Signals and Signposts of the Future: Literary Festival Consumption in 2050

Abstract

This conceptual paper uses a scenario planning process to facilitate possible futures for literary festivals, a form of festival tourism that has grown rapidly in the developed and developing countries of the world in the early decades of the 21 st Century and which continues to grow towards 2050. The paper addresses this in the context of two significant cities, Shanghai -a megacity in China, and Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria, Australia. The paper offers two scenarios for literary festivals, one drawn from science fiction and the other from a process of prognosis. The aim of this work is to contribute to research in festival tourism studies by exploring the signposts and signals that may confer the future role, form and function of literature and the format and activity of literary festivals and literary festival tourism in a changing world. Utilizing Signals and Signposts, the work contributes to the body of work which seeks strategic responses to rapid change, rapid urbanization and possible zones of uncertainty that may await literary festivals and associated tourism and community activity in the future. Keywords

The touring reader: Understanding the bibliophile's experience of literary tourism

“…This activity continues to expand and many regions and sites exploit their literary connections, encouraging visitors to seek out places linked to authors' lives and their imaginative outpourings. We have also seen a similar interest in book towns, literary trails and festivals (MacLeod 2009;MacLeod, Hayes & Slater, 2009;Robertson & Yeoman, 2014;Saretzki, 2013). Visit England has declared 2017 to be Year of Literary Heroes (Figure 1), reporting that one in four Britons visited an English literary location in 2016 (VisitEngland, 2017).…”

Technology, Society, and Visioning The Future of Music Festivals

“…In this interdisciplinary perspective it is possible to divide the activity into six areas. These are: understanding (assessing); thinking (framing); generating (exploring); Robertson & Yeoman, 2014). All these interrelationships have implications for the four facets of experience previously stated.…”

“…Thirdly, the human brain relates easily to stories and the narrative thinking as utilized in scenario thinking. Finally, by forcing the mind to think in qualitatively different directions, the brain can be trained to think the unthinkable (Robertson & Yeoman, 2014).…”

“…Scenarios or scenario planning are used frequently in future studies-in the public and private sector (Robertson & Yeoman, 2014). Shell Oil, for example, has used scenarios to aid its strategic development and capacity since the 1970s (www.…”

Editorial - How the world is changing: The role of micro trends

“…Micro trends or emergent trends are seedlings now but are predicted to be become dominant in the future. They are important to observe as they are signals and sign posts for the future of tourism (Robertson and Yeoman, 2014). Certain micro trends are important to follow as they become the basis of big data and segmentation models for destination decision-making (Fuchs et al, 2014;Perera et al, 2020).…”