Debates around Cultural Re-imaging and Culture-led Urban Regeneration: The Politics of two Festivals in Gwangju and Glasgow

Abstract

In this study, we look at the cultural politics surrounding the narratives of cultural festivals in Gwangju, South Korea and Glasgow, Scotland. These two cities illustrate both a general obsession to become world-class, and intervening efforts toward achieving world ranking. Through archives and in-depth interviews with key actors from the Gwangju Biennale and Glasgow’s West End Festival, this study observes how different narratives regarding urban cultural festivals interact. It also takes a closer look at how instrumental narratives behind these events constrain community involvement. Our findings suggest that both cities adopted an instrumental approach to their cultural festivals. In both cases, the instrumental focus of festival organizers curtails community participation, by focusing on professionalism in both the public and private sectors. Community groups challenged the approach at different levels. We argue that cultural festivals are places where different narratives, such as goal-oriented instrumentalism and self-realisation, interact, compete, and negotiate with each other. We also demonstrate that an instrumental approach in the awareness of urban competition drives the direction and meaning of both the cultural festival itself and the community involvement in it.

What Determines the Success of Culture-Led Regeneration Projects in China?

“…This paper theoretically contributes to the body of knowledge on the successful management of CRPs. Although studies have been conducted to define the implications of CRP success and analyze the impacts of CRPs on local development (e.g., [19,20,27,49,56]), a comprehensive list of CSFs have not been achieved, which significantly limits the identification of effective directions for improving CRP performance. This study bridged this knowledge gap by identifying 25 CSFs from a literature analysis and five case studies.…”

The politics of forgetting: Unmaking memories and reacting to memory‐place‐making

“…In the aftermath of each event, both the Chun and Park governments attempted to discredit the victims' families, alleging that they were North Korean sympathisers or were members of the Jongbuk Jwapa (a pro-North Korean left-wing group). We also found in both cases that right-wing followers supported or actively joined forgetting activities whereas liberals tended to support remembering, aggravating societal and political divisions in Korea (Shin, 2016b(Shin, , 2014.…”

The spatialization of music and politics in festival spaces: The social, symbolic and emotional structuring of the Festival of Political Songs in the German Democratic Republic

“…It would be, however, misleading to look at these latter processes as if they only characterize festivals of the current neoliberal phase and as if they hinder the possibility of social inclusion, sociability and so on. Indeed, three aspects of the commodification and 'eventization' processes of festivals are noteworthy for the following discussion: the fact that they also gather communities of taste (Barrière and Finkel, 2022), that they are useful for urban re-generation (Shin and Stevens, 2013) and that, by returning the impression of an apparent lack of regulation, they make people think they are living 'authentic' experiences (Griffi et al, 2018). In the case of the Festival of Political Songs, the GDR State favored the eventization of the Festival to increase both its international prestige (with respect especially to Western countries) and a feeling of belonging to a (national) community.…”