Document Type

Theses, Ph.D

Disciplines

6. HUMANITIES, Arts

Abstract

Although the importance of arts festivals for places is acknowledged in the literature, there is surprisingly limited understanding of festival making as creative practice, and the manner and extent to which place influences this practice. In recent decades, the global proliferation of art festivals has not been met with a commensurate increase in scholarly or critical examinations regarding their form, function, or content (Merrington, 2016). Indeed, existing studies largely focus on the events themselves and their aftermath rather than the processes underpinning their formation and making (Mair & Smith, 2022). This qualitative study addresses this gap and investigates the dialogical relationship between festival making and place thereby responding to growing calls from festival scholars for more examinations on the processes and practice-based nature of festival making. It examines two community arts festivals situated in urban contexts on the south-east of Ireland; one in Dublin’s North East Inner City (NEIC), and one in Waterford city. The theoretical framework draws from the literatures on festivals, creative geography, curatorial practices, and artistic production. The study examines festival making through two temporal frames. Firstly, situating the festivals in historical perspective, the study finds that festival making practices are deeply rooted in the broader processes and histories of place. While existing research emphasises the role of festivals in altering perceptions and promoting place identity, this study found that historical place perceptions and narratives significantly influence festival formation. In this study, the formation of the festivals served as a means for local people to reveal the artistic

characteristics of their place and provided a way to construct alternative representations of place that could co-exist alongside dominant narratives. Expanding the frame of festival making from the historical to the present day, the study then examines how festival making enables festival makers to express a sense of place care manifested through the practice of "place attentiveness" (Till, 2012; Cooper, 2020). Festival making practices comprised knowing the place, connecting artistic ideas and people, selecting festival venues, accommodating diversity, building resilience, remembering and honouring place, and overcoming feelings of place inadequacy. These practices were found to be deeply rooted in festival makers' connection to, and knowledge of, the places in which they operate. By framing festival making as a creative practice situated within specific geographical contexts, the study finds that place acts as thread that is tightly bound by a strong sense of care that festival makers have for place which helps to renew the festivals and the place each year. The study highlights the importance of tending to the geographies of festival making, as much as to the making of festival geographies, if we are to better understand the dialogical relationship between festival making and place. It concludes by presenting an analytical framework for understanding this dialogical relationship and offers a definition of festival making in community arts festivals contexts as a complex, productive practice, shaped by the situated knowledge and collective vision of a group of individuals, embodying a commitment to caring for place, and contingent upon the particular situated historical and contemporary contexts in which it unfolds.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/7xrk-nx98

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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