Community festivals and events - Their role in raising awareness, generating pride and fostering a sense of belonging within socially isolated areas

Résumé du document

Phillip Kotler's traditional definition of a product (1997) includes anything that can be offered to a market that might satisfy a demand. This large definition embraces goods, services, retail stores, persons, ideas and also places. Place marketing usually concerns countries, regions and big cities. But increasingly, socially isolated areas use place marketing as well. For these towns festivals are probably the most powerful tool to exploit in order to market their place. Thus, the number of local or community events has increased rapidly over the last twenty years in the US and Europe. Janiskee (1996, p. 404 cited in Allen et al. 2005) defines community events as “family-fun events that are considered ‘owned' by a community because they use volunteers services from the host community, employ public venues such as streets, parks and schools and are produced at the direction of local government agencies or nongovernmental organisations such as service clubs, public safety or business associations.”Community festivals help cultivating local tourism. The new people it attracts bring more spending so that it contributes to the development of the local economy. But the benefits of a community festival are not only economic. Yeoman et al. (2005) argued that any events have also other impacts especially sociocultural ones. This paper focuses on those aspects of social benefits defined in terms of “the residents' attitudes to the local area” (Wood 2006, p. 165) through the examination of several examples of community festivals in the US, the UK and in France.

Extraits

[...] The current growth of community festivals can be explained as a consequence of several factors coming both from the visitors' interests and the communities' ones. From the visitors' point of view, rural community festivals stand for a interesting place to go because the greater amount of the population is concentrated in a small part of the territory, either in Europe or to a larger extent in the US (Lewis 1998). Moreover, Hanagriff (2006) pointed out the attraction of short visits to rural communities in the US. [...]

[...] (2006) ‘Assessment of a State Sponsored Marketing Program to Promote Rural Tourism: A Case Study using the 2004 to 2005 Texas Yes! Hometown STARS Program'. The Business Review, Cambridge. Dec, Vol No p Hughes, G. (2000) ‘Urban Revitalization: the use of festive time strategies'. Leisure Studies. Vol.18, pp. 119-135 Janiskee, R. (1996) ‘Historic houses and special events'. Annals of leisure Research. Vol no p (cited in Allen et al. 2005) Aboucaya J. (2007). ‘Jazz In Marciac: Histoire d'un festival'. [...]

[...] The author explained that festivals have an important role to play to enhance this sense of belonging. A festival brings people together for the same purpose. It is the occasion to meet different people who share the same values. Especially, the organization of a festival involves frequently a large number of volunteers. These volunteers are often residents and they develop an active citizenship shared with other residents. Hughes (2000, p.120) called it reconstruction of the notion of citizenship and belonging”. [...]

[...] An active cultural policy emerged in the 1980s as a successful strategy to focus on social cohesion. Social objectives have become more common since this time and community festivals have become an important tool to achieve these objectives. The role of community events in enhancing civic pride Social and cultural value provided by community events encompasses several aspects that interrelate. Civic pride is one of the most recognized benefit. Civic pride refers to the feelings of the residents. It relates to the image that inhabitants share about their city or town. [...]

[...] Nevertheless, depending on the nature of the event, the positive social and cultural consequences can be more or less important. Indeed in Blackburn, ‘Arts in the Park' that had a higher perceived status had higher influence on the level civic pride of residents. Community festivals foster a sense of belonging According to Vine (2004 cited in Wood 2006), a prerequisite for civic pride is the sense of belonging. People are proud of their area when they can identify themselves with the community. [...]