Events and Festivals : Current Trends and Issues

Events and festivals have an increasingly vital role in our leisure lifestyles. We recognize them as part of our lives. For some, they are a very significant part of our lives.

The network of festivals and events that either adorn the world now, or are planned for the future, can both serve to motivate new visits as well as enhance the lives of the people who live in – or near – the host area. They are also dynamos of cultural development, of sport knowledge and excellence and sophisticated consumption. Such dynamic outputs require dynamic inputs. This book looks at different event and festival cases and forwards separate and current managerial implications and responses to these, with reference to the UK, America and Australia.

Both up-to-date and forward thinking, the managerial themes addressed are: Creative Management, Festival and Event audience development, Culture and Community, Event and Festival evaluation. Festival and event types include sport events, art festivals, community events, live music and culinary extravaganza.

This book was previously published as a special issue of Managing Leisure: An International Journal.

Martin Robertson is a lecturer in Tourism Management and a committee member of the Centre of Festival and Event Management in the School of Marketing, Tourism and Languages, Napier University Business School, Edinburgh. Martin’s research is applied to sport events and festivals, with particular focus on the areas of brand narrative, and the analysis of economic and social impact.

Elspeth Frew is a senior lecturer in Tourism Management at the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management, LaTrobe University, Australia. Elspeth’s research is in cultural tourism, with particular focus on festival and attraction management, industrial tourism and personality and tourism.