Managing Cultural Festivals Tradition and Innovation in Europe

Foreword: Cultural festivals - Quos Vadis in research and practice

Marianna Sigala

Introduction: Managing Cultural Festivals: context, challenges and new avenues of research

Elisa Salvador and Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen

Section 1: Cultural Festivals Organization and Management: between Tradition and Innovation 

1. The tradition of being innovative: the case of the Venice Biennale and its Venice International Film Festival

Viktoriya Pisotska, Kerem Gurses and Luca Giustiniano 

2. Food Events and the Temporality of Innovation

Iben Sandal Stjerne and Silviya Svejenova 

3. From Festa to Festival: UNESCO Heritage and the (Invented) Tradition of a Cultural Festival

Carmelo Mazza and Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen 

4. Innovation in early music festivals: domains, strategies and outcomes

Elena Castro-Martínez Elena, Albert Recasens and Ignacio Fernández-de-Lucio

Section 2: Challenges of Cultural Festivals in the Digital Age 

5. A classical music Festival and its audience: The Case of MITO Settembre Musica

Giovanna Segre, Andrea Morelli and Caterina Valenti

6. Ferrara Buskers Festival (1998-2001): Design, Emerging Meanings and Sense Making

Luca Zan and Giovanni Masino 

7. Becoming a symbol and losing control: The Gothenburg Book Fair and the alt-right debate

Josef Pallas and Elena Raviola 

8. Music Festivals and Educational Concerts in Spain: A Landscape between Tradition and Innovation

Ana Maria Botella-Nicolas, Rosa Isusi-Fagoaga and Elena Castro-Martinez

Section 3: Value and Impacts of Cultural Festivals at local and regional level 

9. (The Economics of) Cultural Festivals in the Digital Age: An analysis of the comics publishing industry

Elisa Salvador, Elena Castro-Martinez and Pierre-Jean Benghozi 

10. Beyond economic impact: the cultural and social effects of arts festivals

María Devesa and Ana Roitvan 

11. Cultural value of a Festival: quality evaluator for assessing impact

Arjo Klamer, Ludmilla Petrova, and Dorottya Eva Kiss 

12. Cultural Events and Japanese Pop Culture in Europe: The case of the Japan Expo in France

Norio Tajima, Keiko Kawamata, Shoetsuro Nakagawa and Toshihiko Miura 

13. Facts about music festivals: what we know and what we would like to know

Jean-Paul Simon

Biography

Elisa Salvador is Professor (PhD, HDR) of Innovation and Creativity at ESSCA School of Management, France.

Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen is Professor of Organization Studies at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.

"Cultural festivals are a very important sector and contributes strongly to the vitality of cities. This book offers an interesting overview of European festivals and its richness, but also the challenges facing the sector. In addition, it develops a detailed tool to measure their cultural impact, a tool that can be used in other cultural sectors. I recommend this reading to anyone with an interest in festivals or readers who would like to know more about how to measure the cultural impact." François Colbert, Holder of the Carmelle and Rémi Marcoux Chair in Arts Management, HEC Montréal, Canada

"This book provides an excellent resource for those interested in delving into research on cultural festivals. As the editors point out, cultural festivals are vital showcases of local culture and tradition that link to community and societal wellbeing, and as such, they merit deeper investigation. However, changes in technology and the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic have both hit traditional cultural festivals hard, resulting in a need to innovate and change to keep up with the times. This book also addresses challenges faced by cultural festivals regarding their socio-economic impacts and the future relevance of such festivals. The strength of this book is that it provides a great collection of chapters drawn from across Europe focusing on a wide range of cultural festival types (from film festivals to pop culture festivals and from book fairs to music festivals). Highly recommended reading for all festival scholars." Judith Mair, Associate Professor and Discipline Leader of the Tourism Discipline Group at the UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Australia