Music Festivals and Social Inclusion – The Festival Organizers’ Perspective

Abstract

There is growing interest in how festivals can help to build strong and cohesive communities, particularly whether they can reach a broad swathe of the population or operate as enclaves. This article explores ways in which festival organizers may contribute to social inclusion goals through a qualitative phenomenological study of music festivals. Findings suggest that these festival organizers may contribute to social inclusion across four areas of society-consumption, production, political engagement, and social interaction or communitas-through factors such as providing opportunities for local participation, learning new skills, and access to education about social justice. However, it appears that these festival organizers tended to direct their social inclusion efforts toward portable communities, focusing on attendees but failing to reach out to local residents. This limits their ability to embrace the local community in its broadest sense, and calls into question their likelihood of achieving inclusivity outcomes.

EDM and Ecstasy: the lived experiences of electronic dance music festival attendees

“…This enabled a focused scope of responses from the participants in a semantically rich form, ultimately aiding data analysis. Similar data collection techniques have been applied in other music festival studies when investigating the participant experience in these musical environments (Li & Wood, 2014;Laing & Mair, 2015). The aim of the present study was to investigate the perceived festival experience more thoroughly, using questions based on the existing musical literature.…”

The social utility of small-scale art festivals with creative tourism in Portugal

“…In their diversity, festivals engage both artists and visitors as active participants, providing a platform for a specific time-period for sharing cultural perceptions and expressions arising from history and tradition, cuisine and beverages, music and dancing. Recent research on festivals in Australia (Laing and Mair, 2015) shows that festivals can contribute to community engagement and social inclusion by increasing consumption, production, political engagement, and social interaction. Festivals can also help host communities create and promote a positive image of the host community in the minds of both residents and prospective visitors.…”

‘Plus ça Change, Plus C'est la Même Chose’: Music Promoting, Digital Leisure, Social Media and Community

“…The word 'community' is used in many ways and, as a result, has proved to be a term that is difficult to define. Researching in a similar area of festivals, Laing & Mair (2015) point to this difficulty and indicate a simple but clear definition from Liepins, (2000, p. 29) who suggests community is a 'social construct, one that is created (and enacted) by people.' Whilst there is plenty of literature on the definition of community, here, we follow Liepins (2000) as this definition admits the constructed and negotiated dynamic of community formation.…”