Let's Do London events programme evaluation report

Culture is a huge driver for tourism to London. Four out of five visitors cite the city’s culture and heritage as their main reason for travelling here. There are lots of examples of how culture can develop the local economy and placemaking of a city.

What is clear from the Let’s Do London events programme is that arts and culture can be used as a central plank for economic recovery; to increase footfall and spend back into an area as well as supporting social recovery by building confidence to get back to life in London. However, curatorial expertise is absolutely critical to this kind of programming to ensure it is dynamic, diverse, delightful and delivers to these objectives. The activation programme was designed to express London’s values of inclusivity, vibrancy and diversity through its artistic content and curation.

Positioning creative works by artists including Es Devlin, Anya Hindmarch, Yinka IIori and Hetain Patel put these values front and centre of the marketing and media communications. Pop Up London for example provided an effective model to help support and celebrate jobs during this most challenging time. It delivered paid work for more than 200 creative freelancers after months of unemployment and income instability. The City Lights light installation event delivered an average spend of £46 per person into the Square Mile, adding an estimated £1.16m to London’s economy over the winter period.

David Hockney’s playful ‘Hockney Circus’ redesign of TfL’s iconic roundel alone generated 83 pieces of global media coverage in the USA (New York Times), France, Japan, Italy, Korea, India and Australia. As well as countless social memes. Rankin’s photography project to celebrate the reopening of London’s theatres also generated huge media coverage, in the UK and internationally. Performance by Rankin attracted over 142 pieces of coverage, from The Washington Post to the Bangkok Post.



Promoting the programme as a series of seasonal themes with a mix of activities and events, across many different art forms, was a valuable tool to gain broad marketing and press reach. It also enabled us to reinforce the objectives of Let’s Do London, expanded the offer to support hospitality and retail content and helped to sustain a drumbeat of interest in London throughout the year.

By prioritising free outdoor activities that occupied and animated public places, squares and pop-up spaces, we minimised the risk of events being cancelled if COVID-19 guidance changed. This also ensured that events were inclusive to people who weren’t yet confident to return to indoor venues. The ‘Eyeconic London Art Trail’ across 14 central London sites inspired the strongest performing content overall on the Visit London app during last summer. Outdoor hero events like Back to the Big Screen in Trafalgar Square sold 9,000 tickets in 24 hours and 48 per cent of attendees agreed they felt more confident going to the cinema or other events afterwards.

Working closely with the GLA’s City Intelligence Unit provided valuable access to live footfall traffic and spend from across London’s Central Activities Zone, the vibrant centre of the city that is known worldwide for its shopping, culture and heritage. This offered a new model of programming events to be able to respond to economic ‘cold spot’ sites.



Positioning both Borealis and City Lights in the City of London helped to draw over 50,000 people, spending an average of £46 per person, to part of London that has suffered considerably from the loss of office workers as well as visitors, with few local residents to support local businesses alone.

Developing the programme in an agile way meant that we could respond quickly to the change in COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines. This meant we were able to quickly pivot Pop Up London performances to Central Activities Zone locations that were worst effected to stimulate audience attendance and spend.

Never before has London’s culture, nightlife, hospitality and retail businesses worked together as they did for Let’s Do London. It created a new public and private sector model that was committed, flexible and responsive to work collaboratively for the benefit of London’s recovery. As demonstrated by the formation of the London Tourism Recovery Board which commissioned the Let’s Do London domestic tourism campaign.

From big name brands and institutions to individual artists, community organisations and creative freelancers, the Let’s Do London events programme brought together partners of all shapes and sizes from across the capital’s creative, cultural, hospitality, retail and tourism businesses.



It established not only new opportunities but new ways of working and collaborating that continue to blossom. Let’s Do London would not have been a success without this extraordinary collective effort, and it showed the world that, in tough times and adversary, London comes together.

Following on from the success of the Let’s Do London domestic tourism campaign, the Mayor has reaffirmed his commitment to get London back on its feet by investing £10m to attract more Londoners, domestic and international visitors back in 2022. A recent Mastercard Economics Institute report shows that there are green shots of recovery sprouting up as the UK is becoming the top haunt for European travellers. However, London’s tourism economy is still heavily dependent on tourists from overseas with 84 per cent of overnight tourism spend in London coming from international visitors.



As well as continuing to support London’s continued recovery, as a global city with a target of being net-zero by 2030, more needs to be done to ensure that London’s culture, hospitality and retail can become more resilient and sustainable – both economically and environmentally – to tackle the climate crisis.