Festivals have burgeoned in rural areas, revitalising old traditions and inventing new reasons to celebrate. How do festivals contribute to tourism, community and a rural sense of belonging? What are their cultural, environmental and economic dimensions? This book answers such questions - featuring contributions from leading geographers, historians, anthropologists, tourism scholars and cultural researchers. It draws on a range of case studies: from the rustic charm of agricultural shows and family circuses to the effervescent festival of Elvis Presley impersonators in Parkes; from wildflower collecting to the cosmopolitan beats of ChillOut, Australia’s largest non-metropolitan gay and lesbian festival. Festivals as diverse as youth surfing carnivals, country music musters, Aboriginal gatherings in the remote Australian outback, Scottish highland gatherings and German Christmas celebrations are united in their emphasis on community, conviviality and fun.

Festivals have always been part of city life, but their relationship with their host cities has continually changed. With the rise of industrialization, they were largely considered peripheral to the course of urban affairs. Now they have become central to new ways of thinking about the challenges of economic and social change, as well as repositioning cities within competitive global networks. In this timely and thought-provoking book, John and Margaret Gold provide a reflective and evidence-based historical survey of the processes and actors involved, charting the ways that regular festivals have now become embedded in urban life and city planning. Beginning with David Garrick’s rain-drenched Shakespearean Jubilee and ending with Sydney’s flamboyant Mardi Gras celebrations, it encompasses the emergence and consolidation of city festivals. After a contextual historical survey that stretches from Antiquity to the late nineteenth century, there are detailed case studies of pioneering European arts festivals in their urban context: Venice’s Biennale, the Salzburg Festival, the Cannes Film Festival and Edinburgh’s International Festival. Ensuing chapters deal with the worldwide proliferation of arts festivals after 1950 and with the ever-increasing diversifycation of carnival celebrations, particularly through the actions of groups seeking to assert their identity. The conclusion draws together the book’s key themes and sketches the future prospects for festival cities. Lavishly illustrated, and copiously researched, this book is essential reading not just for urban geographers, social historians and planners, but also for anyone interested in contemporary festival and events tourism, urban events strategy, urban regeneration regeneration, or simply building a fuller understanding of the relationship between culture, planning and the city.

The Festival Cities of Edinburgh and Adelaide examines how these cities’ world-famous arts events have shaped and been shaped by their long-term interaction with their urban environments. While the Edinburgh International Festival and Adelaide Festival are long-established, prestigious events that champion artistic excellence, they are also accompanied by the two largest open-access fringe festivals in the world. It is this simultaneous staging of multiple events within Edinburgh’s Summer Festivals and Adelaide’s Mad March that generates the visibility and festive atmosphere popularly associated with both places. Drawing on perspectives from theatre studies and cultural geography, this book interrogates how the Festival City, as a place myth, has developed in the very different local contexts of Edinburgh and Adelaide, and how it is challenged by groups competing for the right to use and define public space. Each chapter examines a recent performative event in which festival debates and controversies spilled out beyond the festival space to activate the public sphere by intersecting with broader concerns and audiences. This book forges an interdisciplinary, comparative framework for festival studies to interrogate how festivals are embedded in the social and political fabric of cities and to assess the cultural impact of the festivalisation phenomenon.

Over the period 1999-2005, choreographer and dancer Tess de Quincey and a team of international artists conducted a series of art-laboratories and performances in and around the Central Desert town of Alice Springs. These art-labs culminated in the 2005 performance of Dictionary of Atmospheres, staged during the Alice Desert Festival. Drawing upon practice-based research conducted while interning with de Quincey during the development and staging of Dictionary of Atmospheres, Anderson contemplates the way in which moments from the production illustrate the artist’s approach to and articulation of place. Meeting Places offers meditation on the nature of experience as it manifests in serial site-specific art encounters in desert locations. Mary Elizabeth Anderson is an assistant professor in the Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre & Dance at Wayne State University. Her research explores dimensions of popular participation in performance, with particular focus on placemaking, teaching artistry and reflective practice.

Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest explores an annual interstate tug-of-war between two small towns along the Mississippi River. In this book, Johnston examines how media shapes place and identity of people at this festival. In writing this book, he conducted analysis of a ten year period of media coverage, and found that the experience people have while attending Tug Fest is quite different than what is said in classic novels about life on the Mississippi River.

Events can be synonymous with a particular place, helping shape and promote a location. Given the rise of the global events industry, this book uncovers how events impact upon places and societies, looking at a range of different events and geographical scales. Geographers are concerned with how notions of space and place impact people, communities and identity, and events have played a central role in how places are perceived, consumed and even contested. This book will discuss international event cases to frame knowledge around the increased demands, pressures and complexities that globalisation, transnationalism, regeneration and competitiveness has put on events, places and societies. Integrating discussions of theory and practice, this book will explore the range of conceptual perspectives linked to how geographers and sociologists understand events and the role events play in contemporary times. This involves recognizing histories and planning strategies, the purpose of bidding for an event or the local meanings that have emerged and changed in the place. This helps us analyse how events have the potential to redefine place identities. This international edited collection will appeal to academics across disciplines such as geography, planning and sociology, as well as students on events management and events studies courses.

Creativity is said to be the fuel of the contemporary economy. Dynamic industries such as film, music, television and design have changed the fortunes of entire cities, from Nashville to Los Angeles, Barcelona to Brisbane and beyond. Yet creativity remains mercurial – it is at the heart of industrial innovation and can attract investment, but it is also an intangible, personal quality and experience. What exactly constitutes creativity? Drawing on examples as diverse as postcard design, classical music, landscape art, tattooing, Aboriginal hip-hop, and rock sculpture, this book seeks to explore and redefine creativity as both economic and cultural phenomenon. Creativity also has a peculiar geography. Beyond Hollywood, creativity is evident in suburban, rural and remote places – a quotidian, vernacular, eclectic enterprise. In seeking to redefine the creative industries, this book brings together geographers, historians, sociologists, cultural studies scholars and media/communications experts to explore creativity in diverse places outside major cities. These are places that are physically and/or metaphorically remote, are small in population terms, or which because of old industrial legacies are assumed by others to be unsophisticated or marginal in an imaginary geography of creativity. This book reveals the richness and depth, the challenges and surprises of being creative beyond city limits. This book was originally published as a special issue of Australian Geographer.