This book aims at renewing the attention on a niche field, Cultural Festivals, so important for valorizing cultural traditions and local heritage visibility as well as social well-being. Following the disruptive consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, this fragile sector deserves more attention from public authorities and stakeholders at national and European levels with a suitable and dedicated plan of recovery and valorization. This book provides a comparative analysis of Cultural Festivals in Europe, taking insights from an international range of high-level scholarly contributors. Individual chapters highlight and analyse challenges around the organisation, management and economics of Cultural Festivals. As a whole, the book provides a comprehensive overview of scholarly research in this area, setting the scene for the future research agenda. Matters related to educational programs and new audience development, as well as challenges related to digitalization, are also included. The book employs a tradition versus innovation lens to help readers account for the consequences of the digital revolution, new audience development and an educational agenda. The result is a book which will be valuable reading for researchers, academics and students in the fields of event and cultural management and beyond. Chapters 4 and 9 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. They have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Already dealing with disruptive market forces, the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) faced fundamental challenges resulting from the global health crisis, wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. With catastrophic changes to cultural consumption, cultural organizations are dealing with short-, medium-, and long-term threats to livelihoods under lockdown. This book aims at filling the literature gap about the consequences of one of the hardest crises – COVID-19 – severely impacting all the fields of the CCIs. With a focus on European countries and taking into account the evolving and unstable context caused by the pandemic still in progress, this book investigates the first reactions and actual strategies of CCIs’ actors, government bodies, and cultural institutions facing the COVID-19 crisis and the potential consequences of these emergency strategies for the future of the CCIs. Solutions adopted during the repeated lockdowns by CCIs’ actors could originate new forms of cultural consumption and/or new innovative market strategies. This book brings together a constellation of contributors to analyze the cultural sector as it seeks to emerge from this existential challenge. The global perspectives presented in this book provide research-based evidence to understand and reflect on an unprecedented period, allowing reflective practitioners to learn and develop from a range of real-world cases. The book will also be of interest to researchers, academics, and students with a particular interest in the management of cultural and creative organizations and crisis management.

This book aims at renewing the attention on a niche field, Cultural Festivals, so important for valorizing cultural traditions and local heritage visibility as well as social well-being. Following the disruptive consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, this fragile sector deserves more attention from public authorities and stakeholders at national and European levels with a suitable and dedicated plan of recovery and valorization. This book provides a comparative analysis of Cultural Festivals in Europe, taking insights from an international range of high-level scholarly contributors. Individual chapters highlight and analyse challenges around the organisation, management and economics of Cultural Festivals. As a whole, the book provides a comprehensive overview of scholarly research in this area, setting the scene for the future research agenda. Matters related to educational programs and new audience development, as well as challenges related to digitalization, are also included. The book employs a tradition versus innovation lens to help readers account for the consequences of the digital revolution, new audience development and an educational agenda. The result is a book which will be valuable reading for researchers, academics and students in the fields of event and cultural management and beyond. Chapters 4 and 9 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. They have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Already dealing with disruptive market forces, the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) faced fundamental challenges resulting from the global health crisis, wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. With catastrophic changes to cultural consumption, cultural organizations are dealing with short-, medium-, and long-term threats to livelihoods under lockdown. This book aims at filling the literature gap about the consequences of one of the hardest crises - COVID-19 - severely impacting all the fields of the CCIs. With a focus on European countries and taking into account the evolving and unstable context caused by the pandemic still in progress, this book investigates the first reactions and actual strategies of CCIs' actors, government bodies, and cultural institutions facing the COVID-19 crisis and the potential consequences of these emergency strategies for the future of the CCIs. Solutions adopted during the repeated lockdowns by CCIs' actors could originate new forms of cultural consumption and/or new innovative market strategies. This book brings together a constellation of contributors to analyze the cultural sector as it seeks to emerge from this existential challenge. The global perspectives presented in this book provide research-based evidence to understand and reflect on an unprecedented period, allowing reflective practitioners to learn and develop from a range of real-world cases. The book will also be of interest to researchers, academics, and students with a particular interest in the management of cultural and creative organizations and crisis management.