1st Edition
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.
Part 1: Planning edutainment
1. Introduction
Brianna Wyatt and Giulia Rossetti
2. Science Non-Friction: Balancing operational and legacy agendas for a university based science festival
Kathryn Jones, Cherry Canovan and Paul Fallon
3. Witch City’s ‘Haunted Happenings’: Managing authenticity and edutainment in Salem, Massachusetts
Hannah Stewart, Louise Todd and Jane Ali-Knight
4. Edutainment in Disney’s EPCOT International Festival Cycle
Carissa Baker
5. SouthWestFest: Edutainment through the lens of a cultural community festival, and its delivery partners
Joanna Goodey
Part 2: Audience engagement
6. Music festivals, edutainment, and audience engagement in a digital world
Xiao Lu
7. Science in society: exploring science festivals and valuable leisure
Elspeth A. Frew and Amaia Makua
8. Maintaining festivals’ "sense of community" through educational activities for locals and festival tourists during the Covid-19 crisis in Greece
Sofoklis Skoultsos and Nicholas Karachalis
Part 3: Sustainability and EDI
9. The Winterage Festival in a Learning Landscape
Angela Wright
10. Managing inclusivity and diversity with edutainment for festivals
Cemile Ece, Efnan Ezenel and Elif Şenel
11. Edutainment actions in a Mexican film festival - Cinema Planeta, the first film festival in Morelos, Mexico
Driselda-Patricia Sánchez-Aguirre
Part 4: Experiencing edutainment
12. Edutainment through Storytelling, Nostalgia and Living History in 1940s Festivals and Events
Zoe Leonard and Julie Whitfield
13. Playing with your food: fun, frolics and learning at food festivals
Ingrid Kajzer Mitchell, Christine van Winkle and Will Low
14. Learning (with) Negative Emotions: The Future of Science Festivals
Adalberto Fernandes
15. Afterword: The future of edutainment in festival experiences
Brianna Wyatt and Giulia Rossetti
Biography
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.
"Whilst the conceptualisation of edutainment is not new, it is wonderful to see this unique edited text bringing together interconnected concepts such as planning, engagement, and the event experience giving readers a much deeper understanding into how edutainment can be applied in a multidisciplinary way to improve sustainability, create equity, and move EDI agendas forward, upon which the future of humanity depends."
-Dr Allan Jepson, Hertfordshire Business School.
"Festivals and Edutainment is a vital addition to existing knowledge on Events Management theory and practice. It is your one stop shop for examining the theoretical and practical nuances of Education and Entertainment in the Festival typology of events. The blend of industry and research insights means the text lends itself to industry practitioners as well as taught units aligned to Events and Arts Management"
-Dr. Miriam Firth, School of Environment, Education and Development, Manchester Institute of Education.
"Decades, if not centuries later, we are still – only now – starting to understand the transformational power of events on the people that organize and experience them. We must do more to analyze how events move us, change us, and generate positive social change. By "we" I mean… everyone! Everyone involved in the conception, planning, delivery, and the long-tail legacies that events bequeath. That’s why this book, focused on "edutainment", is special; a series of well-written and interesting cases that help to explicate these complex processes, applicable to all event stakeholders, from academics to practitioners"
-Dr. Mike Duignan, Rosen College of Hospitality Management, University of Central Florida.
‘This pioneering volume provides a novel approach to the understudied theme of edutainment in events. It assembles a curated collection of contributions with a wide range of perspectives and incorporating different research methodologies. Important contemporary issues such as sustainability and equality are examined, and visitor and resident perspectives, edutainment experiences and emotions are highlighted. It therefore represents an important source book on edutainment in events for researchers and students.’
-Professor Greg Richards, Tilburg School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Tilburg University.
‘This book is the first to unpack the role of edutainment in festival experiences globally. While much festival research has focused on the operational elements of festival management, the concept of edutainment has received much less attention. Using a series of case studies of diverse festivals from around the world, the book examines how edutainment festival experiences are planned to engage audiences and how audiences experience edutainment. The case studies also explore how edutainment fosters co-creation leading to more inclusive and sustainable festivals. This text will be invaluable reading for advanced students of events and festivals as well as tourism and leisure students more broadly as well as festival practitioners.’
-Professor Kirsten Holmes, School of Management and Marketing, Curtin University.
