Festivals and Edutainment

As the first collection of studies to explore the use of edutainment within festival experiences, this book extends current knowledge and understanding of festival experiences. Relying on a series of international case studies, this book offers readers unique and important insights that emphasise the benefit of edutainment activities for enhanced audience learning, engagement, and festival satisfaction.

Although there is an ample amount of studies concerning festival experiences, as well as the use of edutainment within tourism, few have explored the use of edutainment within festival experiences. This oversight has created a lack in knowledge and understanding, despite the clear benefits of enjoyable learning experiences - edutainment. Moreover, it has created a gap between academia and practice, as the contributing authors have demonstrated, festivals are utilising edutainment to enhance their audience experience, yet scholars have failed to acknowledge this. In response to this oversight, the editors have assembled a carefully curated collection of chapters that include a wide range of international case studies, from science and food festivals to heritage and dark festivals. Through a variety of methodologies and methods, including interviews, observations, databases, netnography, and social media analysis in both face-to-face and digital interactions involving the festival participants, organisers, and other relevant stakeholders, the contributing authors have provided a well-rounded global perspective on how edutainment is applied within festival experiences.

This book is valuable for scholars, festival organisers, policy makers and students interested in or studying festivals, events, edutainment and/or experience design. Other tourism industry scholars, professionals and students of, for example, visitor attractions, museums, theatre and hospitality services, may also find this book of value considering their established use of edutainment within their sectors.

Giulia Rossetti is a Senior Lecturer in Events Management in the Business School, Oxford Brookes University. Giulia’s areas of expertise are: understanding festival and event experiences using cultural sociology and serious leisure theories; festival socio-cultural impacts; and the educational value of festivals and events. Her current research interests include: the role of events in generating wellbeing; storytelling and festivals; edutainment at festivals; intangible heritage and cultural tourism. Giulia is the Event Management Journal Social Media Editor.

Brianna Wyatt is a Senior Lecturer and the current Postgraduate Subject Coordinator for the Hospitality, Tourism, and Events Management programmes at Oxford Brookes University. She specialises in dark tourism with emphasis in interpretation and experience design, with her most recent publication on re-enactment in lighter dark tourism in The Journal of Travel Research. She also has industry experience working in both heritage and dark tourism, and is a Trustee and Member of the Board of Directors for the Buckingham Old Gaol. She currently sits on the Editorial Boards for the World Leisure Journal and Event Management.

Jane Ali-Knight is a Professor in Festival and Event Management at Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland and a Visiting Professor at Curtin University, Australia. A recognised academic, she has published widely in the areas of wine tourism and regional development; destination development; festival and event marketing and management, accessibility, and well-being. Jane is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and Higher Education Academy and a trustee of British Arts Festivals Association; Without Walls: Innovators in Outdoor Arts and Hidden Door Festival.