London: 26 November 2013.
On the spoof TV series TWENTY TWELVE about life behind the scenes at London 2012 there was a running gag about: “what’s the difference between sustainability and legacy?” Some said they are the same; others said they are completely different – and nobody could agree but they all thought it was massively important to argue about.
Now here’s a similar question but in a serious vein: “what’s the difference between legacy and impact?”
The other day while reviewing a research report I saw this definition:
“…in this report we attempt to distinguish two types of changes caused by hosting the event. We understand legacy as the physical, socio-economic or cultural long-lasting changes resulting from hosting the event. We use the term impact to describe immediate effects of public or private event-related initiatives on local economy, culture or environment. An impact may be temporary or permanent, direct or indirect, reversible or irreversible, certain or uncertain, short-term or long-term. As opposed to ‘impact’ the term ‘legacy’ is often used in a positive manner and implies after-effects, often long-term rather than immediate ‘impacts’.”
I’m not sure I’m any the wiser! Even the notion that legacy is good, impact is bad doesn’t really work. If you are in marketing then you want your campaign to have impact. Regarding legacy, you could be left with a pile of debt or a degraded, polluted landscape to clean up, which presumably is not good. Or are these just impacts?
For me legacy means what is left behind for others to benefit from, or deal with. It can be physical, economic, intellectual, or emotional – just as in inheriting from someone’s will and their lifetime.
In terms of events we have the following examples from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games:
- Physical legacy – new sports venues; new parklands; new infrastructure; new housing and amenities…
- Economic legacy – funding for sport development or other projects; creation of institutional structures/programmes; support for business growth and investment…
- Intellectual legacy – new standards, methods and tools (e.g. ISO 20121, carbon footprinting methodology, Food Vision and GRI Event Organisers Sector Supplement)
- Emotional legacy – memories, pride, satisfaction, confidence, increased sense of community, identity and aspiration… (you might call this social or cultural legacy too)
Impact is the difference that has been made and can usually be quantified. For example: tourism numbers up by x%; volunteering up by x%; the actual carbon footprint of the Games; amount of waste diverted from landfill etc. So the tourism legacy is that London/UK is more attractive to tourists; the impact is by how much visitor numbers and their spending have increased.
The removal of 52 pylons and 200km of overhead cables from the Olympic Park site had a hugely positive impact on the landscape. The legacy is an enhanced visual environment.
While legacy is relatively simple to point at, impacts can be hugely complex to measure and attribute causality.
I am sure if you pick away at this there will be many overlaps and exceptions. But the point is that people are using the terms loosely and interchangeably. Does this matter? In many cases maybe not, but when cities and governments are considering investing significant sums in bidding for major events (Olympics and others), it is as well to be as clear as possible what we are talking about.
So I’d love to hear from anyone with a good definition of impact and legacy – and if you can do sustainability and legacy at the same time, that would be magic.
“Festivals” are my main interest, but within the broader “Events” church; we often draw from the same sources – certainly the events and festivals practicioners I’ve come across or worked with have been aware of the pioneering work of the Olympics as regards environmental sustainability; not to mention other crossovers with sports and sports events generally – similar problems of articulating their short and long term value, especially as public spending tightens up more generally.
Impact or legacy or both? or neither? I think the primary difference is, as you suggest, one of time/immediacy: impact must be captured/measured ‘there and then’ whereas legacy can only really be addressed in the longer term. I agree that one-offs such as the Olympics may tend to use ‘legacy’ rather than ‘impact’ to reinforce the idea that these will last. Ironically, festivals that repeat, and have to justify themselves year after year are, perhaps less capable of thinking about legacy by virtue of the mindest of ‘just getting to the next year’. Of course some are more established/better at this than others. Perhaps by virtue of its longer term nature, legacy will always be considered a bit more nebulous, more rooted in ‘softer impact’, feelings, opinion, memory. One interesting work I came across recently was Roches ‘Mega Events and Modernity’ (2010 I think)- amongst other things he describes the immediate ‘event core’, the ‘mid term’ and ‘event horizon’ – relating quite fairly I would say to direct impact, indirect impact and legacy respectively.
Even at this level the distinction is useful, as, I feel, it reinforces the general need to collect “impact” data as close to/during the event as much as possible – and conversely that any attempt to establish “legacy” needs a more longitudinal approach. There is a useful synergy between the two but we should be aware of the demands of each approach.
Your other points regarding different areas – social, emotional, intellectual – this is where I found the Five Capitals model (and more recently the Integrated Reporting approach) to be very useful at disaggregating the different areas – which end up overlapping and generalizing if we aren’t careful. The quote from a report you mention in your piece is a bold but, I agree, ultimately a fairly baffling attempt at defining impact and legacy! For what it’s worth, certainly I don’t think either impact or legacy are inherently “good or bad”.
The semantic pitfalls aside, whichever phrasing we like to use, I think they both have in common a stated desire to affect some kind of change, which is heartening in itself.