In July this year, the Leisure Studies Association (LSA) will hold its annual conference at Edinburgh’s state of the art Napier University. The focus for this year’s conference is Festivals and Events and the aim is to examine the social and cultural impact of those events upon the communities that host them.
The LSA is an international body that is dedicated to the study of leisure. Through newsletters, publications and conferences, they facilitate a regular exchange of information and ideas between the many disparate practitioners in the field.
Founded in 1975 by an independent body of planners, researchers, policy-makers, administrators and practitioners, LSA boasts an international membership of people with professional and personal interests in the study of leisure.
The British Isles is home to countless festivals of varying size and quality; the arts world is well represented in the field with events ranging in scale from the internationally recognised Edinburgh/Glastonbury/WOMAD to the more obscure and locally focussed Derbyshire Well-dressing and Stilton Cheese-rolling types.
‘Festivals provide an opportunity for people from all over the country with all different styles and interests to come together and share and experience different things’ (Morris, Hargreaves, McIntyre (2003) A report into the impact of folk festivals on cultural tourism. See: www.afouk.org)
Historically and traditionally more of a rural pursuit, UK festivals have become big news for cities in recent decades. They have become a regular tool and feature in urban regeneration schemes. The Government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport is keen to make an economic case for the use of arts and culture in this way and recognises the importance of festivals in their 2004 consultation paper, Culture at the Heart of Regeneration. They note that, in regard to the Notting Hill Carnival, one of the UK’s largest urban festivals, it is estimated that, ‘attendees at the Carnival in 2002 spent £36 million including travel and £9 million on accommodation.’
In the run up to the millennium, millions of pounds of lottery funding was awarded to festivals throughout the UK to celebrate the occasion. In the subsequent study to assess the impact of the events, surveys showed:
(Jura Associates & Gardiner. T. (2001) Impact of Millennium Festivals, Millennium Commission. See: www.millennium.gov.uk/lottery/festival.html)
So the number and popularity of festivals appears to be increasing. Government and Arts Council reports consistently push the economic case for festivals, citing statistics on visitor numbers and average spend per head and focussing on the employment of local people and the use of local goods and services. The 2005 LSA conference has an explicit agenda to avoid measuring the purely economic success of festivals and by using a series of themes will focus on the more qualitative social and cultural impacts that festivals can have.
One of the concerns raised at the 2005 conference may be that the quality and integrity of these events is compromised or sidelined in the stampede to reap the financial benefits to a community of hosting a large event.
Among the keynote speakers promising to provoke much debate on the subject, will be Professor Mike Robinson – Director of the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change at Sheffield Hallam University. Judging from the notes accompanying his address, it would appear that not all of the social and cultural impacts of festivals are necessarily positive. His address is titled Celebrating Life, Loss and Mess: The Bleak Poetics of Excess, in his notes he says:
‘As both a consequence of, and a reaction to, the vagaries of ‘globalisation’, the number of celebratory festivals in the world has dramatically increased over recent years and shows no sign of abating. In addition to the greater number of festivals, there has also been a qualitative shift in the practices of public festivity that accentuates the very notion of celebration…. we are moving toward – and in some cases have already moved to – a position where we are celebrating shadows and despair, form rather than content and are giving into a form of festivity that propels us into a nihilistic vision of emptiness’
Also providing fuel for the debate will be Dr. Neil Ravenscroft – Principal Research Fellow, Chelsea School Research Centre at University of Brighton. He will give a review of Soviet Philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on the ‘carnivalesque’ contextualised by an analysis of how far this remains an appropriate interpretation of the role of contemporary festivals – Ravenscroft argues that, ‘festivals, as carnivalesque inversions of the everyday, can and are deployed to maintain and reinforce social order and, thus, the discipline of bodies and behaviours.
He suggests that the current ‘sanitised festivals of consumer culture’ seek to ‘maintain a hierarchical social order’ and will argue in his paper, ‘that contemporary forms of the carnivalesque are more likely to be found in marginalized and liminal events, such as raves and protests, through which different groups of people seek to impose on others their views, values and claims.’
Also amongst the keynote speakers will be Dr Keith Nurse from University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago and Dr John Horne of the University of Edinburgh.
Scheduled around the keynote speakers will be an extensive programme of ‘parallel sessions’, a series of shorter presentations that have arisen from individual applications.
If you want to join the delegates in the debate, FESTIVALS AND EVENTS: BEYOND ECONOMIC IMPACTS is hosted by Leisure Studies Association (LSA) and will be held in Edinburgh from Wednesday, July 6th -Friday July 8th 2005 see Leisure Studies Association, www.leisure-studies-association.info).
