The safe and efficient organisation of your festival is not just crucial to the artists who perfo... more The safe and efficient organisation of your festival is not just crucial to the artists who perform and the audiences who attend, it’s crucial to your finances, your brand reputation and, ultimately, your career. Festivals are a chance for artists to show their inventiveness and brilliance and for audiences to be transported away from the daily humdrum of everyday life; to be entertained and inspired. Those interactions between artist and audience can result in a range of outcomes from intellectually challenging, to entertaining and sometimes life-changing. But the perceived glamour that creative festivals inevitably suggest is built on the rather dull yet essential disciplines of planning and logistics. These days, given the increasing complexities of new technology and larger productions to bigger and bigger crowds, plus the creative desire to continually push boundaries and a growing concern for public welfare, planning and logistics have become ever more vital. Benjamin Franklin...
It used to be called ‘personnel’, or ‘personnel management’, and now has the title ‘human resourc... more It used to be called ‘personnel’, or ‘personnel management’, and now has the title ‘human resources management’, usually shortened to HRM. Within large organisations it can be the least visible until people problems arise. It has to undertake the dull but vitally necessary tasks of ensuring that an organisation’s ‘people management’ complies with the law and that the company gets the best out of the people it employs. So, what’s this got to do with the comparatively small, lively, friendly, funky, chaotic world of festivals? No matter how small and cuddly your festival is, the management of people, whether full time or very occasional, will be crucial to your success. This chapter sets out the principles which will increasingly apply as your festival develops and grows.
Festival producers used their professional cultural expertise to navigate tensions between local ... more Festival producers used their professional cultural expertise to navigate tensions between local and national policies in order to access resources from different funding sources. They did this acc...
Running or working for a festival, you will find that you have to deal with issues related to str... more Running or working for a festival, you will find that you have to deal with issues related to structure and staff roles almost on a daily basis. These management issues will sit alongside leadership questions about your festival’s purpose, values, governance and ethos. In this chapter, you will be introduced to leadership models and different management structures and roles within festival production. The chapter will emphasise the role of leadership in the cultural sector, including artistic and creative vision. It will introduce the concept of organisational culture and discuss the relationship between structure, culture and values. It will also discuss and illustrate the key roles in festival management and delivery. So, what does the term ‘leadership’ mean and how does it differ from the term ‘manager’ which is also often used to describe people in authority? Titles have over the years changed, so what were once ‘managing directors’ at the top of companies are now ‘chief executi...
This chapter outlines the post-recession funding landscape in the UK cultural sector as one view ... more This chapter outlines the post-recession funding landscape in the UK cultural sector as one view of the creative economy. Focusing on the promotion of philanthropy as a hegemonic funding model for arts organisations and a policy response to public resourcing of the arts, the chapter draws on the empirical evidence of funding changes in the East Midlands, UK, through the ‘Leadership for the Future’ programme by the Arts Council. Drawing on anecdotal evidence, the chapter notes shifting patterns in how the arts are valued in the UK, the dialectical tensions created through new funding pressures and regimes, and the eventual impact in arts curation, which arises from the involvement of private funding partners in an otherwise public art domain.
A complete guide to developing and running a festival from inception to evaluation, covering all ... more A complete guide to developing and running a festival from inception to evaluation, covering all aspects of festival management and key central issues and contemporary debates.
Driving home from work a few days ago, I passed through a sequence of villages, all with fluoresc... more Driving home from work a few days ago, I passed through a sequence of villages, all with fluorescent roadside posters. The first was for a flower festival on the following Saturday in the church hall. The second promoted a steam festival at a local stately home. The third was for a festival of local food in a nearby gastro pub. It started me thinking about the increasing number of things that are being labelled and defined as festivals; things that don’t fit neatly into Négrier’s con- ception of festivalisation as ‘the process by which cultural activity, previously presented in a regular, on-going pattern or season, is reconfigured to form a ‘new’ event, e.g. a regular series of jazz concerts is reconfigured as a jazz festival’ (2015: 18). Whilst accepting this as one dimension – part of a wider festivalisation of the ways in which culture is produced, distributed and consumed – this chapter seeks to understand the wider festivalisation of contemporary life by identifying key principles associated with festival production. In addition to the changes to the cultural sector presentation practices noted by Négrier and discussed later, festivalisation processes can increasingly be seen in brand and city marketing strategies. This chapter will argue that the festivalisation of contemporary life can be considered to be the instrumental use of techniques found in the production dimensions of festivals to achieve cultural and non-cultural outcomes within social, economic and policy fields.
Marketing, promotion, sales, communications, audiences, participation – the concepts covered in t... more Marketing, promotion, sales, communications, audiences, participation – the concepts covered in this section are a fundamental part of festival management, whether your event is a community fête or a globally recognised music festival. The word ‘marketing’ originated from the simple forms of buying and selling that can be seen in a local street market, but the term now encompasses a range of sophisticated techniques that have developed to help companies decide what products and services to produce and how to persuade people to buy them. This chapter introduces marketing concepts and illustrates how festivals and cultural events can adapt the techniques to develop appropriate experiences for festival-goers, artists and communities. This chapter will introduce concepts such as supply and demand, segmentation and targeting, CRM (customer relationship management), experience marketing and its relationship to service design, and branding. It will raise questions about the extent to which...
The growth in arts festivals that has taken place since the 1990s has changed the structure of th... more The growth in arts festivals that has taken place since the 1990s has changed the structure of the cultural market place. Based on interviews and discussions with festival directors and arts producers, participant observation as a producer and audience member, primarily in the UK, together with examples from the literature, this paper explores the question of whether festival aesthetics and the particularities of festival production and exhibition are changing the nature of the work that is being produced in response to festivalisation. It identifies a number of dimensions of the festival experience, commissioning, spectacularisation, thematic programming, immersion and participation, that are increasingly prevalent in the performing and visual arts being produced for non-festival settings. This festivalisation of culture poses new challenges and offers different opportunities to artists, producers and audiences to make innovative kinds of work that wouldn’t have been possible withi...
Citation: Jordan, J., Maguire, M., Bianchini, F., Ghilardhi, L. and Newbury, F.(2007) Evaluation ... more Citation: Jordan, J., Maguire, M., Bianchini, F., Ghilardhi, L. and Newbury, F.(2007) Evaluation of the cultural pathfinder programme. Cultural Evaluation and Research Unit (CERU) and International Cultural Planning and Policy Unit (ICPPU) De Montfort ...
The safe and efficient organisation of your festival is not just crucial to the artists who perfo... more The safe and efficient organisation of your festival is not just crucial to the artists who perform and the audiences who attend, it’s crucial to your finances, your brand reputation and, ultimately, your career. Festivals are a chance for artists to show their inventiveness and brilliance and for audiences to be transported away from the daily humdrum of everyday life; to be entertained and inspired. Those interactions between artist and audience can result in a range of outcomes from intellectually challenging, to entertaining and sometimes life-changing. But the perceived glamour that creative festivals inevitably suggest is built on the rather dull yet essential disciplines of planning and logistics. These days, given the increasing complexities of new technology and larger productions to bigger and bigger crowds, plus the creative desire to continually push boundaries and a growing concern for public welfare, planning and logistics have become ever more vital. Benjamin Franklin...
It used to be called ‘personnel’, or ‘personnel management’, and now has the title ‘human resourc... more It used to be called ‘personnel’, or ‘personnel management’, and now has the title ‘human resources management’, usually shortened to HRM. Within large organisations it can be the least visible until people problems arise. It has to undertake the dull but vitally necessary tasks of ensuring that an organisation’s ‘people management’ complies with the law and that the company gets the best out of the people it employs. So, what’s this got to do with the comparatively small, lively, friendly, funky, chaotic world of festivals? No matter how small and cuddly your festival is, the management of people, whether full time or very occasional, will be crucial to your success. This chapter sets out the principles which will increasingly apply as your festival develops and grows.
Festival producers used their professional cultural expertise to navigate tensions between local ... more Festival producers used their professional cultural expertise to navigate tensions between local and national policies in order to access resources from different funding sources. They did this acc...
Running or working for a festival, you will find that you have to deal with issues related to str... more Running or working for a festival, you will find that you have to deal with issues related to structure and staff roles almost on a daily basis. These management issues will sit alongside leadership questions about your festival’s purpose, values, governance and ethos. In this chapter, you will be introduced to leadership models and different management structures and roles within festival production. The chapter will emphasise the role of leadership in the cultural sector, including artistic and creative vision. It will introduce the concept of organisational culture and discuss the relationship between structure, culture and values. It will also discuss and illustrate the key roles in festival management and delivery. So, what does the term ‘leadership’ mean and how does it differ from the term ‘manager’ which is also often used to describe people in authority? Titles have over the years changed, so what were once ‘managing directors’ at the top of companies are now ‘chief executi...
This chapter outlines the post-recession funding landscape in the UK cultural sector as one view ... more This chapter outlines the post-recession funding landscape in the UK cultural sector as one view of the creative economy. Focusing on the promotion of philanthropy as a hegemonic funding model for arts organisations and a policy response to public resourcing of the arts, the chapter draws on the empirical evidence of funding changes in the East Midlands, UK, through the ‘Leadership for the Future’ programme by the Arts Council. Drawing on anecdotal evidence, the chapter notes shifting patterns in how the arts are valued in the UK, the dialectical tensions created through new funding pressures and regimes, and the eventual impact in arts curation, which arises from the involvement of private funding partners in an otherwise public art domain.
A complete guide to developing and running a festival from inception to evaluation, covering all ... more A complete guide to developing and running a festival from inception to evaluation, covering all aspects of festival management and key central issues and contemporary debates.
Driving home from work a few days ago, I passed through a sequence of villages, all with fluoresc... more Driving home from work a few days ago, I passed through a sequence of villages, all with fluorescent roadside posters. The first was for a flower festival on the following Saturday in the church hall. The second promoted a steam festival at a local stately home. The third was for a festival of local food in a nearby gastro pub. It started me thinking about the increasing number of things that are being labelled and defined as festivals; things that don’t fit neatly into Négrier’s con- ception of festivalisation as ‘the process by which cultural activity, previously presented in a regular, on-going pattern or season, is reconfigured to form a ‘new’ event, e.g. a regular series of jazz concerts is reconfigured as a jazz festival’ (2015: 18). Whilst accepting this as one dimension – part of a wider festivalisation of the ways in which culture is produced, distributed and consumed – this chapter seeks to understand the wider festivalisation of contemporary life by identifying key principles associated with festival production. In addition to the changes to the cultural sector presentation practices noted by Négrier and discussed later, festivalisation processes can increasingly be seen in brand and city marketing strategies. This chapter will argue that the festivalisation of contemporary life can be considered to be the instrumental use of techniques found in the production dimensions of festivals to achieve cultural and non-cultural outcomes within social, economic and policy fields.
Marketing, promotion, sales, communications, audiences, participation – the concepts covered in t... more Marketing, promotion, sales, communications, audiences, participation – the concepts covered in this section are a fundamental part of festival management, whether your event is a community fête or a globally recognised music festival. The word ‘marketing’ originated from the simple forms of buying and selling that can be seen in a local street market, but the term now encompasses a range of sophisticated techniques that have developed to help companies decide what products and services to produce and how to persuade people to buy them. This chapter introduces marketing concepts and illustrates how festivals and cultural events can adapt the techniques to develop appropriate experiences for festival-goers, artists and communities. This chapter will introduce concepts such as supply and demand, segmentation and targeting, CRM (customer relationship management), experience marketing and its relationship to service design, and branding. It will raise questions about the extent to which...
The growth in arts festivals that has taken place since the 1990s has changed the structure of th... more The growth in arts festivals that has taken place since the 1990s has changed the structure of the cultural market place. Based on interviews and discussions with festival directors and arts producers, participant observation as a producer and audience member, primarily in the UK, together with examples from the literature, this paper explores the question of whether festival aesthetics and the particularities of festival production and exhibition are changing the nature of the work that is being produced in response to festivalisation. It identifies a number of dimensions of the festival experience, commissioning, spectacularisation, thematic programming, immersion and participation, that are increasingly prevalent in the performing and visual arts being produced for non-festival settings. This festivalisation of culture poses new challenges and offers different opportunities to artists, producers and audiences to make innovative kinds of work that wouldn’t have been possible withi...
Citation: Jordan, J., Maguire, M., Bianchini, F., Ghilardhi, L. and Newbury, F.(2007) Evaluation ... more Citation: Jordan, J., Maguire, M., Bianchini, F., Ghilardhi, L. and Newbury, F.(2007) Evaluation of the cultural pathfinder programme. Cultural Evaluation and Research Unit (CERU) and International Cultural Planning and Policy Unit (ICPPU) De Montfort ...
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