Assessment A – Individual Report: Additional guidelines
You are being asked to compile a 2500 word (+/- 10%) report, which critically analyses the impacts and legacies of a festival or a planned special event, and debates relevant academic and industry frameworks for assessing, monitoring, reporting and managing the event’s sustainability.
Choosing the event
It is very important that you choose to analyse an event for which you can either get some secondary data (existing impact/legacy assessment reports, government papers or academic research) or can collect primary data yourself. It is advisable to focus on a UK-based event, as any economic data can be viewed in the context of UK’s economy, for which you can presumably get enough information. A number of secondary information sources have been provided for you for three different event cases – feel free to use these in your report (make sure you reference them properly). You are, of course, welcome to find your own example and focus on this in your report. However, if that is the case, please let me know and speak to me beforehand to ensure that there is enough publicly available information about the event’s impacts and legacies (i.e. information about methodology and evaluation frameworks used) for you to draw on in your report.
Report contents
Crucially, you will need to draw on academic research (textbooks and journal articles) and other sources (news items and event reports) in your analysis of relevant impacts and legacies of your chosen event. You may find that some impacts are more prominent in the materials you find than other. It is completely fine to just focus on one type of impacts but then you will need to discuss this in enough depth in the first part of the report (define the impact, explain how it is measured and then present relevant findings relating to this impact in the context of your event), you may want to discuss more than one impact and legacy of the event, in which case you will need to limit the amount of detail you provide and instead focus on breadth of information. You will be limited by the work count to some extent but remember, additional (non-essential) information can be placed in the appendix.
You will then debate and critique these impacts and legacies in the context of relevant academic and industry frameworks used to assess, monitor, manage and/or report on the event’s sustainability. These will be the frameworks that event managers can use to ensure long-term sustainability and positive legacies from your chosen event. The “Benchmarking, reporting and communicating sustainability” lecture will point you in the direction of some of these frameworks: The TBL reporting framework, the GRI reporting framework, the various Environmental Management Systems and guidelines such as those presented in the ISO20121 sources. You can also find various theoretical/conceptual frameworks in the academic literature; for example Raj & Musgrave’s (2009, pp. 9-10) ‘Conceptual framework for sustainable event management’. You are obviously required to do your research and additional reading, with the lecture materials serving merely as a starting point for your research.
Please review carefully the assessment criteria and the assessment marking matrix, available in your Module Guide.
Suggested Report Structure
Please note that the headings presented here are simply illustrate what you should do within each section. You will use headings appropriate in the context of your report. No Executive Summary needed.
o Cover sheet/ Title page (download from the Moodle page)
o Contents page – insert a table of contents including page numbers
o 1. Introduction – this should outline what the report will cover and also provide some background information on the event, in order to justify why it is important to focus on relevant impacts and legacies in the context of this event.
o 2. Main body (use an appropriate heading, such as ‘Event XX Sustainability Analysis’) – this is where you critically discuss the theory around the relevant impact and legacies and link these to sustainability principles. Note that you do not have to focus on ALL of the event’s impacts and legacies. Instead, choose one or two that are most relevant and discuss these in plenty of depth. You may also want to explain how legacy outcomes link to various impacts, and discuss the involvement of various stakeholders in legacy planning. You will apply this knowledge in the context of your specific event, and evaluate, with the help or relevant academic and industry sustainability assessment/monitoring/reporting/management frameworks, to what extent relevant stakeholders ensure the long-term sustainability of the event.
• 2.1 Relevant impacts and legacies overview – definitions, main features and the importance of each impact/ legacy type and how it can be measured,
• 2.2 Analysis/ application of impacts/ legacies of YOUR event – critical analysis of relevant impacts and legacies in the context of your event. You will need a lot or secondary (or where relevant, primary) data and information to be able to analyse your event in depth. You should be linking your research back to relevant academic literature.
• 2.3 Sustainability evaluation of the event based on your research – overview and evaluation of appropriate academic or industry frameworks (i.e. sets of guidelines, schemes, models) suitable for the assessment, monitoring, reporting or managing sustainability. Debate how these frameworks are used/or not by relevant stakeholders (e.g. event organisers or policy makers) to achieve sustainability outcomes for the local community and/or destination. Note that relevant frameworks will depend on your event and type of impacts/legacies discussed. For instance, if you are writing about social impacts of a particular event, then you should seek to discuss frameworks that can be used to ensure an event has a positive sustainable social impact on the community. Or you may want to evaluate a specific impact report against guidelines set out in the GRI reporting framework, or evaluate economic impacts against Chalip’s (2004) model for economic leveraging of events.
o 3. Conclusion – this section is where you will draw your ideas together, reiterate the main points and if relevant, make innovative, original and realistic recommendations that build on the findings in your report.
• 3.1 Summary of findings
• 3.2 Recommendations – suggested ways of ensuring long-term sustainability and positive legacies from your event or festival.
o Reference List – this is a level 10 module and so it is expected that you will draw on a reasonable number of academic references and other credible sources of information (i.e. at least 10). Use Napier APA style referencing and do not reference lecture slides (reference the original source).
o Appendices – any additional/ supporting material that expands on or illustrates the material presented in the main section but is not essential to the reading of the report. Ensure that any material included in the appendix is referred to in the main body of your report.
Report Format
A report is a systematic, well organised document which defines and analyses a subject or problem. It is important that you follow the general report writing conventions, to produce a clear and logical piece of work (remember, Presentation accounts for 10% of your mark).
A report:
o Presents information
o Uses numbered headings and sub-headings (each main section – heading 1 – should start on a new page)
o Uses short, concise paragraphs and dot-points where applicable
o Uses tables of figures to present information clearly
Make sure pages are numbered, include the cover sheet (available on Moodle), a table of contents with headings and page numbers. An Executive Summary is NOT required for this assessment.
General report writing tips:
o Keep it simple – Accurate, concise, clear
Do not try to impress; rather, try to communicate. Keep the sentences short and to the point. Do not go into a lot of detail unless it is needed. Make sure every word needs to be there, that it contributes to the purpose of the report.
o Use academic English – Formal language (avoid contractions: “don’t”, “it’s”, “can’t”, avoid colloquial words); Written in the third person (“this report will address…”)
Use an active voice rather than passive. Active voice makes the writing move smoothly and easily. It also uses fewer words than the passive voice and gives impact to the writing by emphasizing the person or thing responsible for an action.
Submission
Please submit the finished report online (in PDF or Word format) using the Turnitin link provided on Moodle. You do not need to hand in a physical copy. Note that late submissions will be recorded on the system and any unjustified late submissions will be penalised in accordance with the University Regulations.
Your work must be submitted with an appropriate cover sheet (available on Moodle), which details the module name and number, the assignment title and your matriculation number. You are advised to keep your own copy of the work.