In recent years, Britain has developed a taste for an ambitious project: one that elbows its way into the skyline, promises to reframe our cultural identity – and turns into a multi-million-pound disaster. Just as the Millennium Dome racked up a £789 million bill and attracted only half of its 12 million projected visitors two decades ago, so the arts extravaganza once known as the Festival of Brexit has spent £120 million of taxpayers’ money while attracting less than one per cent of the 66 million people that organisers hoped would visit its various venues.
So lamentable has the project – renamed Unboxed – been that the National Audit Office (NAO) this week announced it was conducting an urgent investigation into how the money – four times more than the Platinum Jubilee’s budget of £28 million – was (mis)spent. Instead of an economy-boosting, year-long series of installations showcasing British arts, as was first pledged, it has been beset by delays and poor turnouts; a half-baked idea that was unlikely to reach its nebulous goals.
The stage was set four years ago, when then prime minister Theresa May promised that Brexit would be marked with a year-long celebration of “the best of British creativity and innovation, culture and heritage”. That was quickly recast as “the Festival of Brexit” by Jacob Rees-Mogg, before being rebranded again as Festival UK. By the time it was rechristened a third time as Unboxed, the meaning of its name, and what the installations would set out to do, had become profoundly hazy.
Funds were handed out to 10 creators, including Tour de Moon – a theatre project inviting 18 to 25-year-olds to come and “create alternative futures” in abandoned venues using Day-Glo objects – and Dreamachine, described in one report as a “group hallucination”. The House of Commons’ digital, culture, media and sports select committee sounded the alarm seven months ago, when it said that Unboxed’s “lack of strategy and vision” ought to serve as a “wake-up call for the Government”.
“Such a muddled approach is a sure-fire recipe for failure,” said committee chairman Julian Knight. “And we have no confidence that it can meet its ambitious targets for engagement or deliver a return on the substantial investment from the public coffers.”
No pumping on the brakes ensued. The festival’s greatest hope had been See Monster, a 450-ton decommissioned oil rig destined for the seafront at Weston-super-Mare. Covered in evergreens and boasting a waterfall and contraptions that produce renewable energy, the structure was designed to provoke conversations about the environment.
But its opening in late September meant it missed out on tourist pounds. It is due to close in November, after only six weeks.
I was led around See Monster last month by Martin Green, head of ceremonies at the London 2012 Olympics and the man responsible for this year’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. He was drafted in to steer Unboxed in 2020, and had initially been cautious about the festival becoming a “jingoistic jamboree”. Of greater concern, perhaps, should have been timing. Launching amid a cost of living crisis, Unboxed was always going to struggle to justify its £120 million budget.
Still, Green was effusive about the “engagement” Unboxed had wrought, with local CCTV footage apparently showing healthy numbers of people wandering by See Monster in the run-up to opening. Organisers also dispute reports that only 238,000 people had visited Unboxed events by the end of August, saying that “more than four million people have engaged in Unboxed programming so far”.
I couldn’t get hold of Green after this week’s NAO announcement. But others involved in the project maintain that it has been good value for money. “Millions of people have the opportunity to attend live events, watch amazing broadcast content [and] experience really imaginative digital experiences and acts,” says Phil Batty, executive director of Unboxed’s organising committee.
Knight, meanwhile, points to a poll published in the summer that found 91 per cent of respondents hadn’t heard of Unboxed (nor the Festival of Brexit, or Festival UK). “Unboxed means nothing,” he says. Without being attached to a meaningful date like the First World War centenary, say, around which a series of events were put on, this has been, “a means by which to spend money on projects that themselves are here today, gone tomorrow, [and] have no lasting impact”.
Might Unboxed, like the Millennium Dome, one day turn things around? Knight is unconvinced. With the Dome “we ended up with a permanent structure we were able to sell, that has become part of the London landscape”, he says. The same cannot be done with Unboxed.
“No one has had the bravery or, frankly, the intelligence to turn around and say, ‘Stop – this is clearly going off the rails. This is just going to be an embarrassment and a waste of money,’” he says. “Why didn’t someone do that?”
