Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) - results - Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design

Recommendations and Conclusion

To address the findings above a series of actions are being delivered, led by the Scottish Government, with key support from VisitScotland, Royal Incorporation of Architects Scotland, BEMIS Scotland and other partners. These include:

• The Scottish Government is providing VisitScotland with a funding contribution of £38,000 to support activities to boost the Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design as part of the roll-out of the wider Inclusive Tourism project. Outputs include a series of business guides aimed at boosting accessible tourism and also a refreshed on-line toolbuilder to help businesses showcase their accessibility credentials and to enhance the related consumer interface. In addition to boosting 2016 activity these projects will also have a legacy for the future themed years as well as tourism/events more widely. In addition to boosting the engagement of disabled and older people the projects also have the potential to enhance engagement related to pregnancy and maternity.
• The Scottish Government is providing BEMIS Scotland with a funding contribution of £54,000 to celebrate the 2016 YIAD and also Scotland's Winter Festivals 2016/17. This builds on the success of the multi-cultural celebration of the Year of Food and Drink and Scotland's Winter Festivals (2015/16) which engaged around 12,000 people at 65 events across Scotland.
• Exploring opportunities with partners to boost the use of positive images of equalities groups participating in the YIAD to help ensure that messaging encourages as broad a participation as possible.
• VisitScotland's consumer website (VS.com) contains a wealth of information on the YIAD's events programme and this will be promoted to protected communities (through their representative organisations) via a newsletter; including information on the year's highlights and also events that may have a particular appeal. VS.com also contains a section specifically designed to welcome the LGBT community.
• Partnership with the Equality Network on the development of an information guide to welcome LGBT visitors to Scotland.
• Significant strand of partner activity, led by the Scottish Government, with support from the likes of Young Scot and Education Scotland , to engage younger people in the Year of Food and Drink.
• General business/industry support activity- led by VisitScotland and Scotland Food & Drink including an events fund, growth fund, quality assurance scheme, engagement toolkit and focused support and guidance- open to all businesses and showcased to protected groups in Year of Food and Drink equality updates. Business/Industry support opportunities will also be showcased to protected communities via the newsletter.
• supporting activity led by LGBT Youth ( LGBT Innovators event) and also the tourism industry (Women in Tourism initiative).

Monitoring and evaluation

VisitScotland has arrangements in place to measure the impact of the Inclusive Tourism project and these will also include activity related to the three Inclusive Tourism projects funded to mark the Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design (innovative/accessible websites, architects guides and the enhanced access statements).

Arrangements are also in place to measure the impact of the multicultural celebration of the YIAD and Scotland's Winter Festivals 2016/17 (led by BEMIS Scotland) and also the Festival of Architecture (led by RIAS). The Scottish Government is also working with BEMIS Scotland to explore further opportunities to measure the success of the multicultural programme; any enhanced systems developed in partnership will have the potential to assist with measuring any future multi-cultural celebrations of the themed years as well as wider equality related actions.

Information on the engagement of young people in the year will be provided as part of the end of year report on the YIAD. The delivery, impact and lessons and learning for the equality related activity for the YIAD, such as the newsletter, will also be covered in the end of year report.