festivals

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In a nutshell

the specificity of festivals: they are temporary organizations, who try to operate with continuity, moving from one place to
another.

Project Based organizations

They are very common. Any production company is a project-based organization; they are very common in the cultural
sector.

The word event is used to indicate a very varied set of endeavors such as conferences, trades, fairs, workshops, concerts and
festivals. An interpretation defines events as moments that are unique in time + are celebrated with particular rituals and
ceremonies. Another interpretation defines events from:

Audience's pov: chance to have a social experience that differs from normal everyday activities

Organizer's pov: unique undertaking, which transcends their normal activities

⇒ the distinguishing element of an event is it's uniqueness, because the content presented in a specific place and time cannot
exactly be reproduced in the future

Traditionally we date festivals, intended as we do today, back to Woodstock in 1969: a 3-day long pop-up event in which a very
high number of people camp in an open space. It ended up having 10 times the amount of people expected [from 50’000 to
500’000]. up until woodstock, there were city fairs and saint celebrations, but didn’t hold the same amount of audience.

the specificity of festivals

These festivals have in common the fact that they:

1. Are a temporary initiatives

One of the main characteristics of festivals is the temporary occurrence. Things like festivals are city fairs, local festivities
and so on. A festival is a pop-up event, that gathers many people and consequently - many organizations (for example
food providers, camping, bathrooms, parking lots etc.). Festivals attract a huge number of people. Antecedents of festivals
were the fairs, which - however - did not attract that number of people.

2. Have high symbolic value associated with being together [it's the experience that matters]

When a festival takes place, there's a symbolic value of being in that specific place now and together: the experience is
what makes this kind of events successful and what brings people to be in that place, in that moment, in that way.

3. Have high visibility: to attract people + some are still remembered today after years. Also in this case, size matters: it should
be very visible.

4. Have high impact

POSITIVE EXTERNALITIES

Economic impact is

concentrated in space and time as it gathers a lot of people for a limited amount of time

selective: food and drinks providers, accommodations, etc… make high amount of money during festivals. This is also because
they increasingly raise prices for the occasion.

Visibility: you attract people

Festivals exploit economies of scope: places that are usually unutilized are offered for this kind of events so that they can be
certified (certification purposes). The idea of public cultural institutions is to attract people with different backgrounds to places
usually used by a small group of people, so that also other people can discover that place and start to attend it.

Social/Diffusion of the sense of community: there is some kind of social value because you’re taking part in an event where
many people go, you feel like you are participating to something and making history (witness).
You can use impact to send a message: you relate the visibility to a cause. could be for fundraising.
Living the experience and its legacy

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 One impact refers to peer communities: from the artistic, professional and cultural point of view, this generates spillovers,
because it encourages other events and initiatives.
For example, the Festival della Letteratura a Mantova changed the way book are promoted in this country: people who like reading
would like to have a possibility to discuss with the authors, to meet other people with the same interests, to discuss topics during
events. The idea of how you launch a book was totally revolutionized by the Festival in Mantova, that generated, in turn, a lot of
other book festivals, like BookCity in Milan.

⇒ Local governments like festivals and in some cases they encourage these, simplifying the effort of individual organisations to
promote and propose events and opportunities. This can happen because of

visibility;

you can also plan ahead of time;

you can have a city full of events at zero costs as municipalities will give premises. They give public spaces and host these
events for free and then they also offer advertising. All the rest is outsourced to private sponsors and non profits.

NEGATIVE EXTERNALITIES
The problem is that it benefits very few people for a limited time: this phenomenon in statistic is called Skewness. [If you have a
population, you expect a normal Gaussian curve, instead the sales are concentrated in just one point and not distributed well]

Pollution
Tension visitors-residents (because of noise, high prices, etc.)
Economy of the place is mainly in the hands of the event
High costs: you still have costs to organize and manage for smth that last shortly. It might not be an efficient way to allocate
resources.

Festivals from an organizational perspective: building a clan

An alternative way of organizing very diverse groups of people

Common in loosely formal organizations or in very young organizations

Variety of competences allow for covering a wide array of activities

Strong and long-lasting links among members who share strongly the same core values an the same goals

Very charismatic leaders

Particularly relating to the people involved in the organization of the event (apart and more than the ones who participate in it). You
develop specific mechanisms for interpersonal relationships. This sense of clan is important for these companies but lasts for a
short time generally. It is very difficult to replicate every year the same spirit. Moreover, temporary projects require specific aligned
skills and people simultaneously. So behind these organizations, you generally have charismatic leaders: it is quite different from
running a business with continuity.
How do you create continuity for this event?

Make it a travelling event [changing locations]

Repeat it regularly [always on the same time]

In this way (that is, through repetition and routinization), you create loyalty and efficiency, since you do not have to negotiate
every time with municipalities and organizations. From a collective point is view, knowing which events will take place in the city
at a specific time is useful to plan activities around the main events. In this way, you can have economies of learning and
economies of scope around routinization.

Sometimes, you decide to organize the same event every 2/3/4 years. Sometimes you create the five/ten/twenty-five years
edition.

Nostalgia is a very important element to consider in cultural initiatives (every generation has its heroes): look at Walt Disney.
Nostalgia brings a lot of money in merchandising.

They may create legacies also from a cultural viewpoint, and this idea that you could gather this huge crowd in a short time came
from Woodstock itself. Even if there are quite some negative externalities + diseconomies, many people are still attracted to them
and like them.
All the organizations try to legitimize themselves in order to repeat the event every year. Very often, in a local development
project you have festivals as key ingredients.

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 Festival evolution
Increased complexity and variety of goals

A changing socio-cultural context

A different stakeholder system: from “counterculture” to “mainstream”

Less spontaneous; increasingly market driven

A growing attention to results and impact

As the number of festivals grows, they become more complex, regulation became more stringent (since great crowds can be very
dangerous).
Very often, this clanic temporary organizations - think of raves - are built against smth, they are illegal, outside the market. In fact,
these events start off as counterculture.
If you look at festivals nowadays, they are mainstream. The economic interest is a dominant factor, so they are less spontaneous:
they are market-driven. For this reason, the idea of measuring positive and negative externalities has become more important.

… back to festivals
Their complexity varies according to the size + type of audience that they attract. We can therefore imagine a continuum at whose
ends are:

International events: high-impact occasions which require considerable organizational efforts

Local events: imply less organizational complexity, but can have equally significant effects on the territory in terms for
examples of economic impact, improved image of the local area + increased social cohesion

Whatever the size, organizing an event involves specific problems due to its unique nature, high degree of risk + need to perform a
series of complex activities in a short space of time, which require ≠, highly specialized skills. These factors can be managed
effectively by adopting a particular organizational form: PROJECT-BASED ORGANIZATION [PBO], which refers to all
organizational forms which involve creating a temporary system to produce a project aimed at fulfilling a specific object
⇒ useful solution for managing one-off activities which must be completed within a set timeframe + which require grouping together
≠, dedicate resources in order to take place.
It can also be used to manage activities that fall outside normal routine by cultural institution featuring a functional or divisional
structure as well as in more traditional economic sectors to provide greater flexibility, greater focus on goals + more efficient
integration between the various competencies involved

Project based organizations [PBO]

From an organizational viewpoint, these temporary initiatives became progressively more structured. The type of glue that keeps
people together is less and less these common passions, but it is a projected based organization (you assign roles, you set up
goals, you fix deadlines, you fundraise).

From clan based to project-based organizations

Project Based Organizations (PBO) are complex in nature + are geared towards a specific goal that has a specific deadline

Activities are tightly interrelated + require the involvement of an articulated set of specialized skills

PBO refer to organizational forms implying the creation of a temporary system leading to a specific output, being it
one shot or recurring

Project Based Organizations are interesting in the extent to which how processes are structured and interrelated. Maybe, you
have less charismatic leaders, but high level of coordination. The coordination mechanisms among managing time, people,
deadlines and interactions becomes more codified. Increasingly, you must involve a variety of stakeholders and broaden as much
as possible your presence.

Organizing an event also requires setting up a project team consisting of people with ≠ skills, professional knowledge and
experience, which are however extremely interdependent since individual performance strongly depends on the behavior of the
other individuals involved in production processes. Therefore, the team members must also be able to establish positive relational
dynamics amongst themselves so as to make those differences a factor of wealth rather than one producing obstacles + conflict

⇒ cohesion processes and leadership processes are crucial

COHESION PROCESSES: refer to the relational dynamics that help the individual components of a group to work in coordination
with the others. After getting to know each other, it's important that they define their roles precisely + they must effectively

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 coordinate with each other so that they can put their competencies to use in order to reach their common goal.

One element that can aid is if team members have already shared past experiences on other projects since these long-lasting ties
could support the creation of trust + communication processes, thus improving the team performance
LEADERSHIP PROCESSES: refer to one or more team members' ability to help the group's work through coordinating individual
actions + managing conflicts. In fact, each project must have a project manager who ensures the goals are achieved, while
monitoring budget + time limitations. It requires a broad, elaborated series of critical tasks for the project's success, which are
broken down intro 3 main groups:

Interpersonal activities: managing the relationship dynamics between team members + between them and external parties.
To do this, they can perform liaison [networking,…] or figurehead [formally representing the team,…] tasks

Information activities: managing + facilitating processes for communication and sharing of info necessary for project's
success. Can perform tasks of monitoring [= observing the environment and gathering relevant info to share], disseminating [=
circulating info] + being a spokesman

Decision-making activities: regards which strategic decision to pursue, choices to be made as problems arise, managing
disputes + allocating resources

the life-cycle of cultural events

1. CONCEPTION PHASE: defining the content, distinctive features + main objectives of an event
Involves outlining the strategic profile of the cultural project, starting from an analysis of the respective context + the goals to be
achieved by the event. More specifically, the need expressed by the various stakeholders must identified.
Important to analyze all the potential competitors, which is the preparatory, fundamental step for defining the event's strategic
profile, i.e. its mission, goals + target audience. Clearly defining the mission of an event is crucial as it allows to identify the
direction in which the parties involved must go, effectively coordinating the work to be done at various levels of the org. Part of
this is the specification of the goals intended to be achieved, which are differentiated by

importance

time-scale

category

Outputs: choosing the physical space, its date + the line-up

2. INITIATION: the time to check the actual feasibility of the event in relation to the resources and time available. The purpose is
to conduct a feasibility study of the project + implement the initial operational actions necessary for success. Feasibility must be
considered in terms of organizational, technical-logistic, communication and economic-financial aspects

In this phase, we must also define the specific governance of the projects, i.e. identifying the party who is responsible for the
event + defining partnerships with other actors such as association, cultural institutions, companies, media + political authorities

Main output: the drawing of a project document that must contain all the founding elements: title, mission, target, audience,
program, budget + communication strategies. This document is invaluable since it allows to communicate every aspect of the
project, both internally and externally

3. PLANNING: when all the elements considered so far are reorganized into more detailed work plans, i.e. we proceed to the
operational scheduling of the event: we identify which activities + actions need to be executed, the time they are expected to
take, resources to be sourced + methods for monitoring processes. Planning tools commonly used are:

Work breakdown structure [WBS]: we start with the general outcome we want to achieve and then identify the sub-
outcomes or deliverables required to accomplish the general outcome. We then indicate the actions that need to be
implemented in order to meet the defined sub-outcomes and proceed this way until reaching a highly detailed level that can
define individual tasks

Responsibility matrix: allows to outline the roles of the project team members precisely + assign tasks to each person

Gantt chart: offers an overview of the activities to be completed according to the times by which they need to be started
and completed, offering a complete representation of the interdependencies between activities

4. EXECUTIONS AND CLOSURE PHASES: when the project is actually delivered, by implementing the decisions and
indications established in previous phases.
The closure phase includes also all those administrative tasks connected with the receipt of public and private funding,
normally done once the project is over

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 5. EVALUATION: reviewing the work done + the results accomplished so as to check whether the objectives have been achieved.
It's important as, in addition to seeking to establish the value created for the stakeholders, it forms the basis for the conception
phase of the next edition of the event

Important to draw on impact assessment studies, which consist of estimating the impact by an event to the activities in the
surrounding territory. The effects are measured through an estimate of the tourist traffic generated + changes in spending,
income and employment in the area where it took place. 3 types:

Direct impact: returns on direct spending by event organizers + visitors who have come to the area specifically to attend
event

Indirect impact: subsequent effects of the newly injected money to the economy that indirectly boosts the local economy

Induced impact: change in income of residents following the event + consequent increased spending capacity of residents
that will affect local economy

With regard to socio-cultural effects, the study attempt to measure an event's potential for

Attracting new audiences

To help create networks with other contexts

Improve the image + reputation of host territory

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