Arts Festivals and the City

There has been a remarkable rise in the number of urban arts festivals in recent decades. The outcomes of cities\u27 engagement with arts festivals, however, remain little understood, particularly in social and cultural terms. This article reviews existing literature on urban festivals and argues that city authorities tend to disregard the social value of festivals and to construe them simply as vehicles of economic generation or as \u27quick fix\u27 solutions to city image problems. While such an approach renders certain benefits, it is ultimately quite limiting. If arts festivals are to achieve their undoubted potential in animating communities, celebrating diversity and improving quality of life, then they must be conceived of in a more holistic way by urban managers. Currently, the tasks of conceptualising the problems at issue and devising appropriate policies are hampered by the scarcity of empirical research conducted in the area

Symbols, Practices and Myth-Making: Cultural Perspectives on the Wexford Festival Opera

In recent decades geographers have paid increasing attention to festivals. They have construed festivals as important practices through which people connect with their place and as authored landscapes designed to promote particular sets of values and attach specific meanings to place. Tourism influences the processes and dynamics ongoing in festival settings and this paper seeks to unravel some of the complex ways in which it influences the reproduction of cultural meanings there. It draws on research conducted on the Wexford Festival Opera in the Republic of Ireland and analyses the symbolism, practices and meanings found to be associated with the festival. It discusses how ‘official’ festival meanings sought to balance élitism with inclusivity, and international appeal with local support but identifies a contrasting set of ‘unofficial’ meanings being communicated through the attitudes and practices evident in the local population. Tourism’s role was found to be critical in reproducing ‘official’ meanings and in sustaining myths encasing the festival

Care-Givers, Leisure and the Meaning of Home: a Case study of Low Income Women in Dublin

This article seeks to contribute to the literature on the meanings of domestic spaces by furthering understandings of the sorts of roles that space plays in shaping women’s leisure experiences. The study researched a group of 15 women who live in disadvantaged areas of Dublin city and care for dependent children. Focus groups and structured conversations revealed the poverty of the spatial capital available to these women, depicting local environments as difficult and stressful, and to be endured rather than enjoyed. They further revealed the extent to which the women’s lives were shaped by their obligations as care-givers. Within the home itself, private domestic spaces were found to be deeply embedded with powerful ideologies of motherhood that did not necessarily evaporate in the simple absence of obligations imposed by children. Instead, they tended to serve as constant reminders of how things ‘should be’, consequently constraining some women’s abilities to divest themselves of care-giving duties and engage in self-focused recreation. Some of the women studied were able to move beyond obligation, and for them leisure represented modest yet significant opportunities to self-determinedly relax, reclaim and even luxuriate in certain spaces within their homes. Similarly, once relieved of childcaring responsibilities, leisure encounters within the local environment afforded some women new insights into familiar spaces

A comment on: arts festivals, urban tourism and cultural policy

When I wrote the 2010 article \u27Arts Festivals, Urban Tourism and Cultural Policy\u27 for the special issue of JPRTL&E in 2010, the focus on the ‘urban’ in the brief that I was given very much reflected the prominent attention being given to festivals and events in urban contexts at that time (Johansson & Kociatkiewicz, 2011; Stevens & Shin, 2012). I start this brief comment now by noting that this imbalance in the literature is being addressed by a recent rise of research interest in the arts, including festivals, in rural areas (including forthcoming special issues/sections in the Journal of Rural Studies and Sociologica Ruralis). This is a welcome development because festivals in rural areas, although associated with enhanced human and social capital (Wilks & Quinn, 2016), entrepreneurial activity (Pickernell, O’Sullivan, Senyard, & Keast, 2007), economic development and regeneration (Gibson & Connell, 2011), have been under-researched. Meanwhile, arts festivals also continue to proliferate in cities across and beyond developed economies (Slabbert & Vivier, 2013). They remain a mainstay of urban landscapes, and feature strongly in urban development, urban regeneration and urban tourism policies. While an extensive literature on festivals produced in many different disciplines conceives of festivals as very positive endeavours with a wealth of cultural, social and economic potential, the prevalent instrumental use of arts festivals in both urban and rural contexts continues to generate a range of contested reactions. Fundamentally, underpinning the critical perspectives in this literature are Harvey’s (2001) questions about whose aesthetics, whose collective memory, and whose interests are being served when arts festivals are harnessed, in a ‘creative cities’ paradigm, to further urban regeneration and development. Critical perspectives in festival and event studies addressing these kinds of questions have become more prevalent since 2010 (e.g. Finkel, 2010; McLean, 2018; Stevenson, 2016) and this has to be seen as a healthy development. In Lundberg, Armbrecht, Andersson, and Getz (2017), the question of value (all kinds of value) is placed centre stage and scrutinised with the aid of a framework produced by Andersson, Armbrecht, and Lundberg (2012). This distinguishes between both intrinsic and extrinsic values and individual and societal values, and is helpful in trying to analyse and understand the very important question of who derives benefits from festivals

Festivals and the COVID-19 pandemic: creative responses, threats and opportunities

The COVID 19 pandemic severely disrupted the workings of the festival and event sector in Ireland during 2020 and into 2021 as government regulations prohibited gatherings of people, and public health advice advocated social distancing. Many festivals and events were forced to cancel or postpone their plans, but others were able to devise a variety of creative responses to sustain their activities throughout the pandemic. This case study examines how festivals adapted by embracing digital technologies. It goes on to discuss the challenges faced by the sector in doing so, as well as the opportunities that were generated

The arts and changing rural places

This blog post reflects on how recent changes to rural Ireland is influencing the arts. It recognises that rural places are very vibrant and dynamic, and that this offers many opportunities and challenges from an arts perspective. The blog also reflects on a panel discussion that the FADE project team hosted on ‘The arts and changing rural places’ at the Arts Council & Local Government’s biennial Places Matter conference in March 2022. The research activities conducted for this publication were funded by the Irish Research Council

Festival City Futures: Reflections and Conclusions

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

Lost in Translation: Interpreting and Presenting Dublin’s Colonial Past

As Alderman (2010: 90) has recently written, the potential struggle to determine what conception of the past will prevail constitutes the politics of memory. This paper aims to investigate the politics of memory at play in determining how Dublin’s colonial heritage is constructed and represented to tourists. Dublin’s profile as a tourism destination has grown recently. It attracted 5.4 million visitors in 2009 (Fáilte Ireland 2010). Culture and heritage underpin both its touristic appeal and the city’s official efforts to represent itself as a destination. Much of Dublin’s most iconic built heritage is strongly associated with its development as a colonial capital. Many decades after independence, contemporary Ireland is a vastly changed place. Yet the process of dealing with colonial heritage in tourism contexts is not unproblematic. This paper begins to unravel both the construction and the representation of the city as a tourism destination to investigate how the city is remembering/forgetting its colonial heritage. Its approach is interpretivist, and methodologically, its efforts focus on one hugely important site: Dublin Castle, the seat of English administration in Ireland for 700 years. Centrally located in a prime tourist area to the south of the city centre Dublin Castle is the 6th most visited fee-paying attraction in the state (Fáilte Ireland 2010). Data are gathered through: In-depth interviewing with key personnel involved in the multiple sites operating as distinct tourist ventures within the Castle Discourse analysis of the Castle’s promotional and informational literature Analysis of the tour guiding narratives offered to tourists. The findings point to a selective narration of history in various aspects of the Castle’s operation as a tourist attraction. They lend support to the argument that tourism constitutes a mechanism through which places can actively seek to reclaim and recast historically important places of memory

Events, social connections, place identities and extended families

The study reported here investigates the role that planned social gatherings play in shaping social connections, forging group identity and re-affirming connections with significant ‘home’ places within families where relationships extend across space. Empirically, it draws on a study of the Gathering, a 2013 national tourism initiative that encouraged people in Ireland to organise ‘gatherings’ to attract ‘home’ family members scattered across the globe. It reports data generated using mixed methods administered in two Irish counties. The findings demonstrate the profound meanings that the gatherings had for participating family members. The events served to strengthen existing family ties and to create new ones both between family members separated by geographic distance and spread across family generations. They further served to renew and revitalise connections with the family ‘home’ place, to enhance a sense of belonging for the family units studied and to strengthen family identity