Challenge 11.7

How can technology increase the positive impact of Scotland’s festivals for the general public, the culture sector, and the economy?

Challenge Sponsor: Scottish Government, Directorate of Culture and External Affairs

Smart Data Foundry

The Impact Explorer unifies data that's never been connected before, revealing festival impact in near real-time. The Explorer ingests, connects and visualises data on:

financial wellbeing
transport accessibility
accommodation pressure
venue capacity.

Users can explore the data via an interactive map, and ask our AI-Agent more complex questions.

This helps festival organisers, tourism policy makers and local authorities to collaboratively monitor, evidence and address the impact of their events with data-informed strategy.

Smart Data Foundry responded to CivTech Challenge 11.7

The Opportunity

Festivals and events generate £4.5bn for the Scottish economy. But with this economic benefit comes systemic challenges; transport networks fail to meet demand, costs exclude participants, workforce capacity is underutilised, and communities lose cohesion.

But to tackle these challenges governments, local authorities and organisers need a cohesive, collaborative data-informed view of how these challenges are manifesting.

Next Steps

By 2027, we will have successfully onboarded and supported the Edinburgh Festivals' 2027 runs as well as rural festivals across Scotland, expanding into the rest of the UK for the 2028 season. By 2029, we will also have extended support to major sporting events.

The Team

Smart Data Foundry, a University of Edinburgh subsidiary, combines rare cross-domain expertise in data science, geospatial analytics, public policy, and product delivery. We have a proven track record building data-led intelligence platforms for the Scottish Government and local authorities across Britain; turning complex data into actionable geographic intelligence that can inform better decisions for communities.