The Extent and Significance of Rural Festivals

Festivals are enjoyable, special and exceptional, sometimes the only time of celebration in small towns. Festivals are full of rituals of entertainment, spectacle and remembrance, and they bring people together. Most people participate for enjoyment, something different and the pleasure of coming together. Festivals offer much more than just dollars and cents, or place-marketing and branding, although both are implicated. Festivals create culture, engaging some but excluding others. The narratives of participants may articulate a strong sense of being part of a community, however transient, or a reframing of a personal understanding of a specific issue, perhaps sustainability, multiculturalism or reconciliation. More often festivals simply enhance already existing pleasures, from beer drinking to line dancing. Festivals take multiple forms and play multiple roles. This chapter summarises the findings from a three-year Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project, which sought to document the extent and significance of festivals for rural communities and economies.