Rebecca Finkel

A picture of the contemporary combined arts festival landscape

The last 10–15 years has seen the rapid growth of festivals in Britain and overseas. This article examines the current situation of combined arts festivals in the UK in an effort to understand what the British festival environment looks like in the early years of the new millennium. A number of questions present themselves regarding the history and development of the current festival structure, the number of festivals, their size, distribution, audiences, geographical locations, programming content, duration, seasonality, influences, objectives, future plans and so forth. Combined arts festivals are defined as those containing more than one genre of arts, e.g., Edinburgh International Festival. Research methods include a survey questionnaire sent to 117 UK combined arts festivals (56 per cent response rate) to discern audience demographics, programming history, funding and future plans. In-depth interviews were also conducted with festival organizers. Based on survey data, it is argued that a homogeneous combined arts festival “type” is developing and replicating across the country. This argument is supported by the similarity in programming choices and festival format of a majority of the festivals surveyed. One of the main reasons for the increasing formulaic approach to festival programming and design is the increasing competition for funding as public and private funding sources expect combined arts festivals to achieve socio-economic targets and become more sustainable from one year to the next. This can be seen to be contributing to the increasing professionalism of combined arts festival organization, which has resulted in the majority of combined arts festival directors favouring “safe” content options that emulate the successes of several large, long-established festivals. Such an approach has had detrimental effects on the creativity of the arts festival landscape on the whole and may also be altering the symbolic meanings of festivals for communities and places.

Dancing around the ring of fire: Social capital, tourism resistance, and gender dichotomies at up Helly Aa in Lerwick, Shetland.

This article explores the linkages between community events and a rise in community social capital by analyzing a case study of the Up Helly Aa fire festival in Lerwick, Shetland. Through ritually repeated action that now translates as tradition, Up Helly Aa interprets and reinterprets what it means to be a Shetlander. It relies on personal donations and local businesses for funding, and this financial self-reliance can be seen to permit exclusionary actions towards visitors and reaffirm notions of traditionally constructed gender roles. This article examines the complex negotiations that take place during the festival surrounding gender, identity, heritage, tourism, and belonging to a place. It concludes that given the physical and social landscape in which the festival occurs, the reutilization of community celebration and fostering of community identity cannot be discounted despite Up Helly Aas less than politically correct approaches to inclusionary participation and tourism development.

‘Being an academic is not a 9–5 job’: long working hours and the ‘ideal worker’ in UK academia

The deregulation of working time has been occurring over recent decades. Academia is one of the many industries that can be characterised by a long hours work culture and intensification of work. This is significant given the negative effects of such a work culture on the physical and mental health and well-being of workers. Using evidence from two UK-based qualitative studies, this paper begins to explore the causes and effects of academic long hours work culture further. It has a particular focus on the extent to which the long hours culture is a result of cultural and structural changes in higher education, which have led to an increased focus on performance and outcome measures. It queries whether this is also shaped by more personal factors, such as the desire to excel and blurred boundaries between work and leisure, whereby the pursuit of knowledge may be a source of leisure for academics. It finds that while individual factors contribute to the long hours culture, these factors are shaped by cultural norms and pressures to cultivate a perception of the ‘ideal academic’ within an increasingly target-driven and neoliberal environment.

Re-imaging arts festivals through a corporate lens: a case study of business sponsorship at the Henley Festival.

This paper explores the impacts commercialisation processes have on contemporary arts festivals by analysing their increasing reliance on private sector funding sources, such as business sponsorship. A case study of the Henley Festival demonstrates the effects that being primarily dependent on corporate subsidies can have on the ‘look and feel’ of a festival. Research methods include a survey sent to 117 UK arts festival organisers to discern audience demographics, programming, funding and future plans. Case study methods include in-depth interviews with the Artistic Director and Marketing Director of the Henley Festival, as well as participant and direct observation of the festival, which was recorded in a personal research diary. Main conclusions suggest that the Henley Festival is exclusionary for many of the local population and classical arts enthusiasts, who are often alienated from the festival as a result of its emphasis on garnering corporate support and providing corporate entertainment.

Introduction to Special Issue on Social Justice & Events-related Policy

This special issue showcases policy research focusing on social justice and planned events and stems from the reality that the events industry has become truly globalised and more countries with various approaches to civil rights and cultural equity are investing more and more in large-scale events.

Accessibility, Inclusion, and Diversity in Critical Event Studies

Local authorities are increasingly turning to festivals to try to encompass difference by creating welcoming, inclusive, and accessible communities. However, scholars have critiqued this notion, arguing that rather than encouraging diversity, such festivals may rather reproduce and disguise power relationships, leading not to increased tolerance, but rather to tensions and heightened differences. This chapter uses the concept of ‘encounter’ to draw together common themes that have emerged from the many studies of festivals that the authors have undertaken. The chapter initially identifies that ‘community’ is a contested term; therefore, festivals and events that rely solely on place-based conceptualisations of community are potentially marginalising other forms of community. Secondly, the chapter draws attention to the ‘paradox of difference’. For example, while multicultural festivals may be staged to increase tolerance of diversity, such festivals may actually be contributing to disharmony or divergence by positioning different cultures as ‘the other’. Similarly, festivals that bring an increased awareness of classed, educational, and financial divides in a community may actually be highlighting disadvantage. Festivals may increase meaningful social encounters and interactions, but they need to be planned and managed carefully to ensure such positive outcomes are realised.

GOVERNING MAJOR EVENT LEGACY: CASE OF THE GLASGOW 2014 COMMONWEALTH GAMES

This article explores the emerging importance of planning and governance surrounding the concept of event legacy by focusing on an in-depth case study of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Given the long-term nature of the concept of legacy, the need for planned and thorough pre-, during, and post-Games management is essential if legacy outcomes are to be monitored effectively. Research method employed for this study consist of in-depth interviews (n = 14) with policy makers, organizers, and local community associations who were involved with legacy planning and implementation for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. The findings present Glasgows legacy approach as an advancement in the understanding of legacy governance and planning in relation to critical event management. By designing and implementing legacy governance structures at an early stage, each stakeholder role is established and can be monitored while allowing for some flexibility within the legacy management partnerships. In addition, the notion of a partnership legacy can be seen to have grown from innovative legacy governance structures, such as collaborative working and network creation, put in place by Glasgow in the early stages of legacy planning, which can act as a model of best practice for other major event host destinations.

Diversifying the creative: Creative work, creative industries, creative identities:

The call to ‘diversify the creative’ invokes critical engagements with both the concept of ‘diversity’ and that of the ‘creative’. The two have been yoked together in policy discourses which position creative industries as a panacea for economic decline, especially in regions where traditional industries were failing (Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), 2001). These have migrated from the United Kingdom across a range of other national and regional spaces, mutating as they travel (Flew, 2012; Prince, 2010). In the United Kingdom, diversity policies have been explicitly linked to the hope that creative industries would provide employment to marginalised groups, addressing social diversity in terms of equal access to work and of cultural inclusion and exclusion (Oakley, 2006). Creative labour has increasingly been recognised as work, with governmental technologies accounting for creative subjects x in data sets where earnings and occupations can be surveyed. The evidence so far – drawing on this same official data – is that this hope has largely been unfulfilled (Hesmondhalgh et al., 2015). Critical diversity scholars have addressed this failure and the nuanced processes by which it is achieved across a range of creative occupations. Triumphalist claims about a new ‘creative class’ (Florida, 2002) are undercut by critical empirical studies showing continuing patterns of class, gender and racial inequalities (Leslie and Catungal,

Participatory Research: Case Study of a Community Event

This chapter sets out the main methodological approaches for participatory research in an events context, including various methods which can be employed. Participatory research often involves multiple instruments and techniques and is often utilised in conjunction with mixed methods, such as interviews, focus groups, and/or surveys. One of the key elements of participatory research is the equitable partnership approaches to planning and conducting the research in conjunction with community members and/or community-based organisations (Bergold, Participatory strategies in community psychology research: A short survey. In A. Bokszczanin (Ed.), Poland welcomes community psychology: Proceedings from the 6th European Conference on Community Psychology (pp. 57–66). Opole: Opole University Press, 2007). Participatory research views research participants as experts in the field of study and, as such, involves them in the knowledge-production process; thus, research projects are co-designed from inception through to completion (Gyi, Sang, & Haslam, Ergonomics, 56(1), 45–58, 2013). This can be applied to events studies by examining the culture of the event through observation, participation, stakeholder meetings, collective reflection and analysis, and other sensory and visual techniques. The ‘group’ and ‘culture’ being examined are the events audiences and environments. Although events are temporary in nature, anthropological and sociological frameworks can still apply. This has been successfully done in a few events studies through the years (see Finkel, Unicycling at Land’s End: Case study of the Lafrowda Festival of St Just, Cornwall. In J. Ali-Knight & D. Chambers (Eds.), Case studies in festival and event marketing and cultural tourism. Leisure Studies Association Journal, 2(92), 129–145, 2006; Goldblatt, Events and management. In R. Finkel, D. McGillivray, G. McPherson, & P. Robinson (Eds.), Research themes for events (pp. 78–89). Oxford: CABI, 2013) and can be considered a viable and useful methodological approach for events researchers and students to employ for impactful and relevant research. A case study is set out based on participatory research conducted at a community event located near Edinburgh, Scotland. The research is based on stakeholder meetings, survey questionnaires, collection of visual data including photos and videos of the event environment and visitors’ experiences, and the researchers’ personal observations and interactions. This can be considered an apt and accessible example for demonstrating this kind of methodology, as community events highlight the societal, economic, and cultural dimensions and discourses of events studies. It also democratises the research process; research is conducted with participants, rather than on a community.