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In recent times, festivals around the world have grown in number due to the increased recognition of their importance for tourism, branding and economic development. Festivals hold multifaceted roles in society and can be staged to bring positive economic impact, for the competitive advantage they lend a destination or to address social objectives. Studies on festivals have appeared in a wide range of disciplines, and consequently, much of the research available is highly fragmented. This handbook brings this knowledge together in one volume, offering a comprehensive evaluation of the most current research, debates and controversies surrounding festivals. It is divided into nine sections that cover a wide range of theories, concepts and contexts, such as sustainability, festival marketing and management, the strategic use of festivals and their future.Featuring a variety of disciplinary, cultural and national perspectives from an international team of authors, this book will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers of event management and will be of interest to scholars in the fields of anthropology, sociology, geography, marketing, management, psychology and economics.

Focus on World Festivals: Contemporary case studies and perspectives provides the reader with a contemporary overview of festival activity from around the world based on over 30 case studies drawn from every continent. Through its case-study focus this book can be utilised in several ways; to examine different types and genres of festivals across the world; to consider in detail specific festivals in specific contexts; to look at management and organisational issues in festival provision, and to illustrate debates and theories pertaining to festivals throughout the world. This book is a companion to'Focus on Festivals', it is written by a varied mix of academics, practitioners and cultural commentators. It expands many of the central themes and issues to reach a global understanding of festivals. The key themes this book discusses are: • The nature of festivals, festivalisation and the growth of festival provision around the world • Interest in festival's potential economic, social, place-making and political impacts • Festivals as ‘glocal'players • The relationship between festivals and tourism • The management and business of festivals in different locations responding to differing social, political and market contexts • The role of festivals in identity making •Festivals as sites of participation, co-creation and experiences It is a dynamic and indispensable text for students in arts and festivals management, events, tourism, creative industries, cultural and public policy, music industry and management courses as well as for festival and events managers, public authorities and existing and potential sponsors. Through the variety of festivals illustrated in this book, the reader will discover that much about the nature of festivals crosses borders, they are a recognisable and growing part of societal and cultural delivery around the globe; their impacts, economic, social and cultural are a major driver in their development; their popularity with audiences, arts organisations and performers is undiminished in this ever-expanding cultural phenomenon of festivals..

In recent years, major sporting and cultural events such as the Olympic Games have emerged as significant elements of public policy, particularly in efforts to achieve urban regeneration. As well as opportunities arising from new venues, these events are viewed as a way of stimulating investment, gaining civic engagement and publicizing progress to assist the urban regeneration process more generally. However, the pursuit of regeneration involving events is a practice that is poorly understood, controversial and risky. Events and Urban Regeneration is the first book dedicated to the use of events in regeneration. It explores the relationship between events and regeneration by analyzing a range of cities and a range of sporting and cultural events projects. It considers various theoretical perspectives to provide insight into why major events are important to contemporary cites. It examines the different ways that events can assist regeneration, as well as problems and issues associated with this unconventional form of public policy. It identifies key issues faced by those tasked with using events to assist regeneration and suggests how practices could be improved in the future. The book adopts a multi-disciplinary perspective, drawing together ideas from the geography, urban planning and tourism literatures, as well as from the emerging events and regeneration fields. It illustrates arguments with a range of international case studies placed within and at the end of chapters to show positive outcomes that have been achieved and examples of high profile failures. This timely book is essential reading for students and practitioners who are interested in events, urban planning, urban geography and tourism.

This book explores the links between tourism and festivals and the various ways in which each mobilises the other to make social realities meaningful. Drawing upon a series of international cases, festivals are examined as ways of responding to various forms of crisis - social, political, economic - and as a way of re-making and re-animating spaces and social life. Importantly, this book locates festivals in the constantly changing, socio-economic and political contexts that they always operate in and respond to - contexts that are both historical and modern at the same time. Tourism is bound closely together with such contexts; feeding and challenging festivals with audiences that are increasingly transient and transnational. Tourism interrogates notions of ritual and tradition, shapes new spaces and creates, and renews, relationships between participants and observers. No longer can we dismiss tourists simply as value neutral and crass consumers of spectacle, nor tourism as some inevitable commercial force. Tourism is increasingly complicit in the festival processes of re-invention, and in forming new patterns of social existence.