1

Authors: Fabian Holt and Francesco Lapenta

Chapter for The Handbook of Experience Economy

The Social Experience of Cultural Events Conceptual Foundations and Analytical Strategies

1. Introduction

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

This chapter presents a systematic review of conventional approaches to the experi-

ence of cultural events. The argument is that valuable approaches exist in various

fields of study, but that the deeper conceptual foundations have yet to be clarified

and examined. To this end, the present chapter reviews existing approaches from an

essentially sociological perspective on cultural experience as something that not only

involves shared experience and interaction in a particular situation, but also life-style

aspects, social agendas, and world views. One of the distinctive features of cultural

events is their ability to engage participants in the experience of issues and agendas

in both simple and complex forms. The bulk of the chapter is a theoretical outline that

reviews and synthesizes complementary perspectives in the fields of sociology,

communication studies, and business studies for understanding the key dimensions

in the evolution of cultural events over the course of the past couple of decades.

More important than ever before is the media dimension, which has been overlooked

because events have historically been defined by their difference from media experi-

ence, by the direct face-to-face interaction between bodies. This has led to the cele-

bration of culture festivals and performances, for instance, as more authentic forms

of social experience than disembodied media communications, separating the con-

texts of production and reproduction. This chapter argues that while important differ-

ences are real and existing, the romanticist narrative of the unmediated creates a

false dichotomy, while in fact events and media, far from being mutually exclusive

entities, have always evolved in a complex relation, even when this is not immedi-

ately obvious to organizers and participants. The recent development of social media

has revolutionized the field, not only as the main communication platforms between

events and participants, but also in the more intense and more layered mediations

along multiple communication channels and the more expressive information medium

of video in media sharing sites.

2

The main section of the chapter is reflexive outline of three complementary ap-

proaches to the study of cultural events. The outline ground these approaches in the

conceptual foundations, drawing from diverse fields such as event management,

media studies, and marketing theory within a sociological discourse to account for

important changes in the relation between cultural events and society. After this out-

line, the chapter further details two contemporary contexts for contemporary cultural

events. The first is the postindustrial city and its cultural economy in which contempo-

rary event culture emerged in the 1970s. The other perspective is how cultural events

are transformed through new media practices.

After reading this chapter, you will be able to understand:

• Unique aspects of experience and participation in cultural events

• What it means for an event experience to be social

• How cultural events and their management strategies are evolving within

broader processes of social and technological change

• How cultural events have evolved in the specific contexts of the postin-

dustrial city and the expressive information channels of new media

• How analytical approaches to events emerge from broader conceptual

foundations

• The three core analytical concepts of situations, spheres, and leverage

THE CHANGING ROLE OF CULTURAL EVENTS IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

Cultural events have gained new and expanded functions in society since the 1980s

when the term ‘festivalization’ appeared in the context of urban renewal and gentrifi-

cation (Harvey 1991; Holt with Wergin 2012).1 The field of cultural events includes

commercial events organized for profit at one end and events organized by artists,

public institutions, and NGOs for more philanthropic purposes in the other. Overall,

however, it is frequently difficult to distinguish between these interests. Many music

and cultural festivals, for instance, illustrate the eroding boundaries in neoliberal so-

cieties between state, market, and civil society (see, e.g. Scammel 2000). They in-

volve all three sectors and engage participants as both citizens and consumers. The

reason festivals attract interest across society is that they are increasingly recognized

for their ability to mediate agendas of a complex world and not least for engaging

people in these agendas through embodied, localized participation. Thus, cultural

events increasingly become sites where civic utopian narratives of philanthropy, so-

cial movements, and sustainability are intersecting with narratives of economic

3

growth through consumption, tourism, and place marketing.

Cultural events, moreover, have entered the mainstream of social life. In the process,

they have lost some of their autonomy as a utopian "third spaces" for sharing and

imagining alternative futures in social movements and subcultures, for instance. The

evolution in media practices has contributed to this development. Events have taken

on new functions, not only a local, live, full sensory experience valued in discourse of

authentic bodily presence and participation. They have also taken on new functions

in the development of strategies for employing new media platforms in complex con-

stellations to maximize the impact of events in a landscape of fragmented and fluid

audiences. YouTube, for instance, is strategically positioning itself and indirectly also

Google as the leading global platform for video broadcasts of important cultural

events, with the implication that the platform not only gives access to but also creates

a global mass public culture.

New media practices have intensified the communication dynamics of cultural

events. Corporate brand events, for instance, have integrating techniques of installa-

tion art, interactive features, and eventually social video for strategic circulation in

global social media. Participatory media culture and its blurring of social spheres are

also manifest among industry events that are increasingly taking advantage of organ-

izing public festivities outside the closed halls of the trade fair to exploit the public

attention in the media to influence policy makers and consumers. The changes in

contemporary media culture have led to a point where the differences between live

and mediated experience are used more strategically and constitute a powerful and

necessary combination. The live event has become a fixture of corporate communi-

cations, even when events and media campaign activities are prioritized and com-

bined differently. The media perspective is integrated in the conception of the event

to optimize participation and the quality of media content. Thus, the media perspec-

tive no longer enters after the fact. The event has become a driver of media participa-

tion. It gains power from its localized experience in its context of origin and is con-

sumed in a parallel array of mediated communications, interactions, and representa-

tions.

2. Approaches and Concepts for the Study of Cultural Events

The field of events management has been dominated by applied research ap-

proaches in the organizational nexus of city governments, commercial corporations,

4

event production companies, and communications agencies. These applied ap-

proaches have generally been slow to develop a theoretically grounded understand-

ing of the historical, economic, and social dynamics of cultural events. Also lacking

are conceptual distinctions between different levels of analysis.

The events management literature is known outside academic circles for textbooks

that are useful for the practical planning and organization of a variety of events (e.g.

Allen et al. 2008; Bowdin 2006; Richards and Palmer 2010). Many of these books are

similar to guides for planning communication campaigns; they prescribe models of

practice rather than analyzing and conceptualizing those practices. In this discourse,

events are organized not for the sake of the experience itself, but for strategic and

instrumental interests in branding organizations and places. In the 2000s, many city

governments institutionalized and rebranded their events planning and permission

departments into departments for events, culture, and tourism. This was in many

cases influenced by Florida’s (2002) ideas about creative cities.

There is also a more specialized research literature that has appeared in journals

such as Festival Management & Event Tourism and various journals of tourism, mar-

keting, and management. However, it is still largely applied research and often con-

centrates on the sports events industry. The sports industry has always had a bigger

mass appeal, with broadcasts to mass media audiences, more sponsorship and ad-

vertising, and for these and other reasons not only sport events professionalization

happened earlier then in the field of cultural events, but it also received greater atten-

tion in research and related literature. This article does not focus on sports events,

but rather on the current professionalization and evolution in cultural events. Al-

though it does not exclude that some overlapping patterns characterize these differ-

ent industries, it focuses on some key differences. One of the fundamental differ-

ences between sports event and culture event is the generally central role, in cultural

events, of representations of self and social life, a particular cultural mimesis, to

speak with Aristotle, including subtle distinctions and narratives around concepts of

taste, age, and class. In the more art-oriented events, reflexivity tends to play an im-

portant role, and they sometimes presuppose familiarity with the canons and sophis-

tication of “high” culture genres (Eyerman 2006, 21). In comparison, sports empha-

size bodily action and the rules of game. To narrow down the areas of interest of this

chapter the following types of cultural events are included in its critical framework: a)

festivals for cities, communities, cultures, art forms; b) art and book fairs; c) exposi-

tions integrating culture with science and technology; d) large public celebrations,

5

ceremonies, and commemorations; e) promotional events organized around cultural

performance.

A common misunderstanding in the cultural events literature is that events can be

organized more or less without specialist knowledge of content. Cultural events gen-

erally require most specialist knowledge of content, as their core identity emerges

from the particular combination of performances or installations that needs to be cu-

rated for this particular event and to give meaning to the particular time, place, and

audience. Thus, the DNA of a cultural event is often created through curatorial work

of the core content, not just the visual design and story-telling or other more external

components. This makes the curator or programmer a vital part of the event organi-

zation. The curation of cultural events requires analysis of talent, tastes, and interests

among specific consumer segments and the dynamics of fashions or trends. A super

star concert is fairly simple to curate because it is mainly about the market for one

artist. But if the artist is performing as part of a special event, how do we know if it is

the right artist for this particular event? In most cultural events such as music festi-

vals, film festivals, urban cultural festivals, and art biennials, the curatorial process

involves the invention of a creative concept and a large group of artists, activities,

and locals with the goal of creating a coherent vision.

Professional curators of cultural events routinely testify to the importance of creating

a program that is very contemporary, even visionary, because it is in the nature of

events to constantly innovate and be ahead of the curve by exposing audiences to

new cultural forms. This is partly because the event is an act of communication with a

news value, but also because it requires more effort on the part of the consumer to

participate in a festival, fair, exposition or public performance or ceremony for in-

stance, than watching a television show or reading a blog, and there are now more

cultural events on offer than ever before.

The chapter builds on a conventional conception of expressive culture in the humani-

ties to include both the arts and popular culture, but the chapter recognizes and ex-

amines issues pertaining to the expansion of culture outside the conventional

boundaries of culture; what has been called “art worlds” (Becker 1984) and “the field

of cultural production” (Bourdieu 1993) in the sociology of art. The evolving discourse

of experience economy in Northern European business studies is precisely linked

with the aestheticization of everyday life and service environments, involving a higher

design intensity, more events, and within these contexts also the appropriation of ex-

6

pressive culture. In this context of consumer and corporate culture, culture and cul-

tural experience are generally used as strategic entertainment. Culture becomes, in

Yúdice’s (2003) now famous phrase, “an expedient.” Culture has increasingly be-

come a tool in agendas of economic growth, mediating social conflicts, and philan-

thropic causes.

The concept of event, whether it is a social, sports, or cultural event, involves a break

from the mundane everyday. The event is defined by a duality of exhibition and fes-

tivity, and it brings together communicative acts of curation, presentation, perform-

ance, and consumer interaction. For participants, the recognition that many others

are congregating in the same place creates energy and expectations for a special

occasion. This is called ´eventfulness´. However, with culture, a special energy can

emerge in the encounter with culture in its extraordinary context. For instance, the

live music experience at a music festival or concert involves more than a musical ex-

perience, as music scholars have tended to think. But it is also more than a general

feeling of festivity and eventfulness, as event management discourse would say.

When any kind of art is effectively contextualized in an event, it comes alive as a so-

cial experience with meanings derived from its articulation in a special social domain

outside of its everyday domain of art consumption.

Although the contemporary field of professional cultural events has been subject of

little theorization, the broader conceptual foundations do not need to be invented

from scratch. In the events management literature, authors commonly define events

citing definitions in previous publications, complemented with common knowledge,

without grounding it theoretically, and this limits the field and leaves it somewhat dis-

connected from research on events in other fields. It is not only the practitioners’ dis-

course, but also the early attempts at theorization in performance studies and media

studies that lack a diverse but integrated disciplinary approach.

The dominant conceptions of performance in the field of performance studies evolve

from the pioneer works of the 1960s by Schechner (2003) [1977] and Turner (1969).

They built on anthropological studies of traditional ritual events and integrated per-

spectives of behavioral sociology and theatrical performances. At the time, mass cul-

ture and media were marginal topics in the large areas of humanities, and they are

still met with skepticism in performance studies (Auslander 1999). In the 1970s, me-

dia and live events were still considered relatively separate empirical domains in

academia. There was not really an academic discourse on cultural events. Only in

7

the quiet recent post-ritual events literature have scholars taken interest in analytical

perspectives on publics and media in communication studies and sociology. This

happened to some extent inside performance studies (Ibid.), but the perspectives did

not evolve there, but instead in media studies and sociology. It is indicative that the

field grew from a conception of the media event2 in linguistic categories of syntactics,

semantics, and pragmatics. “Syntactically, media events may be characterized, first,

by our elements of interruption, monopoly, being broadcast live, and being remote,”

writes Dayan and Katz (1992, 10). This definition was underwritten by a neo-

Durkheimian perspective of media events as occasions “where television makes

possible an extraordinary shared experience of watching events at society’s ‘centre’”

(Couldry and Hepp 2011, 3).

Media events and liveness research has contributed to the understanding of impor-

tant dimensions of performances and events in contemporary society, but is com-

plementary because it does not primarily analyze participation in physical events. At

the end of this chapter we shall explore the role that new media are acquiring in the

redefinition of the individual, collective, local and global discourse that cultural events

propose to inspire.

For a more complete and systematic account of conceptual foundations for the study

of cultural events, the following typology can be offered. The typology organizes

strands of research on fundamental aspects of events. The strands have evolved

within different disciplines, but to situate concepts and approaches in a broader inter-

disciplinary perspective, it is useful to understand these approaches in context.

Moreover, they are complementary as they focus on different levels of analysis and

are necessary for accounts of the notorious multitude of cultural events. This multi-

tude may be difficult to account for in scholarly terms, but it is easy to identify. When

a big event is occurring, for instance, media reports frequently ask participants and

experts about the nature of the event in the attempt at explaining it to their media

audiences. This produces numerous definitions that point out myriad aspects but

does not create a coherent narrative. Questions about the nature of a major event

are difficult to handle even for specialist scholars, and the nature of the event is often

described as an enigma in journalism, providing statements by participants about

their intense moments of experience. Scholarly writing about events is confronted

with the same fundamental challenge of multitude. To constructively approach the

problem in this article we offer an integrated typology that might provide useful in-

sights to initiate a now necessary multimodal and interdisciplinary approach to the

8

study of cultural events.

A) SITUATIONAL APPROACHES TO PERFORMANCE IN ANTHROPOLOGY, PER-

FORMANCE STUDIES, AND SOCIOLOGY

The first type of approaches are the situational approaches that grew out of an en-

gagement with rituals and social behavior in pre-industrial and industrial societies

without the same social fluidity and media complexity of contemporary advanced so-

cieties. The situational approaches tend to privilege an analytical focus on the imme-

diate context of performance. They tend to stay within the temporal-spatial bounda-

ries of the microenvironment. The scholarly contribution lies in the capacity to not just

describe individual experiences and situations, but patterns of behavior and types of

situations. This explains the centrality of concepts such as ritual and performance.

Situational approaches are also characterized by an interest in how the situation re-

lates to social life more broadly, e.g. how it articulates and challenges everyday val-

ues and agendas in society. However, the prime site of inquiry was the situation it-

self, not its social or electronic mediations or the decision-making in institutions, for

instance. Meyrowitz (1985) offered a pioneer critique of situational approaches:

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the examination of

social “episodes,” “settings,” and “contexts.” Studies, theories, and cri-

tiques have suggested that personality measures are often poor predic-

tors of everyday social behavior and that behaviors such as anxiety reac-

tions are largely shaped by situational factors. […] As of now, the re-

search on situations has supported the plausibility of situationism more

than it has advanced toward a general theory of situations and behavior.

Although there have been many empirical and analytical studies of situa-

tions, most of this work has focused on describing situation-specific be-

haviors as they exist at a particular time in a given culture. There has

been relatively little work explaining the general process through which

situations affect behavior, there have been few attempts at generating

propositions for predicting why and how social situations change, and

there have been virtually no analyses of how behavior will change when

situations change” (Meyrowitz 1985, 27 and 32).

This critique has paradigmatic implications. It puts conventional situational ap-

proaches into a completely new perspective by adopting comparative methodological

9

discourse of sociology and media studies. the critique highlights previously unrecog-

nized boundaries of the situational approaches and points to the necessity of looking

not just at more dimensions of the situation and the experience, but at the conceptual

and disciplinary discourse. In a word, a situation can only be fully understood by con-

sidering the more complex structure of society and other forms of communication and

experience. In particular, mediation and social change have been and are still to

some extent ignored in studies with a situational approach. The epistemological risk

is situationism; the isolation from the forces and contexts needed to explain the

meanings and values of the situation. The concept of situational approaches is used

in this chapter in a broad sense for a shared perspective in research within different

traditions, but particularly anthropology, sociology, and later performance studies.

The founding figures in sociology such as Durkheim (1912) and Weber (1968) stud-

ied traditional rituals and ceremonies as part of large-scale theories of society, and it

was this ritual perspective that was picked up in the research traditions that evolved

with a more specialist focus, notably the folklorist van Gennep (1909) and anthro-

pologists such as Levi-Strauss and Turner. A different but clearly situational form of

specialized inquiry is represented by Goffmann’s (1959) study of social behavior.

Situational approaches, moreover, dominate the field of performance studies that

draws heavily on theatre studies and has a strong interest in sited performances of

extended theatricality (Kirschenblatt-Gimblett 2004). Situational approaches continue

to dominate in analyses centering on new performance spaces and experiences in

those spaces.

B) PUBLIC SPHERE AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT APPROACHES IN COMMUNICA-

TION STUDIES AND SOCIOLOGY

Meyrowitz convincingly argues that situational perspectives need to be comple-

mented by knowledge of how media communications affects social behaviors in

situations. Situations change over time, but not just through media. Changes in

demographics, education, political culture, and cultural policies are frequently playing

into such social processes of change. But between social behavior and broader so-

cial change is a crucial level for the analysis of the event experience. This is the level

that can be analyzed from the concept of the event sphere. The event sphere is the

microcosm that emerges within the time and place of the event. Rather than simply

being a gated physical territory for a number of activities, the event is a social, aes-

thetic, and historical space constructed through the curation of content, communica-

tions, and designs that shape the core audience and the attitudes, ethics, and at-

10

mosphere that emerge through participations. The event sphere should also not be

confused with the identity of the event. Rather, it is a complex whole of interaction

between different identities and images of the event among the diverse audiences of

a mass event. The event sphere is also a fictional space, as illustrated by the fairy

tales and themed areas of Disney World or the utopia counterculture of the Glaston-

bury rock festivals. The fiction takes on a performative dimension through liminal be-

havior, participant role-playing, installations, and costumes. The event sphere,

moreover, is an imaginary social order of a small society, usually modeled on mythi-

cal notions of a pre-modern village, even when fused with futuristic scenarios. In a

festival area, for instance, a temporary micro society emerges with its own eco sys-

tem of camp sites, markets, and subcultures with a daily rhythm over the course of a

couple of days or more. Annual events gain a life-story dimension for participants and

communities as a special occasion that puts past and present into perspective. The

event sphere also involves specific elements such as emotional atmosphere, atti-

tudes and ethical rules among participants, event architecture, and spatial design, all

of which helps create the sense of a coherent and recognizable event.

The event sphere is not an established concept, but recent research on cultural festi-

vals has opened up a path of conceptualizations drawing on public sphere theory.

Public sphere theory is historically linked to political culture, and a political public

sphere is not the same as a festival or event public sphere. Above all, an event

sphere is not necessarily political. Some events are conceived more within a service

logic of the entertainment industry than within the cultural logic of difference to be

found in cultural festivals in which ideology and social consciousness are defining

aspects and motivating forces.

In his pioneer work on the public sphere concept, Habermas (1962) described the

emergence of urban cultural consumer spaces such as cafes, theaters, and concert

halls, but he also ascribed crucial importance to discourse and the ideological as-

pects of culture, which have later been developed in theory of counterpublics; publics

characterized by resistance, opposition, and difference:

The idea of a public is motivating, not simply instrumental. It is constitu-

tive of a social imaginary. … [W]hen people address publics, they engage

in struggles … over the conditions that bring them together as a public

(Warner 2002, 12).

11

The formation of counterpublics has been studied in various strands of cultural soci-

ology, from social movement studies (Eyerman and Jamison 1991) to urban collectiv-

ity studies (Maffesoli 1996), and beyond to the recent public sphere approach to cul-

tural festivals (Delanty, Giorgi, and Sassatelli 2011). The public sphere approach is

particularly helpful for analyzing how cultural festivals engage participants socially

through the experience collectivity and difference.

Sennett emphasizes this aspect of diversity in his discussion of changing meanings

of public culture in modernity. In his critique of contemporary culture, Sennett points

out that

[‘public’ once] “meant not only a region of social life located apart from

the realm of family and close friends … [it also meant that] this public

realm of acquaintances and strangers included a relatively wide diversity

of people” (Sennett 1974, 17).

Sennett’s study is relevant to a critical discussion of the developments of cultural

events as strategic entertainment in the postindustrial city. In particular, his skeptical

description of vulgar intimacy, self-realization, and withdrawal from societal commit-

ment provides are echoed in contemporary cultural policy debates (Ibid, esp. 8-9).

We are now seeing an increasing differentiation between cultural events in the con-

ventional cultural sector and in the events industry emerging out of the service and

tourisms industries.

C) GENERALIST AND SPECIALIST APPROACHES IN ECONOMICS AND MARKET-

ING STUDIES

Scholarship on events in economics and more applied disciplines such as marketing

and management largely use the same general approaches developed from studies

of more established and larger industries. Research on the role of events in the

economy of tourism and cities, for instance, has adopted conventional models of in-

put-output and cost-benefit analysis. Similarly, marketing research has operated from

the fundamental idea of events as one of the mediums or avenues in the marketing

mix, exploring its unique aspects of experience but still within a medium logic. These

and other general approaches are useful for certain purposes, and they serve a par-

ticular role as tools of generalization and legitimization in impact studies. However,

the generalist approaches do not capture what is unique about events. Moreover,

12

theory developed from the analysis of events has continued to question the applica-

bility of not just generalist models but also conventional principles of economics. This

theory, moreover, suggests that the social experience is key to understanding eco-

nomic activity in events. What follows is a discussion of these specialist approaches

that account for aspects particular to events.

A fundamental aspect of approaches to event economics is their attempt at capturing

the flows of economic activity following the particular social conditions and processes

that constitute a cultural event for participants and business partners. The unique so-

cial value of the event to its various actors to create different economic and organiza-

tional arrangements. The disruption of everyday routines in the experience of a festi-

val, for instance, also applies to the extraordinary supply-chain arrangements and the

symbolic values for brands and local communities.

The first treatment of basic principles in event economics was conducted in Baumol

and Bowens’ influential study Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma (1966) that

used the performing arts as a model case for questioning conventional wisdom on

the relation between labor productivity and inflation in classic economics. Baumol

and Bowens argued that because there is little or no productivity gain in an opera or

theatre performance, the costs will rise faster than inflation and grow disproportion-

ally compared with sectors with a productivity gain. Moreover, the wages have grown

in opera houses because wages have grown in other labor markets where productiv-

ity has gone up. In the field of culture, productivity gain has happened especially in

mass media distribution of entertainment. While this theory known as Baumol’s dis-

ease remains true, the question about why the market value of performances and

events have gone up in the age of digital media has caused scholars to think further.

Frith argues on sociological grounds that the reason for the relatively prosperous

economy of live music events such as concerts and festival is the unique social val-

ues of the live experience. “The value of music (the reason why people are prepared

to pay money for it) remains centered in its live experience” (Frith 2007, 4).

The central role of social experience also forms the ground of the new marketing ap-

proach developed around the concept of social leverage by Chalip and O’Brien

(2007). They were motivated by the recognition that sport events stakeholders have

started to look beyond impact in a conventional sense to achieve longer-term sus-

tainable outcomes. The authors also document a widespread scholarly critique of

impact studies, not to mention the fact that rigorous impact studies have frequently

13

arrived at disappointing results about the economic impact of events. Chalip and

O’Brien developed an alternative to impact studies with potentially paradigmatic im-

plications. Instead of focusing on outcomes, the effects, after the event, they focus on

how events create value and work from the assumption that the main value comes

from their ability to leverage processes beyond the event itself. For instance, an

event might not generate profit within its immediate value chain, but it can create so-

cial values, networks, and business in other industries, and for this reason many

events receive donations from sponsors and city governments.

In order to leverage the impacts, Chalip and O’Brien argue, a new analytical ap-

proach with a focus strategic optimization is needed. They crucially introduce a turn

away from measuring impacts to optimizing leverage (see also Chalip 2004 and

2006). Their research has produced a useful marketing model for systematically op-

timizing values for participants, sponsors, media, and the community. The model is

useful for big events with a complex structure but the principles are the same for

small events. The model is concerned with physical participation and conventional

approaches to broadcast media, so it can productively be complemented and devel-

oped with knowledge of new media spaces and practices.

The marketing optimization approach has potential to integrate knowledge of new

media dynamics, for instance, and its core elements can be further conceptualized to

serve complex analyses of cultural events. If we look not only at the practical division

into marketing units, but also at the processes in the event and its life-cycle, new

perspectives open up. An event serves particular needs in distinct sites of action, but

it is also a combinational entity. From an economic and commercial perspective, the

micro society of the event has other functions than its role as a world of experience

for participants, these can functions can be somewhat narrowed down to:

• a real-world consumer laboratory involving a multitude of social interaction in

physical and virtual spheres

• a marketing medium for the promotion and sale

• an innovation platform for products, services, new media and knowledge

• a catalyst of social and economic action, elicited by extraordinary program-

ming, mass audience formation, and site-specific intensity

The combination of these functions (laboratory, medium, platform, and catalyst) ac-

14

counts for an important part of the uniqueness and potentials of cultural events for

society and business. The values of cultural events are not limited to the experience

of a social situation, a cultural performance, or a cultural public sphere.

Events also have limitations, however. Events have a short time-span, and it is an

extraordinary situation from which experience and knowledge cannot automatically

be transferred and implemented into everyday routines. Although it can be perceived

as a real-world laboratory, the event is not an everyday laboratory, and this is both a

strength and a weakness. The intense and overwhelming impressions from many

activities and people create special energies that bring out certain desires and forms

of human behavior that cannot be created in everyday life. Another problem is the

complexity of influences that makes it difficult to distinguish the factors influencing

buying decisions, for instance.

Methodically, the four functions proposed above suggest how the potentials of the

marketing leverage approach can be developed into a broader and more founda-

tional conception of socio-economic approaches to understanding events. They also

suggest that renewed attention should be paid to the new media practices that now

embed all cultural productions and how they can be transformed into engines of eco-

nomic growth and gain. It is clear that the economic action evolves around the par-

ticular social experience of the “cultural event” as an “extraordinary social experi-

ence” and how this experience is designed, organized, produced and consumed by

local and global audiences. Thus, the event becomes a node among different social

and economic practices, a source for understanding social change and the evolution

of experience of cultural event, and the subject for the investigation of the new orga-

nizational and economic functions and structures that emerge from it.

The complement the analytical approaches and concepts discussed above, we would

now like to offer two perspectives of particular relevance to contemporary cultural

events: They are: New media and the postindustrial city.

3. The Evolution of Cultural Events in the Postindustrial City

The above outline of analytical approaches needs to ground the event experience in

its historical dimension and processes of social change. Situated performances, pub-

lics, and socio-economic synergies are core concepts for understanding a cultural

event. While cultural events relate very differently to history and society, the term

15

‘event’ and the forms of design and participation have been fundamentally shaped by

the conditions of culture in the postindustrial city.

The first mega events emerged in the late 19th century with the development of the

Olympics and the World Expositions. They were both held in cities and played an ac-

tive role in creating images of global culture. They created global publics in capital

cities with financial support of nation-states. Like all events, they were born in the im-

age of their time, reflecting the world view of Western modernity with their grandiose

format and claims to universalism. With the expos, the exhibition of world cultures

happened in the larger context of colonial imperialism (Roche 2000). Clearly, a power

relation between the mega event and the megacity was institutionalized.

In addition to the emergence of mega events with heavy involvement of the nation-

state where cultural events in consumer culture and civic society. A market for public

entertainment emerged with bars, clubs, dance halls, theaters, and amusement parks

in urban industrial centers (Nasaw 1993). Since the 1970s, cultural events have be-

come a fixture of urban public culture and city branding. Today more than half of the

world's population live in cities, and the city and the event industry constitute now an

indissoluble power relation. This originates in the post-industrial city when culture-led

strategies of economic growth emerged and with them a new role of consumption.

This is also the context of origin for the experience economy. Spaces of consumption

were created in architecture, image, and by increasing activities such as events. In a

word, the city became a landscape of consumption for a broad population demo-

graphic (Zukin 1991).

The crisis in the manufacturing industries in the 1960s contributed to a general crisis

in urban economies. A city such as New York was close to bankrupt in 1975, and

many inner cities were not only poor but also left with empty and deteriorating build-

ings. The outside motivations for economic growth created a somewhat unstable

ground for culture-led regeneration strategies, while they spread to smaller urban

conglomerates or rural areas.

The consumption economy is most directly relevant to cultural events. Indeed, culture

was for the first time employed by cities as an economic basis through its two main

functions of consumption and marketing (Zukin 1995, 11). This is the prime context of

origin for many later policies and business discourses, including the experience

economy, on emotions and aesthetics in shopping but also cultural forms such as

16

architecture, museums, and events. In these discourses of culture-led strategies of

economic growth, traditional concepts of performance and ritual were replaced with

cultural event. The landslide change in terminology reflects a shift from discourses of

art worlds to discourses of outside agents of megacity developers, marketers, and

business entrepreneurs.

THE POSTINDUSTRIAL URBAN ECONOMY

A long-term process since the 1960s, megacities have experienced a combination of

changes in real-estate development and demographic changes that have changed

the conditions of cultural events. Commonly identified with the term gentrification, a

growing population of professional middle-classes forms the basis of a market for

professional niche culture and more exclusive cultural events. In contrast, cultural

events for a broader population demographic have been forced to move further away

from the city center. Since the early 1999s, one of the most popular forms of mass

events in cultural life is rock and pop music festivals in rural areas where space is

cheap and youths can party and have camping facilities. This kind of more unregu-

lated cultural event and festivity has become more rare in the increasingly controlled

and gentrified city. The early cultural festivals of European modernity created spaces

for imagining different futures in a space outside of the institutions of the market and

the state. Their vision emphasized the celebration not of cities or holidays, but art

and civilization and the emergence of cultural festivals (Autissier 2009, 27 and 30;

BOP Consulting 2011, 99. The cultural festivals were not concentrated in capital cit-

ies, but in smaller cities, where they created new and alternative economies to the

vanishing local industrial economies. The pioneer urban sociological work of Zukin

(1991, 1995, and 2010) and Grazian (2003 and 2008) offer an insight in the socio-

economic dynamics at work in these processes. In a discussion of the illustrative

case of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), Zukin

writes:

It is quite a wager that this museum will create a tourist industry and that

tourism will save the town from economic decline. But when the last fac-

tories have closed their gates and neither business nor government offers

a different scenario, ordinary men and women can be persuaded that

their city is ready to enter the symbolic economy. (Zukin 1995, 79).

Two general points can be drawn from this. First, culture-led growth strategies might

not resonate with all population groups and involve conflicting interests between the

17

cultural sector and other sectors. A shift from this old narrative of one-directional im-

pact to one of synergies can be recommended. Second, the MASS MoCA is an illus-

trative example of two typical problems of culture-led strategies. A $1.8 million (by

1988 standards), state-financed feasibility was conducted by outsiders for this small

town community, even while a fiscal crisis started generating skepticism and there

was no support for the project among the local arts community (Zukin 1995, 94-96).

What is more, the project became an example of smaller city culture projects with

content "imported" from the city. In this case, it was objects from the Guggenheim

collection in New York.

The literature on the transformation of culture in the post-industrial city shows that

focus in the 1970s and 1980s was on conventional venues such as museums, parks,

and shopping. Later, as in the case of the MassMoCA, more emphasis was on per-

formances and events. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is the increasing

fluidity in society that tend to be in favor of events with news value and intense dy-

namics of momentary encounters rather than the more stable structures of cultural

institutions. The permanent exhibitions of museums, and the traditional programming

of concert halls, have been challenged by a growing interest in public performances

in new unconventional spaces. Big concerts used to be an urban experience but are

now organized, pushed by gentrification, outside in smaller urban areas or at the

borders of bigger cities. A core example is the DIY rock scene that emerged in Man-

hattan in the 70s and has now moved to Brooklyn, New York with ad hoc rock shows

in warehouses, lofts, basements, and under bridges greatly contributing to the brand-

ing of the city’s borough that now strongly competes with Manhattan itself.

4. The Transformation of Cultural Events in New Media Practices

The intensification of electronic mediation in contemporary society is changing live

events in complex ways. Key changes for cultural events include the communicative

functions and meanings of the event itself. After detailing these aspects, we shall turn

to changes in the relation with the city, with space.

Before the advent of electronic mediation in the late 19th century, performances and

public gatherings more generally had a privileged role in communicating important

messages and sanctioning dominant agendas in the form of ceremonies and pa-

rades, for instance. Carnivals and other folk rituals served to articulate community,

social values, and informal knowledge via song and dance, for instance. Electronic

18

mass media meant that information could be distributed without embodied interaction

and performance, and they became the infrastructure in the era of national media.

Now everyone with a radio or television could hear a public speech by the president.

Performances could be enjoyed independently of time and space. In this era, cultural

festivals, for instance, could create a public sphere for minorities and otherwise dis-

persed specialist audiences whose interests were at the margins or even excluded

from the institutions of power, including mass media. This has changed with the ad-

vent of networked media that in principle allow any media user to share information,

and so cultural events are no longer a privileged site for articulating community and

communicating the values of that community. But cultural events remain a privileged

site for the embodied experience of cultural performance and of community.

Second, media and particularly new networked and mobile media practices have

created layered experiences. The event is mediated between private and public

spheres, between the real and the virtual. This happens along multiple channels and

through multiple forms user mediation and participation. New media practices provide

many ways of sharing and tracking information. To cultural events, this propose a

challenge to the private and intimate sphere that is central to building local communi-

ties with strong ties. But it is also an opportunity, as a single provocative act such as

the Pussy Riot church performance in Moscow can fire up the internet across the

globe.

The dimensions and meanings of events are now being defined in the contexts of

social networking sites (Facebook), micro blogging platforms (Twitter) and media

sharing websites (Youtube, Instagram, and Pinterest). These platforms, communica-

tive forms and social practices are redefining the very definition of eventfulness and

the spatial and social boundaries of event genres. With more media practices em-

bedded in events, the boundaries of the extraordinary shared experience that were

once defined by elements of ´interruption´ (of daily life) and ´monopoly´ (in the case

of the remote live broadcast of the extraordinary event) are now eroding. Well-known

examples include the narratives of self that participants create through image sharing

and production in their network among friends and their public marking of event par-

ticipation through the now leading user-driven event marketing in the events pages of

Facebook. But more complex collective processes also occur when seemingly simple

video essays of a festival, commonly produced from last year’s event, goes viral in

network media and takes on a powerful role in maintaining and shaping participant

19

representations and experience of the event. A prominent example is the 2012 after

video of the large electronic dance music festival in the Netherlands called Tomor-

rowland. The video had more than 30 million views on YouTube before the festival,

and it follows the story-telling strategy that also penetrates the entire festival and its

event architecture, drawing on models of adventure and fantasy universe from theme

parks and Disney cinema.

Cultural events are being redefined by qualities that blend the power of collective

mediated experiences, with a more intimate and personal experiences. New media

practices in a way more closely resemble the personal and social dynamics once

characteristic of the middlebrow art of family photography (Bourdieu 1990). A ritual-

ized use of media and media representations used to both separate the mundane

from the exceptional, and to celebrate and consolidate individual histories, personal

ties and social relations. Emerging social media representations are now overlaying

all cultural events, at times enriching old forms of media coverage of collectively

meaningful events; and at times, by means of their own substantial media coverage

establishing an event as collectively meaningful and extraordinary (Lapenta 2011;

Papacharissi 2011; Ito 2008; Ito, Baumer, Bittani et al. 2010).

5. Conclusion

The motivating idea of this chapter was to complement the existing literature on the

experience economy by examining the social dimensions of experience, specifically

the experience of cultural events. The existing literature in Northern Europe has so

far focused on the immediate situation, on the immersive experience of individuals,

from the perspective of positive psychology and marketing communications. The core

point in our conceptual framework of experience is that the focus on the immediate

situation is strong not only in the aforementioned fields but also in ritual theory, per-

formance studies, and event management. By introducing the concept of public

sphere we illustrated a distinctly different conception, recently developed as a post-

ritual approach. To think of an event experience in the context of a public sphere in-

volves other analytical levels and opens up other perspectives on the meanings and

values of cultural events. The chapter than further explored the complexity of spheres

and embodied experience in relation to new media practices that have so far re-

ceived little attention in the conception of cultural events and in the experience econ-

omy literature.

20

The methodical rationale of the chapter, then, has been to make clear that the con-

cept of experience, in the context of cultural events, can productively be more

grounded in mainstream social science traditions. We have sought to illustrate this by

integrating and synthesizing approaches and highlighted complementary aspects to

build a broader and stronger understanding of the topic.

The argument about taking the broader social dimension of experience more seri-

ously and integrating approaches, however, also confronts barriers that should not be

ignored. There are divisions between the traditions from which we have drawn. Not

all of them claim expertise in the social dimension, and we are willing to view our ar-

gument as a sociological intervention, as we cannot represent all disciplines but ask

questions and examine problems of relevance to them. More specifically, the ap-

proaches to experience in marketing studies and in public sphere theory not only

present different analytical perspectives but also involve ideological contrasts. The

concept of public spheres is closely linked with notions of critical social reflexivity,

including a critical stance against capitalism and the market. The contrasting per-

spectives embedded in these traditions can highlight the complexity of the issue.

Moreover, this also leads us to the conclusion that one cannot adopt unitary narra-

tives in the account of contemporary cultural events and cultural experience. The way

forward is to engage with explanations in different disciplines and their underlying

ideologies, while also examining their relation with relatively separate but changes

avenues of culture in more or less commercial forms. In contemporary society, con-

ventional conceptions of culture still exist, e.g. in urban micro-scenes and arts festi-

vals, but there are also a growing number of cultural events in the avenues of con-

sumer culture and corporate culture. Furthermore, cultural events constitute spaces

between civic society and consumer society, and they often also involve public insti-

tutions. The role of events as spaces in-between is fascinating, but it also poses a

challenge to scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers in the field, but it becomes

harder to clarify the interests and values. How, for instance, can the cultural depart-

ment of a state or city government decide whether to support a cultural event that

might serve cultural and civic values, but at the same time is corporately sponsored

and draws people into a cultural sphere outside the political sphere? A festival, for

instance, can advocate philanthropic causes but in the process de-politicize those

issues by reframing them as philanthropic and not political. And how are attitudes to

politics changing when social issues are presented as part of the festival experience?

These questions are not only of interest to social scientists and public institutions, but

also to event managers collaborating with public institutions and volunteers. They are

21

relevant to everyone concerned with issues of citizenship.

The blurring of boundaries between spheres was central to our theorization of new

media practices and how they are transforming cultural events. The deep transforma-

tions in media culture involve more hybrid social experiences that are produced in

their local context of origin and consumed in a parallel array of mediated communica-

tions, interactions, and representations. New media platforms and practices are rede-

fining the very definition of eventfulness and the spatial and social boundaries of

event genres. Media are no longer entering the event production and consumption

after the event. Instead, they are integrated throughout the entire process, shaping

the creative ideas and management of the event from the very beginning. This is il-

lustrated by the fact that some events are produced to provide media content in

global social media for branding purposes. With more media practices embedded in

events, the boundaries of the extraordinary shared experience that were once de-

fined by the interruption of daily life and the monopoly of broadcasting are now erod-

ing. The event is now being redefined by qualities that blend the power of collective

mediated experiences, with more intimate and personal experiences. The social ex-

perience of cultural events is therefore also a mediated experience. This presents

new challenges and opportunities for the study of cultural events and for profession-

als in the industry. We have pointed to key aspects and emphasized that the analyti-

cal mode can productively shift from investigating individual aspects of how events

are ascribed meaning in the media to an investigation of how events are constructed

through layered media practices that changes perceptions of space, mobility, and

cultural experience.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express special gratitude to the editors of this volume. We

would also to thank our colleagues in the research group Innovation in Service and

Experience at the University of Roskilde for inspiration. We are grateful for comments

on an earlier draft of this paper at a conference on experience economy in Roskilde

in June 2012.

22

Notes

1 The term refers to the increasing number of cultural events, but it also variously refers to

cultural and spatial transformations such as 1) the increasing use of urban public spaces for

cultural events; 2) the use of cultural events and particularly popular culture for promoting so-

cial and economic agendas; 3) the popularization of culture from arts scenes for reaching

broader non-specialist audiences and media, 4) the growing power of public presence in a

media-intense culture at the cost of attention to substance and long-term values; 5) the car-

nivalization of cultural performances in the form of spectacular show effects, choreography,

and installations. The term festivalization has been used for such broad a complex develop-

ments that they might not be adequately represented by this term 2 The influential book Media Events (Dayan and Katz 1992) helped kickstart interest in media

events and issues of liveness in media experience within media studies, with important con-

tributions being a special issue on liveness in the Journal of Communication Studies (2004)

and the edited volume Media Events in a Global Age (2010), both edited and with important

contributions by Nick Couldry.

Cited works

Allen, J. W. O’Toole, R. Harris, and I. McDonnell 2008. Festival & Special Events

Management. 4th Edition. Milton: Wiley.

Autissier, A.-M. ed. 2010. The Europe of Festivals: From Zagreb to Edinburgh, Inter-

secting Viewpoints… Paris: Éditions de l’attribut Culture Europe International.

Baumol, W. and W. Bowen 1966. Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma. New

York: Twentieth Century Fund.

Becker, H. 1984. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bourdieu, P. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature.

Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P. 1990. Photography: A Middle-Brow Art. Stanford: Stanford University

Press.

Bowdin, G. 2006. Events Management. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

23

Chalip, L. 2004. “Beyond Impact: A General Model for Sport Event Leverage.” Sport

Tourism: Interrelationships, Impacts and Issues, ed. by B. Ritchie and D. Adair.

Clevedon: Channel View Publications, 226-252.

Chalip, L. 2006. “Towards Social Leverage of Sport Events,” Journal of Sport & Tour-

ism 11 (2), May 2006: 109-127.

Couldry, N. and A. Hepp 2011. “Introduction: Media Events in Globalized Media Cul-

tures.” Media Events in a Global Age, ed. by N. Couldry, A. Hepp, F. Krotz. New York

and London: Routledge, 1-20.

Couldry, N., A. Hepp, F. Krotz eds. 2011. Media Events in a Global Age. New York

and London: Routledge.

Dayan, D. and E. Katz (1992). Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Delanty, G., G. Giorgi, and M. Sassatelli 2011. Festivals and the Cultural Public

Sphere. London: Routledge.

Durkheim, E. 1912. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York and Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Eyerman, R. and A. Jamison 1991. Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach. Cam-

bridge: Polity Press.

Florida, R. 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books.

Frith, S. 2007. “Live Music Matters,” Scottish Music Review 1 (1): 1-17.

Gennep, A. van 1960 [1909]. The Rites of Passage. London and New York: Rout-

ledge

Harvey, D. 1991. “The Urban Face of Capitalism,” In: J. F. Hunt (Ed.) Our Changing

Cities, pp. 50–66. Baltimore, NJ: Johns Hopkins University Press.

24

Holt, F. with C. Wergin 2012. “Introduction,” In: Musical Performance and the Chang-

ing City: Postindustrial Contexts in Europe and the United States. New York and

London: Routledge.

Ito, M. 2008. “Introduction,” In: Networked Publics, ed. by K. Vernelis. Cambidge: MIT

Press.

Ito, M., S. Baumer, M. Bittanti et al. 2010. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geek-

ing Out: Kids Learning and Living with New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Lash, S. and C. Lury 2007. Global Culture Industry. Cambridge: Polity.

Maffesoli, M. 1996 [1988]. The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in

Mass Society. London: Sage.

Masterman, G. and E. Wood 2006. Innovative Marketing Communications: Strategies

for the Events Industry. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Meyrowitz, J. 1985. No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social

Behavior. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nasaw, D. 1993. Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusement. Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

O’Brien, D. and L. Chalip 2007. “Executive Training Exercise in Sport Event Lever-

age,” International Journal of Culture, Tourism, and Hospitality Research 1 (4): 296-

304.

Papacharissi, Z., ed. 2011. A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on

Social Networking Sites. New York and London: Routledge.

Pine, J. and J. Gilmore 1999. The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every

Business a Stage. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.

Richards, G. and R. Palmer 2010. Eventful Cities: Cultural Management and Urban

Revitalisation. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

25

Roche, M. 2000. Mega-Events and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of

Global Culture. London and New York.

Scammel, M. 2000. “The Internet and Civic Engagement: The Age of the Citizen

Consumer,” Political Communication 17: 351-355.

Schechner, R. 2003 [1977]. Performance Theory. New York: Routledge.

Sennett, R. 1974. The Fall of Public Man. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Turner, V. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New York: Aldine

De Gruyter.

Turner, V. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York:

PAJ.

Warner, M. 2002. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books.

Weber, M. 1968. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology. Ber-

keley: University of California Press.