Artful Conversations 2020 Dr. Daniel Turner Interview
Welcome to Artful Conversations - a podcast about arts and cultural management. Hosts Annetta Latham and Katrina Ingram, interview leaders who help shape the world of arts and culture. We share their stories, their insights and observations. This podcast season has been brought to you with the support of MacEwan University and The Rozsa Foundation.
Annetta: Welcome to Artful Conversations, I'm your host, Annetta Latham. We have Daniel Turner here with us today. Daniel is the deputy dean of the School of Business and the Creative Industries at the University of West of Scotland, UWS. His research interests focus upon social cultural exploration of events and sports and the use of such activities to generate income, social and cultural impacts. Daniel was going to be joined today by his co-author, David McGillivray, who is also a professor of events and digital cultures at the University of West of Scotland, but unfortunately, David has been called away. Daniel and David are the co-authors of Event Bidding: Politics, Persuasion and Resistance.
Daniel, it's great to have you join us today. Thank you for being part of Artful Conversations. Can you tell us about your scholarly career pathway?
Daniel: Yeah, of course, actually the day that we're recording this, is my sixth work anniversary for UWS. I've been in academia full time since 2007, spent a few years working on my Ph.D. At the moment, as you say, Im in the role of deputy dean of the School of Business and Creative Industries, but my academic background has always been in areas to do with sport and events, and my doctorate, which I completed at Glasgow Caledonian University over a very long period of time, looked at the growth of essentially adventure recreation publicly funded skate parks in Scotland using a figurational sociology approach with the work of Norbert Elias in there.
So I've always had a real interest in the interplay between public policy and my undergraduate degree was in leisure management, so I guess what used to be called the leisure industry - sports events, tourism. So having come through with my PhD very much in the sport terrain, I started teaching at Glasgow Caledonian 13 years ago full time, and there my role took me across sports and events and increasingly my interest in public policy and the interaction between these areas, of events and in my case, sporting events, playing in developing cities, developing nations, growing their economies, what contributions you are making, always really trying to have a bit of criticality about claims that are advanced, when those types of things happened. So three years in that role led me up to Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, which is where you and I met for the first time, where I had the role of program leader for what was at that time, the new event management program up in Aberdeen. So working with colleagues to build that program from its first intake of students over a period of four years. And that's really where I started to become increasingly more and more focused on the role of events. Obviously, at the time you and I got to know one another, you were involved with the youth festival in Aberdeen. And a lot of my role there was about getting students to engage with these events and thinking again critically about how they might contribute to the visitor economy in a country which is, a city sorry, that was really starting to think of those questions, I guess in some ways for the first time. That was where event bidding started to come on to my horizon a little bit as well. At the time I was there Aberdeen was bidding for the UK City of Culture, it was quite interesting to look at some of the information around that and how we were trying to do that. And then six years ago, the opportunity to move back into the west of Scotland, which is home for me, came up. So I came back to the west of Scotland and started at UWS, again primarily there as a senior lecturer in event management teaching some of the same areas with some of the same issues. But in the last couple of years, Ive kind of moved into the management and leadership side of working in a university, which isn't quite as much fun for doing research, but it's still an exceptionally challenging role. And a lot of my research interests are now starting to spin out into issues related to higher education, student engagement, I spent time overseas recently looking at how universities in Sri Lanka deal with academic engagement, but still maintaining this interest in essentially events and sport. So whilst at UWS event bidding has been my main area of focus, but also actually, interestingly, come back to some of the things that interested me originally with my colleagues, Sandro Carnicelli, who's one of our senior lecturers here, and parallel to working on the event bidding stream, Sandro and I developed some work around lifestyle sports and public policy. So almost going full circle back in the early 2000s. So that has been the last 13 years, I guess.
[00:05:13]
Annetta: And coming back to what you mentioned before, you and I met when we were both living in Aberdeen and at the time Aberdeen was bidding for the City of Culture and which is a UK massive kind of regeneration policy and hope. So, when you mentioned before, kind of out of that became a little bit of interest around event bidding. What was it that really sparked your interest? Because I know, we both lived through that experience and we were both part of those initial early meetings where they were thinking about the bid and how to do it. You know, I went in one direction and you kind of have now taken that concept, and you've written a book, really. You know, for our listeners, what would you describe as what is event bidding, like what are you talking about when you're talking about that?
[00:06:17]
Daniel: OK, so there is essentially there are a series of events, whether sporting or cultural, which would be best be described as peripatetic so they move from city to city, country to country, the most notable examples being the Olympics, World Cup, for example. And it was actually the FIFA World Cup that I think first certainly caught my interest in this, David, who can't be with us today, he and I worked together for a really long time, and we'd stayed in touch. And I had moved to Aberdeen and he was in Glasgow. And it was round about the time that Qatar was bidding to host the 2022 World Cup. And actually in preparing for today. I was going back through my notes and there was some emails that I just after I got into Aberdeen in 2010 saying this is interesting, someone should look at this. And we were kind of swapping a few messages back and forth about what that might look like, what that might be. A big part of that conversation, and subsequently became the event bidding book five years later. Yeah, but being in Aberdeen was really interesting to me because the City of Culture award was literally on your doorstep. Aberdeen is the third biggest city in Scotland, but it's a city of 100,000 people. So it's still a very compact city, it's a small place, everyone knows everyone. And so there was an opportunity to really see firsthand what was happening. And so Event Bidding essentially then relates to the process by which cities or countries or combinations of countries increasingly, follow the case to an awarding body who typically are the owners of the event, that they should be allowed to host that event. And it's a process which is in some cases very lengthy, can be a number of years. It can be exceptionally costly and in some cases hundreds of thousands for small events, and tens of millions for large scale events. And I think we felt it was a process that often happens outwith the public eye. Yeah, often it's only when the host is announced that people really started to understand it. So that's really what I mean by that process, is everything that happens before the moment someone stands up on stage and says ‘and the host is’ so we were interested in, I guess, the gestation of the event rather than the delivery of the event itself.
[00:08:48]
Annetta: So what do you think are some of the key factors that kind of play into when a city bids for an event, you know, like where do you think the spark comes from that someone goes: Why don't we try and run the Olympics?
[00:09:07]
Daniel: I think there can be lots of things. And I think one of the things you say is there are factors that come into play. Some of it should and some of it shouldn't, but they come into play. I think you have to accept that for certain people, for certain organizations, these events are massive money makers, they are massive opportunities for certain people in certain types of business. So you often have very prominent figures within the local region thinking, well, if we could bring this in it will create investment in construction, will produce investment in tourism, or produce investment in hospitality or produce investment in all these different areas. So you often have that as a heavy area and a lot of places all over the world very much linked to a city or a country’s ‘sense of place’, and trying to position themselves within the world on a global scale, something like the Olympics, if you think about some of the countries that have hosted the Olympics in recent years, China or Brazil, for example. That's very much been about making a statement about being a world player. So there's a bit of statesmanship involved, but a lot of smaller events and particularly smaller cities and smaller national events like the City of Culture, often local authorities, local politicians will see it as an opportunity to drive regeneration. I think if you look in the UK, I appreciate some of these place names might not mean much to some of the people who might listen to this, but if you think of places like Hull, you think of places like Paisley, we’ve actually we've just gone through the process a couple of years ago of Paisley bidding for the UK City of Culture as well. These are places which should perhaps have seen a period of industrial decline and they're trying essentially a cultural regeneration approach to development. I think politicians like bidding contests because it's a fabulous image to be the politician who brought the event to the country, in fact, our prime minister was not involved in winning the bid and has made an awful lot of hay of being the mayor of London at the point when that came to town . So I think aspect things, I think in some countries and in some populations, there's also a sense within the population of this is the thing we do. You know, it's almost of course, we bid for events, of course we get involved in events. So there's a lot of disparate reasons, some of which are very well intentioned, some of which perhaps are slightly more self-serving, some of which are financial, some of which are political, some of which are, I guess, tangible, and some of which are intangible.
[00:11:49]
Annetta: Yeah, I think your point there around the tangible and intangible is really interesting because, you know, in the research that I've been doing, looking at the cities that don't actually win the bid that go through the whole process, it's also about what they do after they've announced, you know, and the host is and their name is not the host, they don't win. There’s this whole thing around the journey they go on that you've been talking about. And in some element, some of what happens is a little bit around this topic of soft power, you know, and finding our name and our identity in that. And, you know, soft power as opposed to military power. So from your perspective, how would you say that concept of kind of soft power sits into the narrative of event bidding?
[00:12:48]
Daniel: I think your point there about places which the one is really interesting because of course, some places will be bidding as part of a long term strategy of doing the types of events they might hold one event because ultimately they want to hold a different event. And it's about demonstrating capacity and capability and building their brand awareness essentially in a safe pair of hands. Glasgow, which is my home city, essentially has been very good at that over the last couple of decades. I think the notion of soft power is interesting because really what you see is events bring legitimacy. They bring a seat at the table. So if you look, for example, for China, really hosting the Olympics was the culmination of their emergence as a global superpower. It was almost that last moment of saying, well, here we are. We are not only actually economically, politically strong. We are able to host the biggest and the largest. I think if you look at places like Qatar, very small but very rich country, they have really used events as a means of securing access to possibly a much bigger place on the global stage than they might otherwise have. So whether that's in trade negotiations, whether that's in discussions with other countries. But now we know where Qatar is, we know who Qatar are. And I think this is really interesting literature, for example, Australia holding the Asian Cup a few years ago about how that was used as a means for Australia to leverage investment from China, as well. So it's very much that hidden level of power than the opposite of the hard military power, soft power is a more cultural influence, it is a more political influence. That suddenly you can't be ignored anymore.
[00:14:45]
You are as a seat at the table and I think one of the discussions ahead of the Olympics, I think, in Brazil, it was essentially a coming out party for Brazil and again, as a time where Brazil was bidding to host the Olympics. It was one of the fastest growing economies in the world. It was the fifth largest economy in the world at that point. There is an interesting thing there, which is the point that we're bidding not so much at the point they were delivering 10 years later and how much that can change.
[00:15:14]
Yeah, I think that that soft power can be underplayed. And actually, even again, if I think when Scotland famously held the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and it was no coincidence that the same year as we had the Commonwealth Games, we had a couple of very large national events in Scotland. The likes of Homecoming, there was an independence referendum shortly afterwards, which clearly was about Scotland standing on its feet as an independent nation, saying we can host these large scale events. So some of that can be soft power broadcast outwards to the world, some of it can be soft power broadcast inwards to the population to say this is who we are, this is what we do. And if you go really far back, the stories of South Africa hosting the rugby world cup after Apartheid that there are lots of stories of both inward and outward facing softpower
[00:16:07]
Annetta: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because it's certainly a narrative that is kind of rising to the top right now. And you can see, especially around cultural policy, some narrative around soft power that is certainly getting more traction than it would have got even 10 years ago. So, you know, in relation to the event bidding, because you've been involved in that sector now and looking at event bidding for a long time, would you say, apart from Covid, over the last several years, do you think there's been a shift in the purpose of why cities bidding or is it still the same, but they're just using modern, trendy language?
[00:16:53]
Daniel: I think there's been a shift in how we talk of bidding. And I think partially that's because, you know, event management as a field is still a relatively new field of academic study. But if I think working with David, David is the fabulous professor in this area, and has a very strong track record of producing interesting pieces of research. But David did a piece of work with my colleague Gayle MacPherson and Malcolm Foley around about policy back in saying that it had been about 2010 maybe 2012, which was really one of the first times that people were being really critical of the narrative around events.
In that last maybe 10, 15 years, we've started to pay more attention to the role that events play in cultural regeneration or urban regeneration, whatever we want to call that. And so because of that, they are becoming more critical in how we discuss it. I think 20, 30 years ago you could say we're going to host event X and it's going to make us millions. And there's been a host of authors and academics in the last 20 years have said, but will you?, really? And then they start to ask questions about when you say we, who do you mean? And then there have been questions about, well, is money the only thing we're interested in, or are we interested in social advancement, are we interested in environmental sustainability? Are we interested in any of these different issues? So I think that because there's now a greater understanding of some of the claims that have been advanced in the past, there’s a greater skepticism towards it, a greater interrogation, towards it, the language we've used to talk about, of bidding is had to change the requirements on cities and countries are trying to bid are more detailed and nuanced than they’ve ever been. I think you also have the fact that I think the big thing for me has been there's been a professionalization of bidding now. Yeah, there are literally people who travel the world to leak and it's an exceptionally lucrative job. And so as they've professionalized, so too we have much clearer criteria about what you're betting on and why you're betting what you're required to do to achieve the successful hosting of the event. So I think all of those things mean that we talk about it differently, we think about it differently, an event organizer sort of, does have to talk a different language.
[00:19:27]
Annetta: Yeah, they certainly do. One of the things that I found interesting in exploring the City of Culture narrative is the changing of cultural policies that cities are doing to match the bid process, and I think that's really interesting and it kind of comes you know, I want to circle back to your book because your book is around the event bidding process and the politics of that and the persuasion and resistance, and you published it in 2017. And thank you for the book on behalf of myself and other academics. I've certainly used it in my event management class, and it was fantastic. It was really, really good. So for you and David, you kind of mentioned earlier on that, you know, you'd started a little bit of an email narrative around what's going on. So how did you actually decide together that you were going to write a book on the email narrative?
[00:20:31]
Daniel: I think it was a lot of different things, David and I have known each other for a very long time, he’s not here, so I’ll embarrass him, David was my lecturer when I was an undergraduate student, he is much, much older than I am. And then subsequently my supervisor and we worked together for a number of years and we both had an interest in this area, and I think as most academics, I think in this I guess in this industry, this part of the industry, I think actually is most academics. when they get together what we can talk about it is the subject tend to be passionate about thing, and that's why you teach it, and that's why you research it. So we really had been just as friends talking about or who's bidding and what are we seeing and why are the bidding? And at the time, I don't think the full scale of some of the concerns of Qatar’s World Cup bid, had really came out in the public domain. And so by that point, you're starting to see something suspicious here at the start. But actually, the campaign that they were running, the narrative they were writing around the event were really interesting, the way in which they were trying to gain traction and gain. We understood that. So we talked about that a lot as one conversation then during my time, another being with the city of culture, bid that was happening there. I, I started to scope out some information around what happened in the city and interviewed some people and pulled together a conference paper around that which I had taken a few different places and presented really my initial thoughts around how bidding worked, David, at the same time coming off the back of what he had done. event policy was growing his interest in, I guess, the criticality of should advance what should be pushing these things. Who do they serve and how is consent manufactured around events? And by coincidence, we ended up both working together again. David had gone to the University of West of Scotland I think in 2010. And when I came back into the west of Scotland, we got together and said, well, is it time to do something with this. We've been talking about it for a really long time, we think there's something there. We sketched out what's now become the structure of the book, particularly I think the first maybe the chapters of the book around why do people get to the event and some of the more critical questions that should event. And that turned into a proposal for Routledge. Who came back and said that they felt it was something that was useful, something that was potentially quite timely at that point. So that would have been we'd have written that proposal around 2014, 2015. And so just coming off the back of the London Olympic Games, the back of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. There were some quite big processes taking place at that of time. And so Routledge came back and said, yeah, we think there's something in this as well.
I think they possibly saw David’s track record of publication. Yeah, has been very interesting. And so that kind of led to let’s try to put the book into the world. And then two years of writing and reading and writing and reading eventually got it out there, in 2017/ 2018, it was fabulous to see it come together. It did have quite a long gestation period.
[00:24:12]
Annetta: And what's co writing with an old friend like?
Daniel: It's a lot of fun, to be honest with you. The first thing I think that we should highlight is that we did most of the writing at David’s kitchen table. So the best part really was David's wife, Clare who is a lovely lady, bringing us bowls of soup and sandwiches. So I was in heaven for a large part of the process and probably that's why it took so long to be published. He’s really good, I think David is a fantastic academic. He's got a critical mind. I mean this in my book, it's my first book writing experience. So learning a huge amount. David, if he were here, I'm sure you would say wonderful things that we probably highlight that I need to learn when to use a comma. But it was a really positive experience. The only problem, though, is, again, come back up when you have two colleagues who have a passion about a subject. I seem to recall we may have spent the first two hours arguing about, so are we talking about sporting mega events or mega sporting events? And yeah, that's becoming an issue for the rest of the day, Well, I’m right no i’m right, but the exceptional learning experience for me, I hope if he were here, it was as enjoyable for him. We have written together since.
[00:25:30]
Annetta: So there you go, you're obviously on the right track. So what's the response to the book been like?
[00:25:39]
Daniel: It’s been good with a couple of very nice reviews in academic literature, which is always good, we've had some really quite nice feedback queries to use with students that we found it to be interesting. They found it to be an accessible book on a challenging topic, which I think is, whenever I write anything, I think i’m writing so it can be used. You've said very kind things today. So in that sense, it's been very positive. It seems to have made its way onto a few good reading lists, which is nice. I think we've had some nice comments from colleagues in the industry who have been interested in the area as well, who've said nice things about it. So it's been positive and very rewarding in that sense.
[00:26:28]
Annetta: Yeah, I think one of the things for me that added incredible value to my class was the event bidding process gets students to focus on what happens prior to an event, even getting money, even those things, whereas often in event management, and I've been teaching that, you know, kind in the event management arena for eight or so years is that and been working in the field for a very long time, is that people usually look at the event and then do the post the event narrative. Like, you see this a lot out there that's written by some fantastic academics around the affect of the event on community or economy or all of those things post event. But what's fantastic about this book, from my perspective as a teacher, is getting the students to focus on that stuff that, like you said earlier, can start seven, five, seven, eight, nine years before an event even occurs. And it's a great way to get emerging arts managers and emerging events managers to think with much more depth around this topic. If you're going to say, oh, well, let's host a city of culture, actually there's years and years of process here before you even get to put someone on the stage and make a beautiful speech.
[00:28:02]
Daniel: One of the things that really interested me, about 2007, I think it would have been, David and I ended up in Liverpool, Liuverpool was just gearing up to be European City of Culture in 2008. And I can't remember what the conference was or what the event was. It was in Liverpool. But there was a keynote presentation from a guy called Bob Scott, who basically is a peripatetic bid director. He moves at that time, was moving from place to place, and he would lead the bid. And I remember distinctly was one of the things that was on my mind. And I think we quote Bob Scott almost. I think in the first couple of pages was he talked to the fact that his job ends the minute someone says, yes, you can host, he leaves and then someone else comes in and actually does the delivery. And as a result of that, he was kind of an invisible figure, I didn't really know that these guys existed. And that for David and I was fascinating for a lot different reasons. I mean, the first is, the cost to the public purse of bidding for these events. I mean, there were figures being thrown around in the region, probably in Aberdeen in the high six figures. I think if you go back almost 20 years, England spent somewhere in the region of twenty to twenty six million pounds for the World Cup. For the last Olympic bid round, the one which ended up with the dual coronation of Los Angeles and Paris. If you added up budgets for every city that bid for either of those games, at some point it surpassed a billion dollars for the first time. What's really interesting about that is most of that money is probably coming out of the public purse. All of it spent with no guarantee of success and very, very little of it spent with the public knowing that's where the money's going and that's what's happening. But also, if you are successful and winning the right to host the games in the bid stage, particularly, again, for those big events, you are committing yourself legally and financially to some massive, massive investments and in some cases potential financial loss, in some cases to building venues and facilities that are going to last a lifetime, you hope. Again, very little very little attention being paid to. And how did that case get me something? I mean, if you look at the Vancouver Olympics, for example, by 2010, some of the implications I had for host communities, I think if you look at some of the potential implications, there's really interesting stuff coming out of America where they've had peripatetic events and some of the impact that had on things like civil liberties in those cities. And none of this really ever surfaces until someone opens the envelope and says and the host is, so that for us was really interesting to look at that hidden aspect and all the things that meant, and I think you made a point earlier about how places then become focused. Martin Muller is incredibly interesting in this area where he talks about essentially everything becomes focused in on the event, sometimes to the detriment of things that might otherwise be happening. So I think that's something that can set the agenda for a city or for a country for 10, 15 years with little oversight and little critique.
[00:31:42]
Annetta: I want to pick up on something you mentioned a little bit earlier about the information not getting out there, because I think that also leads into what role the media plays in all of this process. You know, from your perspective in the research that you and David have done, where would you say the media sits in this bidding process - is it positive is it negative? Do they focus at the end or the beginning? What have you guys found in that narrative?
[00:32:19]
Daniel: Well, I think I mean, yes and no to everything almost simultaneously, and the media should have a role, as it should in any aspect of public life, of holding power to account, of critiquing, of challenging, of looking for accountability. And I think some of the more recent what David and I have done with John Lauerrmann has looked at the role, particularly new media plays in that. I think if you look at some places in the past and we talk about it in the book, the fact that it's a deliberate attempt often on the part of bid committees to bring the media into the tent. Perhaps too often or in some cases at the very least, the media can end up assuming the role of cheerleader for the bid. But that makes sense. There's a you know, a diet of nice, easy, friendly, publishable stories. You can lock yourself up in a patriotic fervor and support it. And often I think bid committees actively search for that because there's an analogy about better having people inside the tent than out which comes to mind. So I think the media has a role to play and being critical and holding the committee to account and asking questions about who is spending money and where are they spending money, but often I think historically they've been sucked into being cheerleaders for it rather than having that criticality. But that's where I think more recently we've been talking about the role of new media and new media and such as the media and whatever you want to call it. Yeah, challenging and holding to account. And there have been some really good examples and subsequently elsewhere. What would be, I guess, if we're talking in new media or traditional media, have they come in and said, well, actually, is that claim valid? Is that claim accurate? So the media has a massive, all encompassing role to play, it's just whether or not it always plays it effectively.
[00:34:31]
Annetta: So in the field of further research, you know, we've just talked about what you have been looking into. In a recent project that you and David wrote together, you made a case for more participatory involved and collaborative research methods, as a way of better understanding this really, what is, a dynamic and a complex dynamic that is taking place in the event bidding process. So for you, what would that look like? What would that kind of research look like in the field moving forward?
[00:35:09]
Daniel: Well, I think that that more recent piece of research that you're referring to is a piece of work that David and I did with John Lauermann. John is an academic based in New York, and one of the fabulous things about academic life is we've never been in the same room as John. We really like John's work, which had looked a lot at some of the protest movements, particularly in Boston a few years ago. And we reached out to John and said, look, we like you a lot. Hopefully you like our work as well. Do you think we can collaborate on something so this paper came forward around the idea of new media activism? One of the things we've seen in the last, again, 10, 15 years and as a former colleague of ours, a former student of David’s, Jennifer Jones, actually, you know, Jen, didher PhD around citizen media around the Vancouver Olympics and protest media. And that's something that's really emerged in the last 10, 15 years with social media has been ordinary citizens forming protest movements and campaigning against in some cases historically, that's often came after the announcement of the host and in the build up to the delivery of the event. What we had spotted was in the most recent piece for me that was increasing the protest movement on the big stage and that was where John's work was useful in Boston. And so we can try to sit down as a trio and identify, well, what role is new media playing in the fact. And I think we got to the end of the world because we were able to see that new media was playing a very strong role and shining a light on things. But actually where it was at its most effective is we have some of that new media protest aligned with traditional models of political activism. And almost this physical domain that we are participatory democracy of going along to protest physically, going into committee meetings and asking difficult questions. And I think really what we were talking about was if those types of movements want to be effective, they have to recognize that there's an alignment between the digital world and the physical world. But also where they have been particularly effective was where new media enabled old media. Some might say enabled, some might say forced or are held to account to, to assume the more critical stance. So literally feeding them the stories and pointing them in the direction of, this is a question you should be asking. This is an area that's interesting. And so that's really what we mean by participating, trying to join the dots and see if we really are going to have an effective critique and a holding to account of the types of bid systems. If you want to use that language, then it has to be an alignment of new media and old media, digital protected physical protest. And I think that's really what we saw as a participatory involvement with this.
[00:38:16]
Annetta: Fantastic. So with that rich content of future research, what are your plans for the next five years?
[00:38:25]
Daniel: Yeah, that's an interesting question. We've obviously just within the event bidding thing, we just finished two or three things. So the book itself and then a couple of things with John separately. In this area, I don't want to speak for David, as he's not here. But I know David is increasingly, through our center that we have at UWS, interested in a range of different issues around mega events. So he's the supervising students with interest areas, is looking at some of the uses of public space by private events, which are really interesting. And I'm really interested in something you mentioned at the start, which is field that. I'm fascinated by having lived in two cities which have been unsuccessful in bids in the last 10 years, I dont know if that means I’m a jinx, and perhaps not be invited to cities that are bidding. But I'm really interested in what happens after a bid fails. Aberdeen has bid twice now and never got close to it again. And if they have. But again, what have they learned from the last time? If you're unsuccessful in bidding from one event, what happens when you go for a different event? I think that's an area that's really interesting. I think there's a lot of things that are really interesting around starting to interrogate rights holders of events, something we've not really told yet, but I'm fascinated by the power that, again, particularly in sporting the big event, right? Holders like FIFA and the IOC, the power they have with very little accountability. These are organizations that have economies essentially bigger than many countries, and they're able to enact massive influence on how countries behave, insisting on changes to legislation and insisting on changes to practice. I'd like to really look at some of those issues as well and start to interrogate that, whether or not my own personal career path lets me do that as much like I don't know. But I think that would be an area that would be really interesting to consider. What happens after the circus has left town?
[00:40:42]
Annetta: So it sounds like a sabbatical year and a book. Another book in the pipeline. Hey, Daniel, I really want to thank you for your time with us today. Is there any pearl of wisdom that you would pass on in relation to your, the knowledge of, you know, that you got that you both learned and really investigating the bidding process?
[00:41:16]
Daniel: Oh, that's a big question. Definitely write with a co-author who provides you with regular sustenance, thats a big one. I think it's about the thing that I found really fascinating and personally fulfilling a promise and hopefully if people engaged with the work they find useful is look for the thing that's not being looked up. You know, a thing went with these types of events these days with, What's the question thats not being asked. What's the area that was not shining a light on? Because I think for me that was the thing that was that was the thing that made it interesting to do. Was to say, well, hang on a second. Whenever someone tells you you can't look at something, you want to go behind the scenes and find out what's actually happening. I think that would be the thing. What's the question I want you to ask? Yeah. And why do you want you to ask that question? And then that's the interesting stuff for me.
[00:42:19]
Annetta: Daniel, thank you so much for joining us tonight for conversations today. Please pass on our disappointment, but also understanding of why David couldn't be with us and we would have loved to have heard from him. But we'll do that another time. But it's been great chatting with you. And thank you for your time.
[00:42:40]
Daniel: I think it's been really enjoyable to hopefully I’ll speak to you again soon.
Analysis
Annetta: Katrina, Daniel is always an incredibly interesting person to spend time with and interview, and I thoroughly enjoy spending time with Dan and this was an amazing interview. I think one of the things that is really exciting about what Daniel talks about is that he knows the topic, he’s in there all the time, you know, the whole conversation around bidding and why we bid and how we bid and what's the purpose of bidding. And if we lose a bid, what does that mean? Iit just fascinates me and, you know, all the strategy around bidding. And one of the things that always amazes me when Dan and I talk is when he talks about these people who actually their job is developing bids for these great big, huge events. I’d never thought of that as a job. And it always amazes me.
Katrina: That was a total eye-opener for me as well, because I always think about what happens after you get the bid, not necessarily all the work that goes into getting the bid. And so I was really intrigued to hear about that. And I was intrigued by Daniel himself. As someone who went to business school, when I think of people who run business schools, I think of this typical structured type person. Just to hear about Daniel's background, though, in arts and sports, the sort of non-traditional business background. I just love that. I love the contrast of that. It was just really, really refreshing.
Annetta: Yeah. And really exciting. And I think one of the things that I really like about that, is the way that arts and festivals and major event management is acknowledged as business, as big business. And, you know, and we all complement each other. We're not, we're not standalone and we all work together really well. And I really, really liked it. And one of the things that I think has really helped sharpen my thinking around management is the way Daniel talks about bidding is sometimes strategic. It's not you don't necessarily need to win the bid. Sometimes it's about applying and getting some marketing off the bid that is important. So that strategy around bidding for something I think is fascinating.
Katrina: Yeah, I totally agree. And I recall during the interview Annetta you raised this point about soft power and how hosting these events can really kind of legitimize a country or give it a sense of itself. And Daniel talked about the story of Scotland and the 2014 Commonwealth Games and how the independence referendum followed. And it really just kind of defined a people and that really, you know, that political kind of soft power really resonated with me. I thought that was a really interesting way to think about this issue that goes beyond the economics.
This show was created by Executive Producer and Host Annetta Latham; Co-host Katrina Ingram. Technical Producer Paul Johnston. Research Assistants involved were Caitlin McKinnon and MacEwan bachelor of music students.
Theme Music by Emily Darfur and cover art by Constanza Pacher. Special thanks to the Rose Foundation for their support and to our guests. Artful Conversations is a production of MacEwan University and Assistant Professor Annetta Latham, all rights reserved.
Latham, A. (Executive Producer and Host). Regan-Ingram, K (Host). (2020, October 20) [Season 2: Episode 1]. Daniel Turner. Podcast retrieved from: https://www.artfulconversations.com/season-2-1/2021/2/6/ep-6-daniel-turner