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

Understanding the library as a commemorative exhibition space

This research responds to calls to further our understanding of exhibitions in the library context (Rogatchevskaia, 2018; Fouracre, 2015) by exploring the significance of a commemorative exhibition staged in a public library. Employing a qualitative methodology, it centres on the ‘Goodbye Dublin: The War of Independence in the City’ commemorative exhibition, staged by Dublin City Pearse Street Library, between August 14th and October 31st, 2019. The findings show that the commemorative nature of the exhibition appealed to a variety of new, lapsed and frequent library users, connecting with Irish and non-Irish residents, as well as tourists visiting the city. In this regard, the exhibition was effective in its objective of appealing to a new and wide-ranging audience, however, the findings underline the need for more diverse and varied marketing, if this aim is to be entirely successful. The staging of the exhibition as an active authoring and articulation of the past by the library is highlighted, and the use of multimedia is seen to transform the library into an emotionally charged, dynamic and multisensory space. This facilitates an immersive encounter, involving interplays between the exhibition narratives and visitors’ personal memories and interests. This offers different ways for visitors to engage with the library, inspiring them to find new meanings, explore issues of personal, collective and national identities, and to reassess contemporary events. Overall, the research makes an important contribution by highlighting the complexity and importance of commemorative exhibitions in the context of public libraries

Understanding the influence of place on festival making and artistic production in the local urban festival context

Recent decades have seen a dramatic increase in research output on arts festivals and cultural events, and a growing focus on the role festivals play in negotiating and constructing meanings of place. However, little attention has been paid to how place shapes the process of festival making and artistic production. This paper attempts to address this shortcoming by examining the extent to which place matters to the production of festival activity and asks: how does place influence festival making and artistic production in a local arts festival context? The study is part of ongoing qualitative research into the Five Lamps Arts Festival, a local urban festival in Dublin’s North Inner-City and employs a mixed methods approach. Findings indicate that processes of festival making and artistic production are permeated by the social, cultural, and physical dimensions of place, thereby revealing the potent and mutually inter-dependent relationship between place and festivals

Understanding the Library as a Commemorative Exhibition Space

While traditionally recognised as quiet places for study and for reading, today public libraries house in their premises many more activities than they did in the past (Capillé, 2018). No longer just spaces that only house and preserve collections, libraries now stress the importance of the relationship between the collections, the knowledge they contain, and their readers (Mickiewicz, 2016). In this regard, the staging of exhibitions for the public have become increasingly significant and ‘constitute a new area of professional expertise for libraries serving a new, expanded user base in a specific way’ (Fouracre, 2015: 384). While exhibitions help fulfil the role of the library as educator and knowledge disseminator, the scope of exhibition work in libraries is both extensive and varied (Dutka, Hayes and Parnell, 2002). This frequently includes the staging of commemorative exhibitions, events that are typically planned with the intention of affirming and reinforcing memories that provide a sense of heritage and identity (Frost & Laing, 2013). Such events are important for their meanings, which may differ from person to person, and which are frequently contested (Laing & Frost, 2019) and which, as Drozdzewski, Waterton and Sumartojo (2019) suggest are strongly linked to the construction of both individual personal identities and collective, national identities. However, little has been done to further our understanding of commemorative exhibitions in public libraries, in particular with regard to the relationship between the exhibition, the attendee and the library. This research seeks to address this. Employing a qualitative methodology the research centres on the ‘Goodbye Dublin’ War of Independence commemorative exhibition staged by Dublin City Library & Archive, the largest library authority in the Republic of Ireland. The exhibition, which commemorated the central role that Dublin played in Ireland’s War of Independence 1919-1921, ran from August 14th to October 31st, 2019 as part of the annual Dublin Festival of History. Over this time-period, 30 interviews were undertaken with exhibition attendees to explore the meanings the exhibition held for them. The research findings indicate that the exhibition provided clarity, understanding and moments of learning for those attending. Of particular significance were the myriad of meanings and personal connections that the exhibition, in particular the visual images, evoked. These ranged from reflections on the War of Independence and its impact on Irish society, to wars in general, as well as personal reflections and reflections on contemporary life. A key finding of the research was the importance that respondents placed on the role of public libraries in staging commemorative exhibitions, and the significance of these exhibitions in reconnecting attendees with the city, its history, and with the library itself

Playing from the Edge: Music Festivals and Broadcasting Practices in the West Cork Region of Ireland

A study of arts festivals\u27 experiences of adopting digital practices in the period 2020-2022. The context is rural and the qualitative data were gathered in West Cork in the south west of Ireland

Event Tourism, Public Policy and Socio-Cultural Development in Dublin

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

Understanding the Rural in the context of Making Art today

Graphic: Understanding the Rural in the context of Making Art today created in response to an online panel discussion called \u27The Arts and Changing Rural Places\u27 which was held as part of the Arts Council Biennial Conference, Places Matter. March 2022. Credits: Maia Thomas, Graphic Illustrator

The Challenges and Opportunities posed by Digitisation

Graphic detailing the Challenges and Opportunities posed by Digitisation. created in response to an online panel discussion called \u27The Arts and Changing Rural Places\u27 which was held as part of the Arts Council Biennial Conference, Places Matter. March 2022. Credits: Maia Thomas, Graphic Illustrator