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The article discusses the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, highlighting their historical significance and artistic contributions. It addresses the lack of racial diversity in audiences and performers, particularly affecting people of color. Financial strains on artists, rising costs, and exclusivity issues within the festivals are also explored. Despite these challenges, the festivals attract global audiences, showcase diverse performances, and contribute to Edinburgh's reputation as a hub for the performing arts. [Extracted from the article]

In July 2021, residents of Vicente Guerrero, a settlement built around the largest landfill in Oaxaca, commemorated the waste-pickers' 40th anniversary with an urban art festival. This event was organised by Santa Cecilia Music School, a community-led cultural infrastructure that has shaped the social and material landscape of Vicente Guerrero since 2011. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted around this festival and throughout 2023, I propose studying cultural initiatives like Santa Cecilia as listening infrastructures to discern their ability to 'centre' peripheral communities through the opportunities they create for self-, collective and social listening, which, respectively, promote self-growth, spark community projects and display peripheries as creative places. I argue that the combined effect of these forms of listening – what Vicente Guerrero residents call community weaving – helps overcome material and social stigma conditioning life on the periphery. By examining these listening mechanisms, this analysis aims to enrich debates about the fundamental role of cultural infrastructure in the making of (Latin American) cities and their peripheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) enables Artificial Intelligence (AI) to explain its decisions. This holds the promise of making AI more understandable to users, improving interaction, and establishing an adequate level of trust. We tested this claim in the high-risk task of AI-assisted mushroom hunting, where people had to decide whether a mushroom was edible or poisonous. In a between-subjects experiment, 328 visitors of an Austrian media art festival played a tablet-based mushroom hunting game while walking through a highly immersive artificial indoor forest. As part of the game, an artificially intelligent app analyzed photos of the mushrooms they found and recommended classifications. One group saw the AI's decisions only, while a second group additionally received attribution-based and example-based visual explanations of the AI's recommendation. The results show that participants with visual explanations outperformed participants without explanations in correct edibility assessments and pick-up decisions. This exhibition-based experiment thus replicated the decision-making results of a previous online study. However, unlike in the previous study, the visual explanations did not significantly affect levels of trust or acceptance measures. In a direct comparison, we consequently discuss the findings in terms of generalizability. Besides the scientific contribution, we discuss the direct impact of conducting XAI experiments in immersive art- and game-based environments in exhibition contexts on visitors and local communities by triggering reflection and awareness for psychological issues of human–AI interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Founded in 1997 by arts and community workers, the Feast Festival in Adelaide is one of the major LGBTQIA+ festivals held in Australia. 2022 marked the 25th year of the Feast Festival and, as such, was an opportunity to reflect upon the importance of community-driven festivals, especially those that explicitly services and advocates for social and cultural minorities. Researching this queer history required multimodal strategies. We interviewed past participants, organizers and performers, which contributed to a short documentary film that was exhibited as part of Feast’s 25th programme. This project has also been supported by extensive archival research. We investigated the role that archives play in research and in documenting the history of a community arts festival, and how archives can actively contribute to the research process at various stages of data collection and creative artefact creation. Further, we explored the festival organizers’ careful engagement with both open-access and curatorial approaches to festival management, including engaging with the South Australian LGBTQIA+ community to encourage participation and develop special events for the programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the use of arts-led approaches to augmented reality (AR) marker design through the presentation of four commissioned projects featuring AR markers created using traditional techniques including drawing, hand weaving, and tiling. The physical-to-digital process to convert artworks into AR markers produces opportunities for cocreation with diverse participants and for materiality to shape the AR experience. Reflecting on the materiality of the different techniques in relation to the temporal, spatial, and social settings of each project (arts festivals, a summer school, and workshops on heat wave-risk communication), the authors argue for a responsive approach to integrating multimodal dynamic markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public space has a vital role in defining the politics of identity. Art festivals in public spaces can increase the function of public spaces to negotiate cultural identity, characterized by vernacularity, and simultaneously use various local symbols and tourist attractions. This research discusses how art festivals in public spaces become a means for reconstructing cultural identity and promoting cultural tourism in Bandung City, Indonesia. This research employs qualitative research methods. Data collection is carried out through a literature study and field research using various approaches, including observations, interviews, and Focus Group Discussions with relevant stakeholders during July-August 2023. Findings show that art festivals become a space where the politics of culture and cultural tourism meet different interests. At the same time, government policies appear to promote the preservation of vernacular culture and local traditions in order to improve tourism attractions. The paper concludes that the festivals serve as a significant place for cultural commodification, even if their primary goals are to celebrate cultural identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the Labour Party's plan for the arts, culture, and creative industries in the UK. It highlights the damage done to the social fabric of the country and the cuts to art and culture over the past 14 years. The article argues that Labour's plan focuses on the economic benefits of the creative industries but criticizes the lack of attention to the specific needs and challenges of the sector. It also mentions the government's approach to the cultural sector, criticizing its reliance on public-private finance initiatives and lack of funding promises for the Arts Council. The article emphasizes the importance of access to the arts, diversity in the sector, and adequate funding for cultural rights. [Extracted from the article]

Societal Impact Statement Summary People often undervalue plants, hindering botanical education and conservation efforts. This study demonstrates how art‐based approaches including audience co‐creation elements can yield new insights into human‐plant interactions. Analyzing plant‐related memories showed that reflecting on personal experiences with plants evokes emotions and can reconnect individuals to specific people and places. The role of multisensory experiences of plants was also highlighted. This knowledge can inform botanical education practices and improve the design of effective outreach programs, fostering greater societal plant awareness and appreciation. The lack of plant appreciation, a manifestation of plant awareness disparity, is concerning in the context of plant conservation and preservation of botanical knowledge and skills. Developing effective strategies to foster plant awareness requires a better understanding of the nature of human interactions with plants. Art‐based approaches offer a new lens for attracting diverse audiences and can generate unique data through promoting self‐reflection and evoking emotional responses. Herein, we used the case study of visual exhibition “In Memory of Plants” to investigate how arts can be used to explore lasting connections to plants. The exhibition, presented at the Alternative Kilkenny Arts Festival 2022, was designed to inspire reflection on plants as elements of personal experiences and introduce the concept of plant awareness disparity. It also included a co‐creation component where visitors were invited to add their own plant‐related memories to a display board. These audience contributions were subjected to qualitative and quantitative analyses. The results underscored the ability of plants to act as memory anchors, providing lasting connections to places and people from the past. Additionally, the study yielded insights into the identity of “plant mentors” and highlighted the role of multisensory perception in human‐plant interactions. Presented observations can inform future projects focused on plant awareness and may encourage new collaborations between artists, botanists, and science communicators. Collectively, this study supports the use of arts‐based methods to both enhance and investigate plant awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Pariwisata Budaya: Jurnal Ilmiah Pariwisata Agama dan Budaya is the property of Pariwisata Budaya: Jurnal Ilmiah Pariwisata Agama dan Budaya and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the National Arts Festival held in Makhanda, South Africa from June 22-July 2, 2023, which focused on smaller-scale, local stories, particularly emphasizing work by Black feminist artists.

This photo essay is an exploration of how monuments, that try to give coherence to our shared past and identity, can be rethought through modern art. Specifically, it centres on an art festival in Balaguer, Spain, where an art installation titled MONUMENT by the MITO Collective was set up close to an existing monument of a 18th century Spanish conquistador. During the festival, the monument of the conquistador was vandalised and subsequently removed. The photo essay shows that instead of being static symbols, monuments can be lively spaces that encourage us to talk, question the usual stories told by history, and engage more actively with our collective memories. By presenting reactions to the MONUMENT installation, which featured slogans from various social movements, it suggests that monuments can be places where ongoing stories and conflicts are acknowledged. This shift in perspective invites us to keep rethinking how history can be negotiated in public places, making room for a wider range of voices and stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking its cue from the loss (more precisely, the disappearance) of a close friend and sometime collaborator, and drawing on my long‐term fieldwork on an experimental arts festival held annually in the Orkney Islands, this essay reflects on the challenges of documenting uncertain or intermittent presence, as well as the possibilities the latter affords for unsettling and expanding received conceptions of identity, place, and belonging, especially in a political moment in which these are being defined in increasingly narrow and exclusionary terms. Bringing ethnography and autoethnography into dialogue with literature, visual arts, and oral storytelling, it suggests that anthropology can most effectively respond to the challenges of the present by acknowledging that it is, inescapably, a creative as much as a descriptive practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organized as part of the annual Art Days festival in the capital of the Latvian SSR, the First Exhibition of Approximate Art comprised a cacophonous and provocative mashup of music, dance, performance art, and design. At the center of the event was a demonstration of mixing and scratching records by Maximilian Lenz, also known as Westbam, one of the leading DJs in West Berlin. Mining archival sources in Berlin and Riga, this article reconstructs the complicated path by which the DJ came to perform at the event. It reveals a surprising network of relations and alliances operating in tandem behind the scenes, featuring a Riga artist dedicated to enacting a vision of postmodern performance in his city, an ambitiously networking émigré Latvian living in exile in West Germany, and a pair of Soviet offices under direct control of the KGB, charged with managing cultural exchanges with the West in hopes of currying sympathies for Soviet culture and policy. Complementing and extending research on the "gaps" and "holes" in the Soviet system that sometimes allowed for the staging of otherwise unacceptable works of art, the story of the First Exhibition of Approximate Art reveals how personal connections and interpersonal networks within even the most highly monitored parts of the system itself—the state security apparatus—could open doors for artistic projects unanticipated and even undesired by the bureaucratic state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseño y Comunicación is the property of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseno y Comunicacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Index: Revista de Arte Contemporaneo is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Ecuador and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The purpose of the work is to investigate the dynamics of the folklore-jazz direction in the competition-festival movement of the accordion-fabulist art of the first quarter of the 21st century and to determine promising ways of development of folklore and jazz in modern musical content. The research methodology is based on the use of musicological, comparative, chronological and systematic methods, which allowed to analyse the cultural and artistic trajectories of the folklore-jazz direction in the competitions and festivals of accordion and legend art of the first quarter of the 21st century. Scientific novelty. For the first time, a scientific investigation of the competition-festival movement was carried out on its own practical example, namely participation in international competitions and festivals of the first quarter of the 21st century. The importance of the artistic content of the competition-festival environment on the performing and composing creativity of the participants of the artistic Olympia is considered. New, relevant ideas are offered to expand the creative horizons of performance and composition skills in mixing and synthesising folklore and jazz. Conclusions. The global perception of the folk-jazz direction in the competition-festival movement of the accordionfabulous art of the first quarter of the 21st century emphasises our opinion that the huge spectrum of musical diversity allows to find new creative solutions, to make modern interpretive explorations of different styles through the creation of author's content, the introduction of revolutionary modern stylistic innovations in arranging and harmonising, experimenting and combining the latest conceptual solutions in improving the instrumentation and introducing new technical quality standards in the manufacture and updating of instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It should come as no surprise that a music and arts festival dogged by scandal would lead to two separate documentaries that each raise ethical concerns. The 2017 demise of the Fyre Festival, a would-be luxury music event in the Bahamas targeted at millennials, inspired late-night comedians' jokes, social media schadenfreude and so far, two documentaries detailing how things went so wrong. Both films detail the maddening twists and turns during the preparations for the Fyre Festival and make it clear to viewers that it was doomed from the start. Both films also contain potential conflicts of interest that are notable, and notably absent from discussion or clarification in either film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the shift to relational perspective in cultural diplomacy, there is little comparative analysis of relational practices and their effectiveness on enhancing cultural relations, whether understanding, collaborations or market exchanges. To address this gap, we incorporate network literature into cultural relations to examine 10 years of Momentum, a cultural diplomacy programme hosted by Festivals Edinburgh, the British Council and Creative Scotland, that seeks to enhance learning, exchanges and collaborations among arts organizations. The findings offer three insights: (1) cultural relations, similar to networks, have a curvilinear effect where an investment is required but more years of investment do not gain better outcomes; (2) effective relational strategies depend on the larger cultural and economic environment: more investment in relations is needed for countries that are more decentralized, have higher political uncertainty or larger cross-cultural differences; (3) cultural relations are anchored in key cities, offering a concentration of artists and cultural organisations that enable both a stable base to build on and a platform for expanding across geographic regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limited research has been conducted on the benefits of utilizing festival spaces for methodologies involving storytelling and narrative inquiry for use in other (related) areas of investigation (e.g., tourism). This article introduces a method, "story-mapping," for the collection of locals' stories during a combined arts festival. The intention was to capture place-focused data from community stakeholders from the case study destination, Bridgend County Borough, South Wales. Locals were encouraged to tell stories about the area, including specific grassroots elements using a map as a visual prompt. The process was designed to empower and involve the local community in defining and sharing a "sense of place" as part of a paradigm shift towards regenerative tourism. Utilizing "story-mapping" in the festival space proved effective but also presented some challenges. The article evaluates the method through the lens of narrative inquiry and makes recommendations for future researchers wishing to utilize this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ido Movement for Culture. Journal of Martial Arts Anthropology is the property of Idokan Poland Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Art History / Sanat Tarihi Dergisi is the property of Ege University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in artist-led collectives with high-profile recognition within contemporary art mega festivals, prizes, and biennials. Yet, these amorphous entities and initiatives tend to be framed either through their politically motivated actions or as a critique of the notion of the single author or 'artist-as-genius' mythology. This article builds upon this discourse to shift the emphasis onto both interpersonal and socio-political relationships that constitute artist-led collectives in order to explore their complex role in convening and placemaking and what this might mean for both policymaking and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural value is a hot topic these days. However, few studies have been conducted to investigate the value of contemporary dance festivals, particularly in the Chinese context, and even fewer from the standpoint of cultural ecology. The current study thus proposes to investigate the value of contemporary dance festivals in a Chinese context through the interaction of various participants in a specific network. Qualitative research, such as case studies, semi-structured interviews, and inclusive thematic analysis, is implied in this paper. This paper contains three theoretical innovations. The findings highlight the various levels of network participants and the roles played by those involved, demonstrating that those roles are more complex than Holden's network analysis theory allows and emphasizing that the degree of interaction in the network is related to the effectiveness of the value of art festivals. Second, this paper suggests that the persistence of artworks and audience satisfaction could be two evaluation indicators for the value of arts and culture. In addition, the article connects Holden's theory to cultural ecology theory and "political market square" theory to provide a more nuanced understanding of the value of contemporary dance festivals. The findings of this paper are hoped to be helpful in cultural policymaking and the design of other arts festivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]