Living Lab’s first economic model was for the Singapore Grand Prix in 2012. In 2025 we became a software platform: government-grade intelligence for the visitor economy
Festival economic impact assessment. Living Lab connects box-office, participation, spend, sentiment, and sustainability data on one timeline, and reports the cultural and public-value indicators on their own terms rather than forcing them into a pound figure that does not fit them. Reference data is published by UNESCO.
Attributes what a completed edition delivered: economic value net of displacement and deadweight, beside participation, commissioning share, and community sentiment reported as their own measures. Carbon, waste, and community impact tracked on the same cycle, so the sustainability report and the funding case draw on one dataset. The attributable figure drops straight into the funder’s template. The rest of the case comes with it.
Forecasts visitor flow and capacity pressure ahead of a venue or programme change, so a new site or an expanded headline strand is tested before the calendar is fixed. Used occasionally, when the decision is forward. Signal137 carries the annual case; Demand137 tests the change before it is made.
| Product | Your question | You get | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Signal137 | What evidence goes into the grant renewal or board paper? | Cultural, public, and economic value reported together, each with its own measure | A funding case a board, a funder, and the artistic community can all recognise |
| Signal137 | Did the expanded headline programme buy value, or only day-visitor spend? | Attributable value against a stated counterfactual, beside participation and commissioning share | Programme decisions made on what each strand contributes, not its visibility |
| Signal137 | How do we answer a challenge that public money should go elsewhere? | A traceable path from source and assumption to result, including what happens without the festival | A defensible answer, not a defensive one |
| Signal137 | Does measuring economic value undermine the cultural argument? | The economic figure reported beside participation, commissioning, and community indicators, not instead of them | The festival is shown to have been assessed properly, not reduced to one number |
| Signal137 | What did the festival do to the neighbourhood that hosts it? | Event cadence, accommodation pressure, and resident sentiment for the defined area | The community's question answered on the same evidence as the funder's |
| Signal137 | Did we meet the sustainability commitments in the funding agreement? | Carbon, waste, and community-impact data on the same cycle as the value case | One report answers the funder and the sustainability requirement together |
| Demand137 | Will the new site cope with the audience? | Visitor-flow and capacity forecast for the specific venue scenario | The site is tested before the programme is announced |
| Demand137 | Which weekend should the festival move to? | Displacement and capacity by date, with the shoulder weeks priced | The date is chosen on what the place can absorb, not on habit |
| Both | Our funder's template still asks for a single impact total. Does this replace it? | The attributable economic figure, ready for the template, with the counterfactual behind it | One submission answers a fuller set of questions than the template requires |
| Both | Who holds this, and where? | Model, data, and a trained team inside your jurisdiction | The evidence survives the change of director or funder |
Manchester United’s proposed stadium is a Ā£2bn, 100,000-seat ground by Foster + Partners, with a target opening of 2030-31. The club and the regeneration case cite Ā£7.3bn a year for the economy and 92,000 jobs. Those are the promoters’ projections. Here is what to test before believing them.
At the Italian Grand Prix, the fleet of guest vehicles arrives on German plates with German drivers. The hospitality guests do not sleep in Monza, which hosts the race. They sleep in Milan, which does not. The town that pays captures a fraction of what the event generates.
On 13 June 2026 Scotland played Haiti at Gillette Stadium. Around 50,000 Scottish supporters travelled. Boston’s bars sold beer at roughly four times the volume of a Fourth of July weekend, and some ran dry. Every signal that would have warned them was visible weeks ahead.
Hand a country that is losing visitors the largest sporting event ever held on its soil, and see whether the event can overcome the friction. It could not. Measured per hotel across 16 host markets, the 2026 World Cup delivered as a tournament and failed as a remedy.
We turn messy event and tourism data into decisions that help communities grow. Bring curiosity and rigour. We will hand you questions nobody has answered yet.
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