Brian Rudman: Are our events strategists blind? What about the arts festival!

The events report calls for 'fresh thinking' in creating an events strategy that makes Auckland 'a highly desirable place to live and work.' Photo / Brett Phibbs

You have to wonder where the authors of Auckland Council's "Major Events Strategy" were lurking in March while the rest of us were "exploring new worlds" at Auckland Arts Festival 2011. My guess is they were locked inside a conference hall studying new ways to reinvent a wheel.

How else to explain a masterplan to develop Auckland as a global events destination without one mention of the burgeoning, 10-year-old arts festival.

Indeed, the authors put the boot in by not just ignoring the festival, but also concluding that the "two notable holes in Auckland's [major social events] programme relative to other cities are a gay and lesbian festival and a music festival".

Putting to one side the missing gay festival, one of the core features of the Auckland Festival is its music programme, this year featuring, among others things, the baroque orchestra Lautten Compagney from Germany, Handel's Opera, Xerxes, a night of new music from local composer John Psathas with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and Canadian singer Martha Wainwright in concert.

But the Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development bureaucrats obviously missed all this excitement, deciding Auckland has only four economic "anchor events" - NZ Fashion Week, the Auckland Marathon, International Boat Show and international tennis tournaments - with two social "anchor events", the Pasifika and lantern festivals.

Anchor events are "the social and economic pillars of a city's event portfolio". They are typically large and regular. Social anchors generate "significant social capital" while economic anchors are "events that attract new money into the economy".

Arts Festival organisers are still tallying up the figures from the latest event, but early indications suggest the festival could fit into either - or both - the above categories. Particularly if it were to blend even more fully than it does, with the community-driven, Pasifika Festival.

The aim of the events report is to drive the region and country's economic growth by making Auckland a global events destination.

Major events will, we're told, be a "key enabler" in the social and cultural development of Auckland and in its transformation into "the world's most liveable city". But somehow, I don't really see any of the above four economic anchors triggering that sort of renaissance.

On the other hand, getting behind the Auckland Arts Festival would. On this, Mayor Len Brown seems to agree. In his foreword to the Festival 2011 programme two months ago, Mr Brown welcomed us to "our region's biggest celebration of arts and culture, and a vital ingredient in making Auckland one of the world's most interesting, engaging and liveable cities".

He said it "is part of our drive to make Auckland an 'events city' that is both inviting and exciting for its residents and guests".

How odd that he's now launched a "Auckland's Major Events Strategy" document that ignores this signature celebration of the arts.

Even by the events group's own criteria, there's a case for the festival qualifying as both a social and an economic anchor event. As a social anchor, it has to be distinctively Auckland, be regular and have mass appeal involving at least 200,000 participants and spectators. With a mix of both local and international performers and shows, it fits the Auckland cap.

As for crowd size, the 2011 figures are not yet out, but the first four festivals attracted a total of 880,000 participants.

The festival organisers don't have the spare cash to spend on economic benefit analyses, so it's anyone's guess whether it generates the benchmark "immediate return on regional investment of at least $5 million". But its budget this year of $8.75 million - the largest so far - illustrates its prominent and growing role in making this a liveable, events-rich, city.

The report calls for "fresh thinking" in creating an events strategy that makes Auckland "a highly desirable place to live and work", but then rehashes a list of upcoming one-off sporting world championships, an expensive frock show, and the Pasifika and lantern festivals. For something new, it pines for a gay and lesbian festival.

Of them all, only Pasifika stands out as distinctively Auckland. That and the arts festival.

If I were to select one anchor event to both sell Auckland and make it more liveable, it would be to blend the two events into a truly unique, only-in-Auckland, South Pacific Arts Festival.