innovative new product, content and campaigns created by industry inspired by YS2022. For example, Isle of Cumbrae Distillers created a new gin and multiple DMOs created new content and campaigns.

Rosslyn Chapel, Midlothian. Credit: VisitScotland / Kenny Lam