Events & Wellbeing

This book is the first to take an in-depth examination of events and well-being, adopting a much-needed critical approach to the study of events. It uses empirical case studies to help us better understand how events foster positive well-being or counter negative well-being for event organisers, participants, spectators, volunteers and even non-attending local residents.

While researchers have long understood socialisation as the major motivation to attend contemporary festivals and events, it is only just being acknowledged that well-being is also a key motivator. Those researching in the field of event studies are yet to clearly articulate "the how, why, where, and impacts of socialisation." This multidisciplinary book draws together empirical research across a range of event types and sizes, from music festivals to mega sports events, to provide a nuanced understanding of their contribution to the well-being of individuals and communities. Case studies are drawn from around the world and apply a diverse range of theoretical lenses to the conceptualisation of well-being as it applies to events and methodologies used to achieve research aims and objectives.

This significant volume will be valuable reading for students and academics in the fields of sport studies, critical event studies, queer studies, cultural studies, tourism, music, sociology and end-of-life studies.

Allan Stewart Jepson has contributed widely to event studies literature within the realm of community festivals and events. His seminal work investigated power, hegemony and the construction, representation and consumption of culture(s) at a community festival and was the first to reveal marginalised local communities trapped and underrepresented in a community cultural festival. He has three key texts in event studies, all edited with Alan Clarke, University of Pannonia, Hungary. He, along with colleagues, is currently pursuing a research agenda investigating the well-being impacts of local community festivals and events which has centred on families and Quality of Life and more recently to investigate arts participation events and collective memory creation amongst the over 70s and how these events can reduce the common psychosocial impacts associated with older age.

Trudie Walters is a freelance researcher and consultant living in Dunedin, New Zealand. Her research platform centres on events and leisure as interdisciplinary lenses through which to understand the inner workings and values of society. She is developing and managing the data strategy for Tourism New Zealand’s Conference Impact programme, which seeks to create genuine, long-lasting social legacies from conferences, and is a consultant with TRC Tourism. She serves as President of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Leisure Studies. In her spare time, she runs, cooks, photographs, potters about in her garden, explores new places with her husband, panders to the needs of her cat, and fossicks about in second-hand shops of all kinds.