Boram Lee

Purpose: This paper examines how the Huilo Huilo Music Festival in Chile shapes career pathways and professional learning for emerging classical musicians. It analyses how its programming, festivalscapes and community engagement constitute a learning ecology and sociomaterial environment that function as intermediation, legitimising artistic practice, building career capital and supporting entry into international music networks through Latin American and Global South circuits of recognition rather than Eurocentric gatekeeping. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative case study drew on 81 Instagram reels posted between 2022 and 2025, alongside festival website materials, public documents, organisational participation data and news coverage. Reels were analysed primarily for their spoken and narrative content, supported by observation of visual context such as background settings. Forty-one reels contained 70 interview segments with participants and stakeholders, with several individuals appearing multiple times, including the festival directors, instructors and participating musicians. Materials were transcribed and analysed to examine how the festival operates as an intermediary that supports emerging Latin American musicians' career development locally, regionally and internationally, and how it constructs and communicates educational, professional and community value. Findings: Huilo Huilo Music Festival operates as a cultural intermediary, assembling a four-part learning ecology. It builds cultural infrastructure by addressing access gaps via territorial embedding, school outreach and regional connectivity. It cultivates disciplined capability through compressed routines, standards, feedback and confidence under pressure. It enacts place-based learning in Patagonia, where landscape, nature and supports, including luthier work, shape focus, affect regulation and artistic meaning. It brokers careers through prizes, residencies, post-festival performances and endorsement, turning recognition into mobility and career capital. Narratives shift from Chile–Brussels validation to participant-centred Latin American identity and Global South recognition. Research limitations/implications: The analysis relies on secondary and curated digital data, without primary data collection. This constrains triangulation and limits access to learning processes that occur beyond what organisers and participants choose to share. Although the dataset supports longitudinal analysis of the festival's development over time, it cannot capture participants' post-festival trajectories, which are essential for assessing longer-term career development and the durability of intermediation effects. Future research should combine on-site observation with follow-up interviews and longer-term tracking of artists' pathways, alongside attention to local cultural change and the consolidation of Latin American music networks. Practical implications: Festival organisers and policymakers can position music festivals as long-term talent development infrastructures by designing them as intentional learning ecologies. This requires continuity across editions through sequenced training pathways, sustained mentoring, peer collaboration and embedded reflective practice rather than treating development as optional. Place can be mobilised as a pedagogical resource, with the natural environment supporting concentration, well-being and artistic sensibility, while strengthening local engagement, access pathways and locally grounded cultural capital. At the network level, the festival can consolidate Latin American brokerage through equitable partnerships, transparent credentialing and alumni tracking and narratives of excellence that resist Eurocentric hierarchies. Originality/value: This paper reframes the Huilo Huilo Music Festival as a learning ecology that shapes emerging musicians' professional formation through intertwined pedagogical, organisational and place-based mechanisms. It extends festival intermediation theory by showing how a rural festival operates simultaneously as a mentoring ecosystem and a broker that connects local, regional and international music networks. By situating the case within Chilean and Latin American cultural and policy conditions, it clarifies why the festival matters and what becomes possible and contested, in this specific environment.

Purpose: The study examines the current state of access and inclusion provisions at international performing arts festivals by asking, “How can performing arts festivals create accessible and inclusive spaces to enhance the representation and empowerment of people with disabilities?”Design/methodology/approach: As a case study, the research focuses on two performing arts festivals in South Australia: the Adelaide Festival and the Adelaide Fringe, both established in 1960. The Adelaide Festival is a curated event, while the Adelaide Fringe operates as an open-access festival. Using qualitative methods, the study examines secondary data, including the 2024 festival programmes, access guides, impact reports and other relevant documents, such as news articles and critics’ reviews and conducts a comparative content analysis.Findings: Implementing an effective access and inclusion plan for people with disabilities in performing arts festivals is challenging due to the diverse nature of disabilities, which demands careful consideration and consultation. A comparison of two Adelaide-based festivals highlights various initiatives designed to create welcoming spaces, challenge ableist biases and support the professional growth of artists with disabilities. While both festivals have made significant strides, there is room for improvement in better accommodating people with disabilities, reflecting the agency of artists with disabilities in programming and decision-making, and actively gathering and sharing audience feedback on the effectiveness of their provisions and the impact of disability-led arts in the broader arts and culture sector.Originality/value: The access and inclusion provisions of two international performing arts festivals contribute to theoretical discussions and offer practical guidance for professionals, serving as both a moral compass and a blueprint.

The paper investigates how online platforms achieve legitimacy in the context of art securitization. Art securitization platforms are new ventures in the art market that leverage blockchain technology to enable fractional ownership of art, thereby increasing liquidity and accessibility for online investors. While traditional art market intermediaries, such as auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s, face legitimacy challenges like price-fixing issues, new intermediaries, such as art securitization platforms, require legitimacy with investors in order to secure a primary source of stability and survival in the art market. This study investigates how four leading art securitization platforms, Maecenas, Masterworks, Otis, and Artory achieve legitimacy with investors in the art market. We analyze both the art securitization platforms’ 6306 social media posts to decode their legitimacy-achieving approaches and draw on the positivity of 2510 post comments to measure how their legitimacy is perceived by investors. Our findings suggest that highlighting technological distinctiveness and entrepreneurial identity aids art platforms in achieving legitimacy, despite raising concerns among conservative investors. Positive legitimacy judgements are also awarded by investors to platforms that conform to stakeholders’ expected levels of return, transparency, and security.

For newly graduated art school students to become professional artists in the long-term, self-sustaining income-generating practices beyond selling their art are often required. We focus on how a prestigious annual contemporary art exhibition contributes to the professionalization process through its ability to synthesize market production and consumption activities involving the exhibiting artists, art schools, partnering organizations, and members of the public. The exhibition acts as a platform for the professionalization of the newly graduated art school students. We recommend that art school students graduate with both artistic creative competencies and a range of embedded entrepreneurial skills relating to networking, idea generation, and creativity in order for them to sustain their professional artist status. Sustained institutional, peer, and wider network support for artists is required if they are to survive professionally, economically, and artistically. Our work also informs theory and practice in the wider cultural landscape, including cultural entrepreneurship.

The demand for professional recognition for artists with disability is growing. There is little research, however, on the ways in which disability arts are associated with professionalism. This study examines professionalization in disability arts by comparing it with the concept of professionalization in the arts generally. It identifies three components of professionalization in disability arts by means of a case study of an inclusive arts organization. This qualitative study entails 17 semi-structured interviews with artists, staff members, and other stakeholders both with and without disabilities. The results identify both commonalities and differences in the components of professionalization between artists with and without disability and indicate challenges to be met in improving public perceptions toward the professionalization of artists with disability.

Taking a management perspective in the field of philanthropy, this study examines 12 Australian major performing arts organizations over 19 years (2000–2018), which were identified as vulnerable and struggling with overreliance on public grants. Underpinned by theories that integrate understandings of external and internal resource management—resource dependence theory and the resource-based view—we uncover insights into what drives the increase in their philanthropic income. Using data from 228 annual reports and interviews, we present an original taxonomy that identifies organization-donor relationships and organizational efforts in nurturing philanthropy. We uncovered the interplays between donor engagement and positioning philanthropic staff in terms of organizational structure. Longitudinal financial and narrative data demonstrate that external resource management through donor engagement and internal resource management through organization structure emphasizing philanthropy have a significant impact on the growth of organizational philanthropic income.