How it works?

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I know that for some communities the arts can be the glue that holds them together.

The Arts Debate, Arts Council England 2007

Jargon Buster

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Event

What does this mean?

A discrete, one-off happening such as an exhibition, performance or participative workshop.

The plural of ‘event’ is a series or run.However, there are potential tensions here between this definition and the term ‘event’ as it tends to be used by ticketing system suppliers.For details on this please see the protocols section.

How did we get this definition?

In its definition section this resource defines an ‘event’ as: ‘a discrete, one-off happening such as an exhibition, performance or participative workshop. The plural of event is a series or run.’.

However, this is potentially in contradiction to a convention used by a number of box office system suppliers. Here ‘event’ is used to signify an offering or production which, when allocated to a specific space, place and time, becomes known as ‘a performance’.

This document’s recommendation – that a discrete ‘one off’ happening should be referred to as ‘an event’ – is made because this seems in keeping with common parlance.

Related and similar definitions

Consequently it is proposed that when talking or writing about a ‘real world’ event (as meant by common parlance) this should be called ‘an event’. However, if something that is a system supplier convention is being discussed, this should be termed a ‘system event’. Alternatively the suppliers might be encouraged to change their terminology.