Exploring Community Festivals and Events

Allan Jepson, Alan Clarke, Allan Jepson, Alan Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317690849
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

The development of the festival and event industry has seen large scale growth and extensive government support as a result of objectives to enhance and project the image of place and leverage positive sponsorship and regeneration opportunities. As we move deeper into austerity measures prompted by economic recession, community festivals and events as a sacred or profane time of celebration can be considered even more important than ever before.

This book for the first time explores the role and importance of 'community', 'culture' and its impact through festivals and events. Split into two distinct sections, the first introduces key themes and concepts, contextualises local traditions and culture, and investigates how festivals and events can act as a catalyst for tourism and create a sense of community. It then questions the social and political nature of festivals and community events through examining their ownership. The second section focuses on communities themselves, seeking to examine and discuss key emerging themes in community event studies such as; the role of diaspora, imagined communities, pride and identity, history, producing and consuming space and place, authenticity, andmulti-ethnic communities. Examples are drawn from Portugal, the Dominican Republic, the USA, Malaysia, Malta, Finland and Australia making this book truly international.

This significant volume will be valuable reading for students and academics across the fields of Event, Tourism and Hospitality studies as well as other social science disciplines.

1 Defining and exploring community festivals and events

Allan Jepson and Alan Clarke

Events are deeply embedded within society and culture and, as a result of this, events create and re-create their histories which generate community values, customs and particular types of behaviour. This book, unlike any other, explores the role and importance of ‘community’, ‘culture’ and their impact through festivals and events. The genealogy of this text begins in conversations between the editors back in the last days of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. We were in what we considered to be a unique position to observe and participate in an attempt to develop a series of events, which was eventually branded a community festival, in our university city. The initial research was centred on a community cultural festival that was staged in Derby (UK) in the summer of 2002, the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee celebrations. The festival was unique in the United Kingdom, as it tried to encapsulate three major celebrations under the umbrella of ‘The Derby Jubilee Festival’. The City of Derby was celebrating 25 years since the Queen granted it city status in 1977, 50 years since the Queen acceded to the throne in 1952 and 75 years since Derby Cathedral was built in 1927 and the Church of England created the new Diocese of Derby, and with it ‘Cathedral Status’.

The original concept of the Derby Jubilee Festival came from the Dean of Derby Cathedral, who had the idea when he met representatives from 20 music and choral groups in Derby that perform regularly at the cathedral. The idea was partly generated by the lack of an original festival in Derby; the last official festival of any kind in Derby had taken place in 1996, and had been predominantly concerned with the arts and classical music. The main problems identified with this festival stemmed from the narrow focus of the events and it being considered elitist, which resulted in a large proportion of the surrounding local community not attending any of the events. It was thus decided to widen the scope of the proposed festival by incorporating the three key celebrations (25, 50 and 75) into one programme celebrating the diverse and burgeoning cultures in Derby.

However, there were another six notable celebrations that, we would hold, were also significant within the City of Derby: the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Derby Assembly Rooms in 1977; the 25th CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) Beer Festival; 200 years since the death of Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), grandfather of Charles Darwin; the 21st anniversary of ‘Royal Crown’ Derby; and the 10th anniversaries of the Queen’s Leisure Centre (opened by Queen Elizabeth II) and the Derby Heritage Centre. Although these events might be considered to be notable, they were to play little or no part in the formulation of the festival as the stakeholders focused on the ‘big three’ (Jepson & Clarke, 2005).

Our reading suggested that there were major issues surrounding the definition of culture and the types of culture that were approved as being worthy of inclusion. We also began to consider the nature of the ‘community’ that was being employed in the festival organisation. We moved to a position where we questioned both of the central terms. We had problems negotiating the imposition of a monocultural culture on a multicultural city by an elitist, middle-class, middle-aged minority. These reflections have led us to explore the complexities of both cultures and communities. We recognise that the discourses of identity are structured through those of gender, class and ethnicity and are fundamental to understanding the construction of the cultures and communities involved in the festivals and events that are often presented in their names.

It has been recognised that community festivals should be more than a series of loosely connected events, as can be seen in this definition provided by the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure in Northern Ireland:

A community festival is a series of events with a common theme and delivered within a defined time period. It is developed from within a community and should celebrate and positively promote what the community represents. Community festivals are about participation, involvement, and the creation of a sense of identity and are important in contributing to the social well being of a community. They must be initiated and led by a community organisation or a community-led partnership. It is not enough to run a festival for a community – the community must play a strong part in the development and delivery of the festival and have ownership of it.

(Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, 2007)

This definition calls into doubt the concept of development of community festivals, particularly when the power relations are considered. As we pointed out in one of our earlier articles (Clarke & Jepson, 2011, p. 8), political relations are significant to the creation of a festival because there are particular individuals who are the power-brokers of that community, ‘those who hold direct power over the festival and its construction’. A community festival is therefore constituted out of a complex set of power relations that nonetheless serve to define notions of belonging.

Our work (Clarke & Jepson, 2009, 2010, 2011; Clarke, Jepson, & Wiltshier, 2008; Jepson, 2009; Jepson & Clarke, 2005, 2013; Jepson, Clarke & Ragsdell, 2012) has developed a focus on the way decisions are taken in and around community festivals. We found that none of the previous definitions referenced the conditions that create a community festival and therefore proposed a more critical and comprehensive definition that sees community festivals as a:

Themed and inclusive community event or series of events which have been created as the result of an inclusive community planning process to celebrate the particular way of life of people and groups in the local community with emphasis on particular space and time.

(Jepson & Clarke, 2013)

We hope that this genealogy helps to explain the range of the key themes introduced into this book’s frame of reference, including: ‘culture, authenticity and meaning of local community events’; ‘the evolution and life cycle of local community events’; ‘community events as tourist attractions’; ‘the role and importance of community events’; and ‘community hospitality, foods and wine’.

The development of the festival and event industry alongside the globalisation of major sports events has seen large-scale growth and extensive government support as a result of objectives to enhance and project the image of place and leverage positive sponsorship and regeneration opportunities, all with an overarching aim to ensure place competitiveness. As we move deeper into austerity measures as the result of worldwide economic recession, community festivals and events as ‘a sacred or profane time of celebration’ (Falassi, 1987, p. 2) can be considered even more important than ever. Particularly as festivals offer all stakeholders an opportunity to ‘celebrate community values, ideologies, identity and continuity’ (ibid.). As a social cultural phenomenon festivals can be seen as prime manifestations of the experience economy (Pine & Gilmore, 1999) as they entertain, educate, hold aesthetic value and provide the platform for escapism. Farber (1983, cited in Getz, 1991) investigated festivals and public celebrations and learned much about a community’s symbolic, economic, political and social life. This book will be unique in the marketplace and has the possibility to take the lead in modules at undergraduate and postgraduate level where modules explore community involvement and importance within events. This edited collection aims to explore community festivals and events from various perspectives to elaborate their meanings.

Part I: Exploring and defining the context of community festivals and events

The ‘explorations’ section of the book introduces key themes and concepts that help to define community festivals and events. It seeks to explore and contextualise local traditions and culture and how community festivals and events can act as a catalyst for tourism, as well as create a sense of identity and community. This part also begins to question the social and political nature of festivals and community events through examining their ownership. The case studies in Part I are taken from community festivals and events in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Dominican Republic, Italy and Finland.

Part I begins with a fascinating study on the history and meanings of festivity by Vern Biaett (Chapter 2). There is no denying that community festivals have evolved into well planned and executed commercial organisms, but, Biaett asks, where is the fun and can there not be more? A riposte to this paradox suggests that while the physical, emotional and collaborative energy that goes into planning and producing the financial, marketing and operational aspects leads to expanded social capital for the organizers, the typical, mostly unimaginative, spectator aspects of community festival activity programming fail to adequately achieve similar results for their visitors. Real festivity is much more, having originated in the spiritualism of our distant ancestors, expressed in the performing and dramatic arts of rhythmic chanting and dancing to loud bass beats, as well as the visual art forms of costumes, masks and decoration, all combining to produce a sense of wild abandonment in the participants. It is these types of activities that get people out of their chairs and physically, emotionally and collaboratively engaged in social interaction; these types of activities that can develop and increase social capital; and these types of activities that event producers must acquire a deeper understanding and sensitivity about en route to luminal, authentic festivity. Event management must also have the aspiration and/or the knowledge to provide festivity.

Biaett also proposes that although a festival can be defined in context as a noun, a temporary happening or occurrence, he argues that it possesses a much more significant meaning as a verb, a word of action in the sense that it creates something, and part of that something could be social capital for attendees. Event producers who manage the economic, promotional and operations aspects of community festivals, however, with increased emphasis on programmed festivity also have the opportunity to manage larger social impacts.

This chapter is followed by Maarit Kinnunen and Antti Haahti in Chapter 3 offering insights into the experience of community festivals and events from Finnish summer festivals. The chapter focuses on two related questions: how do festival visitors perceive and experience the place and the locality of the venue of the festival? And, how do the local inhabitants view the festival taking place in their home community?

When visitors were asked to imagine an event that would be ‘totally ruined’, the key feature was the absence of residents and local characteristics of the community. It is the local people and the tastes and smells of local food that give the event its authenticity and the personal touch that makes it memorable.

The authors suggest three clusters within the experience. Young crowd-lovers like to hang out, seek to have fun in their rock festival and to share their experiences, mementos and feelings on social media. Active universalists are conscious consumers willing to spend more money than others, and much of it on local produce. Their choice of events is the most versatile of all the groups. Modest traditionalists are the oldest of the participants, and they favour both local and fair trade products. They are not interested in mobile, location-based or other technical services and they shun social media.

Chapter 4 sees Michelle Duffy and Judith Mair take us all the way to Australia in order to explore the issues surrounding festivals and the sense of community. They observe that many local councils have invested substantial resources into community events and festivals with the expectation that they will produce a range of social and economic benefits. Much of the research on festivals has begun with the underlying premise that such events sustain social benefits through their economic implications. However, recent work has begun to understand festivals as a way of ‘performing’ or ‘doing’ community. Festivals are inherently about celebrating community and are understood as community-building activities. Yet, these are complex, potentially divisive processes, and raise many issues, such as what is ‘the community’ being celebrated at festivals? Using a case study approach, the chapter focuses on the annual Yakkerboo Festival, held in Pakenham, a once-rural community near Melbourne that is now undergoing processes of rapid urbanisation.

In Chapter 5, Margherita Pedrana draws our attention to continental Europe, as her examination deals with the combinations of new and old traditions in the construction of the experiences of the Skieda, in Livigno, Italy. Community events are often based on traditions and on the social need to be interconnected with each other, creating and maintaining the sense of ownership of a community or a place. However, community events may also have other functions. The local community in Livigno is strongly connected to tourism, which is the main economic resource along with retail (it is also a duty-free area). The event is a full week of festivals based on the telemark style of skiing. Telemark is based on a traditional skiing technique, and is also how the old Livigno inhabitants used to ski, with a free heel. The success of the discipline and of the event thus depends on the local community, which started to understand how the old traditions may also be important in the future and give the community a competitive advantage in attracting new tourists.

Chapter 6, by Jodie George, Rosie Roberts and Jessica Pacella, asks ‘Whose Festival?’ They explore questions of participation, access and ownership in regional festivals. They begin from a recognition that much of the literature within tourism and event studies highlights the important contribution of regional festivals to local communities in terms of social cohesion, regional identity and fiscal viability (Bell & Jayne, 2010; Brennan-Horley, Connell & Gibson, 2007; Getz & Andersson, 2008; Gibson & Stewart, 2009; Gibson, Waitt, Walmsley & Connell, 2010; Gorman-Murray et al., 2008). These questions sit within a context where government bodies in particular have adopted an instrumentalist approach, prompting rural communities to develop economic self-sufficiency, in part through the promotion of festivals as a tourist space. The resulting commodification of community events as a space of consumption may have problematic outcomes in practice, raising questions about whose versions of ‘community’ are recognised, legitimated and institutionalised through the discourses of event tourism. This chapter extends critical tourism and event studies literature by further unpacking the emergence of competing discourses of ‘place’ in regional and rural areas, disentangling the ways in which rurality is constructed, experienced and legitimated. Through participants’ diverse stories of ‘place’, the authors’ research reveals the complex ways in which festivals construct local cultures for both residents and visitors and how these individuals in turn contribute to shaping festivals through their own participatory practices.

Part II: Exploring and defining community festival and event communities

This part builds on the first by focusing on the communities themselves. It seeks to examine and discuss key emerging themes in community event studies such as: the role of diaspora, imagined communities, pride and identity, history, producing and consuming space and place, authenticity, multi-ethnic communities. Examples are drawn internationally fro...