Festivaler på Sørlandet

Festivals are often overlooked despite extensive studies conducted into the performing arts sector. The potential of festivals to foster creativity and innovation or how they can, and do, contribute to the areas of cultural and economic development have never been a specific research interest for academics or the business world. The purpose of the FESTIVALS project, headed by Agderforskning alone with its partners, is to explore these complex cultural, social and economic phenomena, sampling 11 European festivals, by posing the question ‘what role do festivals play in initiating and nurturing creativity and innovation?’

The critical feature of the FESTIVALS’ project and its HERA bid is a research plan to draw together the apparent effects of festivals, not just artistic content, but also in management structures, funding, programming policy, strategic partnerships, audience experience as well as wider social, cultural, political and economic implications. The countries working together for the project and the HERA bid are Croatia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom.

Through this research the FESTIVALS team aims to develop evidence-based models of successful practices for producing festivals as a creative and innovative cultural industry as well as to propose ideas and solutions to obstacles in innovation and progression such as increased competition for audiences, the rising costs of live venues and the implications of the global financial crisis.

The research project concentrates on United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Croatia. The benefit of sampling all these geographic areas is their ability to illustrate different processes and approaches to festivals. For example, the long tradition of merging festival activity with entrepreneurship in Britain and Finland versus the development of an experience economy supported by state funding in Scandinavia and the broader function of identity-making and tourist industry development in Croatia.

The research team will bring together a range of expertise and methodologies, cut across institutional boundaries as well as continuing to promote dialogue between consumers, festival managers, policy makers, businesses, students and research communities. The results and updates from the project will be updated on the festivals.no website.

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