Bernadette Quinn

This paper is concerned with the role that urban cultural festivals play in enhancing the quality and vitality of social life. It acknowledges that their reputation has become tarnished in recent years and that festivals now frequently feature in debates because they are charged with inciting tensions, exclusions and contestations. However, of note here is that cities tend to narrowly conceive of festivals as temporarily bounded moments of commodifiable spectacle. The fact that festivals function, on an ongoing manner, as embedded, sustained practices capable of supporting urban social living in numerous ordinary ways is rarely acknowledged, much less prioritised. This paper tries to shift prevailing thinking by advocating an understanding of festivals as embedded socio‐cultural practices. Specifically, it argues that festivals can be conceived as social infrastructure that comprise distinct but entirely inter‐connected components: material/built forms, socio‐cultural materialities and immaterialities constructed through year‐round practices and, social spaces constructed and enhanced in the moment of their staging. As well as underscoring the societal importance of festivals, using infrastructure as a framing idea helps develop a better understanding of how festivals function to support the socio‐cultural well‐being, vitality and engagement of urban dwellers.

The geographic literature on festivals and events has expanded rapidly since Hall and Page (Geography and the study of events. In S. J. Page & J. Connell (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Event Studies, 2014) described event studies as a young study area ten years ago. The significant expansion in research output on the topic reflects the fact that as Frost (Anthropology and festivals: Festival ecologies. Ethnos 81(4), 2016: 569) notes, events like ‘festivals and carnivals are significant contemporary phenomena in societies across the world'. For several decades now, geographical research has focused on investigating the complex relationships between festivals and events, and the core geographic concepts of place, space and to a lesser extent, environment. It reveals how festivals and events are obvious examples of the kinds of activities that endow space with the significance that turns it into the kind of place where people want to spend time engaging in activities that promote well-being, facilitate self-expression and the formation of identities. In transforming space from the everyday into the extraordinary, festivals and events represent transformative experiences and facilitate passage into the kind of liminal spaces that allow people to refresh and re-energise. This chapter contributes by reflecting on how recent geographic work has contributed to theorising and furthering understandings of festivals and events, and by considering emerging developments in the literature.

In a highly globalised, competitive world, urban strategies often highlight festivals and events as activities which can attract tourists and investors, extend the tourism season and boost the economy. Event tourism as a term is now well established in the tourism lexicon, however, it is usually employed in quite a limited way that offers only partial insights into a complex phenomenon. To redress this deficit, this paper examines the case of Dublin, where for the last twenty-five years, policy makers have been using festivals and events to boost the city’s international standing. The aim is to investigate whether policy makers can strategically use events to further tourism goals while simultaneously fostering socio-cultural development more broadly. Methodologically, the study reported undertakes a detailed, critical analysis of public policy documents that relate festivals and events to tourism. It finds a range of policy perspectives at play but overall, there is a clear tendency for festivals and events to be framed through an urban entrepreneurial lens that under-appreciates social and cultural issues. In contrast, a second set of findings reported from primary research undertaken at one of the main tourism-oriented festivals in the city show how festival experiences can generate enjoyment, sociability, pride, inclusion and belonging for both tourists and other city users alike, while simultaneously producing economic returns. Together, the findings of the policy analysis and the empirical case point to the need to re-think how events and tourism intersect to achieve optimal outcomes, especially in these post pandemic times when cities the world over are searching for more sustainable tourism futures. The study recommends that event tourism policy making adopt broader, more holistic terms of reference and suggests that lessons from practice could be employed to inform better policies. Keywords: festivals and events; tourism; public policy; socio-cultural development; inclusion; Dublin.

Cultivating places and spaces to encourage sociality and foster sociocultural inclusion is a very pertinent societal challenge. Community festivals are often marshalled in the interest of making cities more hospitable for the increasing numbers of migrants, refugees, remote workers and tourists internationally on the move. This study investigates if and how community festivals are constructing hospitality through their practices. The findings are drawn from a qualitative study of two community festivals in Dublin’s North East Inner City, an ethnically diverse area characterized by social disadvantage. They suggest that community festivals can make places more hospitable. However, the approaches taken to inculcating hospitality can differ substantially. Here, the two study festivals were found to differ in terms of how they extended welcome and exerted social control, how they constructed the host-guest dynamic and how they operationalized the concept of gifting. Overall, the findings encourage further analysis of festivals using the concept of hospitality.

During the COVID lockdowns of 2020/21, the transmission of live or recorded concerts grew exponentially as festival makers embraced digital technologies to a greater degree. Investigating how this digital pivot interrupted festival-making practices is now important given that online and hybrid modes will potentially be used in conjunction with in-person events in the future. This task has relevance for rural areas where digital infrastructures can be under-developed. Yet, place-based, community-organised festivals can play a significant role in sustaining local communities. In this context, we explore the recent digital programming practices of music festivals in West Cork, Ireland. Methodologically, the study adopted a qualitative research design and generated data from fieldwork observations and in-depth interviews with festival practitioners in West Cork. This area was chosen for study because it is characterised by intensive arts and festival activity, high tourism activity, and a significant level of social change. The findings show that the ability of festivals to move practices online was variable and highly resource dependent. Overall, they suggest that in times of crisis the role of festivals became even more important than normal. Festivals played an important role in sustaining social connectivity, cultural participation and employment, with festival organisations demonstrating a strong sense of care and responsibility towards participants.

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University of Westminster Press (UWP) is an open access publisher of peer-reviewed academic journals and books. Our principle focus is to ensure that publications are freely available to as wide an audience as possible, so that researchers around the world can find and access the information they need without barriers. We publish in the social sciences and humanities, science and technology, media arts and design, business, architecture and the built environment. For more information on our publishing practices, or guidance on how to propose a book or journal title, click here. This chapter introduces the Festivals and the City book, outlining its origins and development during a period dominated by the Coronavirus pandemic. The opening sections provide an overview of the key themes addressed by the book and the various cases and festival/event genres it covers. There is also an introduction to the Chapter structure of the book and the four key sections contained within it. This chapter also introduces some of the key ideas and key issues covered by the book. There is a review of the contemporary use and meaning of the term festival; which provides the basis for an extended discussion about the ways festivals are now incorporated into urban strategies. The core argument – that festivals are now regarded and used a tool to assist municipal authorities with various policy objectives ­– is illustrated through sections which address the value of geographical analyses of urban festivals, the ways festivals have been used in city making, and the related festivalisation of urban spaces. Ultimately, the chapter argues that festivalisation is inevitable in an era where festivals and events have been earmarked as ways of addressing a range of policy objectives from city marketing to social inclusion.

In an increasingly digital age public libraries have had to adapt to rapid changes in how information is produced, disseminated and consumed. This has led to questions about whether their physical presence matters any longer. In addition, they have been subjected to public funding cuts which seem likely to be exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic as demands on the public purse intensify. In terms of governance, as with other public spaces, there are signs of a move away from direct state involvement to arrangements involving a range of social actors. Developments like this which see the state reduce its oversight and involvement with public spaces have generally been interpreted negatively. In this context, Capillé (2017, 409) noted the importance of investigating the ‘publicness of public libraries and their value for society’. This chapter reports the findings of a study investigating the kinds of publicness that libraries foster. Empirically, it used a qualitative open-ended survey tool to gather data from people attending Dublin Festival of History events at six local libraries. The findings yield insight into people’s library usage, their understanding of the local library as a public space and the role that festivals and events play in opening it up to wider use. While the libraries studied create public spaces where groups of like-minded people can easily gather, reproduce shared meanings and generally feel included, they are not engaging for everyone. Study participants felt that libraries are under-valued and that barriers to accessing the public space of the local library are very real.

This concluding chapter reflects on some of the key themes highlighted by previous chapters, but it also aims to look forward by examining how city festivals and festival cities may develop in the future. The chapter explores one of the most important dimensions of the book – the ways festivals and events might help to produce more inclusive public spaces. The authors explore whether the social and cultural value of festivals may be (re)prioritised over the economic agenda which has dominated in recent years. The contested nature of city festivals and urban festive spaces is also discussed at length, and the chapter also covers the importance of analyses that can capture the affective and sensorial effects of urban festivity. This provides the basis for a wider review of the methods employed by the authors of the chapters that feature in the book. Inevitably, given the timing of the book, there is also an attempt to highlight the implications of the Coronavirus pandemic, and the ways that urban festivity may be affected in the medium and longer terms. The chapter concludes by summarising the contribution of the book, and by making some suggestions for future research that would help us to better understand the relationships between festivals, public spaces and social inclusion.

Social scientists across several disciplines have long recognised the need to investigate and understand the extent to which festivals and events are socially, culturally and politically constructe...