Dr Giulia Rossetti

Festivals have been conceptualised as serious leisure activities as well as arenas for cultural capital acquisition and embodiment. However, there is still theoretical confusion surrounding the process of cultural embodiment, especially in leisure practices. This article suggests that the serious leisure perspective, in combination with cultural capital ideas, offers a means of deepening understanding of how cultural capital can be embodied in festival settings. To make its arguments, the article draws on qualitative data collected at two long-established literary festivals, one in Ireland and one in Italy. Observations and interviews with festival participants were used to develop an understanding of participants’ cultural capital embodiment. The article suggests that the serious leisure perspective is a valuable theory to throw light on three elements of cultural embodiment at festivals: (1) body; (2) pre-existing cultural resources; (3) time. Interlinking serious leisure with cultural capital leads to an in-depth analysis of how culture is embodied during festivals. This article demonstrates the value of using serious leisure and the embodied state of cultural capital ideas in tandem to further understand cultural embodiment in festivals. The study concludes by suggesting potential future studies and areas of research.

The paper explores the role and value of the so-called ‘balcony performances’ – community special events, organized during the first national lockdown in Italy in March-May 2020. Following the constructionist research paradigm, in-depth interviews were collected and analysed to understand how through engaging with special events, residents found ways to deal with uncertainty and distress during the time of lockdown. Balcony events allowed participants to connect with others at a distance, express and share their feelings and emotions and, eventually, transform fear and worry into hope and positivity. The paper reiterates the vital ritualistic role of events in community life and introduces a conceptual framework of the transformative power of events. The framework explains how during times of uncertainty, improvisational creativity within neighbourhoods, expressed in special events, can provide a platform for resilience building and community cohesion. The paper also puts forward a new perspective on residential balconies as event venues.

Purpose - This paper examines the under-investigated well-being outcomes of literary festival attendance. It is an exploratory study into how a festival contributes to attendees’ overall well-being. Drawing from literature on well-being and festival studies, this paper seeks to understand the well-being dimensions generated by festival attendance, and the factors that promote attendees’ health and well-being.

Design/methodology/approach – This exploratory study adopts an inductive and interpretivist approach. Observations, 45 on-site interviews, and 17 follow-up interviews were undertaken at one literary festival in Ireland. Thematic analysis was used to analyse data and identify key themes.  

Findings – The findings reveal that attendees perceived a sense of well-being that included five interconnected dimensions: social, mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical. Results also show that five factors generated attendees’ overall well-being: festival programme, social environment, place, weather conditions, and attendees’ background.

Originality– This paper presents a new comprehensive model that shows that festival attendance has the potential to generate five interconnected dimensions of attendees’ well-being. The model also captures the five main factors that can promote attendees’ health and well-being. The model is proposed to guide further research on attendees’ overall well-being associated with festival attendance. 

This study examines the under-investigated cultural outcomes of small-scale festivals. Specifically, it uses Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital to explore the cultural outcomes of festival participation in rural locations, investigating if and how small-scale festivals are arenas for displaying, reinforcing, and acquiring culture. The aims were to investigate whether attendees enhance their cultural capital by participating in literary festivals and to identify the elements that play a role in this process. Interviews and observations were undertaken at two small-scale literary festivals: Listowel Writers' Week located in a rural village in the west of Ireland, and Pordenonelegge located in a small town in the north of Italy. Findings reveal that cultural capital can be reinforced, stimulated, and acquired in a process that is shaped by both internal and external elements. A new conceptual model capturing this process is presented. The model characterises the internal elements as: demographic features, behavioural dimension, enjoyment, involvement, and pre-existing capitals; and the external elements as: festival features, social context, spatial and temporal dimensions. The empirical findings show how rural literary festivals can be rewarding and fulfilling experiences that lead to individual cultural capital development. Further research is needed to examine whether the model portraying the development of cultural capital associated with literary festival participation can be applied to other types of festivals.