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The purpose of this paper is to establish the image and associated impression of atmosphere created by independent theatres at two fringe festivals namely, Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Melbourne Festival Fringe.

The paper contains a content analysis of promotional materials produced by the independent theatres for their involvement in their respective fringe festival.

The atmosphere created is of fringe festivals replete with serious experimental theatrical productions, with independent theatres being the home of alternative ideas and the performers being skilled in the production of the art form.

The atmosphere created by the independent theatres is similar to that projected by the fringe festival overall.

The paper highlights the importance of the fringe festival organisers establishing a strong working relationship with the managers of independent theatres to ensure the most appropriate promotional material is used to attract the desired target audience to the fringe festival.

This paper is of value as most festival‐related literature provides only a passing mention to atmosphere whereas this paper investigates atmosphere in more depth. The paper adds to the limited research on fringe festivals.

The paper seeks to examine the concepts, types and implications of festival innovation and failure.

A review of extant literature is undertaken and examples of innovation and failure in three festivals are used to demonstrate the simultaneity and co‐dependency of innovation and failure in the process of festival management.

It is apparent that many forms of program, market, service, organisational and financial innovation are available to festival managers. Many involve risk of failure due to the resource dependency theory postulated in the literature, as well as more pragmatic reasons including bad weather and managerial incompetence.

Festival managers responses to the dual challenges of embracing innovation and avoiding failure will determine the future of festivals, so it is vital that knowledge is developed.

There is limited literature on festival management innovation and failure and limited information available to festival managers regarding the nature of festivals that facilitate innovation or failure. This paper makes an original contribution to these important issues in festival management.

Against the background of the biggest arts festival in the world, there have been some shocking findings recently about the treatment of performers and other workers at the Fringe. The purpose of this paper is to consider the type of treatment a significant number of Fringe workers experience and how it might be dealt with under the law. The mistreatment of workers includes being: required to work excessively long hours, paid low wages or no wages, subject to sexual or street harassment, lookism, ageism or deprivation of other employment rights. What is unusual about Fringe workers is they normally only work for a short time (often a maximum of two months). Also, in respect of performers and other theatre workers, they might be inclined to work on a voluntary, unpaid basis to gain the necessary experience to kickstart their careers. Employers will often be theatrical promoters in charge of productions at a number of venues. This paper highlights the issues surrounding working at the Fringe and identifies the employment law issues for its workers. This involves identifying likely breaches of legislation under the civil law and contract law by employers. Also, the consideration of how the criminal law could apply to the treatment of workers is undertaken. Finally, it involves an analysis of how the rights of Fringe workers could be better protected. The findings and recommendations in this paper will have application to any situation where someone is employed as a volunteer or worker in an artistic setting on a short-term basis.

This paper is a review of sources drawn from articles in law journals, newspapers, etc.

The findings of this paper suggest that there is a need for reform of the law.

This paper focuses on improving the rights of Fringe workers who have a history of being neglected or abused.

This paper ensures improved rights for Fringe workers.

This paper analyses issues that are relevant for all workers in the arts at festivals, etc., throughout the UK.

This paper is extremely original.

Arts festivals use projects to showcase creative works, configuring a creative field, whether locally, regionally or internationally, by whom engages and attends to the arts festival: artists, funders, media and audiences. This study compares the Edinburgh and Berlin arts festivals founded after World War II. Each city began with a founding festival. Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama sought to reconcile and heal international relations whereas the Berlin International Film Festival sought to showcase free expression and democracy. Both founding festivals were internationally oriented, as seen in their names. Each city added festivals over time and engaged in distinct temporal strategies and configured different creative fields. Edinburgh’s additional festivals entrained to its founding festival, synchronizing in time and place five festivals which led to greater duration and intensity of the experience and configured an international creative field: artists, media, and audiences who attended and engaged with the city festivals. In contrast, Berlin’s founding Film festival, which was internationally oriented, was followed by festivals that were treated as distinct, scheduling each festival sequentially across a yearly calendar and configuring a creative field regionally oriented around Germanic language and culture. Thus, a city’s temporal strategies for arts festivals may configure international, regional and local creative fields, changing who comprises the field to interact.

The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the reader to three papers discussing the role of atmospherics within predominantly hedonic service settings.

This editorial introduces the papers in this special section.

Atmospherics plays a significant role in determining how consumers and patrons perceive and interpret hedonic services.

The first study examines how atmospherics can impact the overall meanings patrons attach to visiting a hedonic facilities. The second study looks at the role of promotional materials on setting the tone for fringe festivals. The third study investigates the role of atmospherics in green consumerism.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the origins and management of literary festivals in Ireland from the perspective of their founders or those involved in managing these festivals.

This qualitative research study explores six literary festivals across the island of Ireland. The research and data collection instruments include bibliographic research and a series of in-depth interviews with festival founders, directors and managers.

The festivals in this study have evolved from a range of origins and are strongly influenced by the artistic vision and strategic approach of their founders and/or directors. Generating adequate revenue remains a constant challenge for these festivals as they rely on three primary sources of funding, i.e. ticket sales, sponsorship and grant support. Volunteering at literary festivals provides an opportunity for increased community involvement, participation and a sense of co-creation. Building strong partnerships and positive stakeholder engagement is fundamental to successful festival support and funding, ensuring that festivals can deliver well-structured programmes that will attract a loyal and engaging audience.

This exploratory research is limited to six literary festivals in Ireland and there is potential to extend this into a more comprehensive study.

This study provides insights into this increasingly popular festival sector and identifies practical strategies for developing and managing literary festivals and related events.

Even though literary festivals have proliferated in Ireland over the past twenty years, there is a dearth of academic research in this area. The research study focuses on literary festivals, primarily from a “supply” rather than “demand” perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to explore literary festivals in Ireland and gain an understanding of the vision and strategic approaches of the stakeholders involved in their development and management.

This qualitative research study explores literary festivals in terms of how these are managed and developed, as well as the experiences offered, from a supply-side perspective. The research and data collection instruments include bibliographic research and a series of in-depth interviews.

The strategic vision and approaches of the founders and directors are critical to the success of literary festivals. The findings of this study provide insights into the stages of festival professionalization, as it explores the development and management of six literary festivals in Ireland.

This study is essentially exploratory in nature. This topic is under-represented in the literature and there is potential to extend this research into a more extensive study of literary festivals from the perspective of key stakeholders. This study was limited by the challenges and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the festival and events industry.

Against a backdrop of increasing numbers and popularity of literary festivals and related events in Ireland, this study could influence the development and promotion of this sector. Furthermore, the findings identify strategies adopted by festival founders and managers, and this is likely to be of interest to stakeholders at national and international levels.

Even though literary festivals have proliferated in Ireland over the past 20 years, there is a dearth of academic research in this area. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study exploring a range of literary festivals in Ireland. The research focuses on literary festivals from a “supply” rather than “demand” perspective. Moreover, it discusses the evolution and development of literary festivals as well as the vision of the key stakeholders involved in their management.

This paper aims to consider the relationship between urban events and urban public space, asking whether cities have enough space for events and whether events have enough space in cities.

Policy analysis surrounding events and festivals in the Netherlands is used to understand the dynamics of urban events, supported by content analysis of policy documents. A vignette of event space struggles in Amsterdam illustrates the contradictions of the event/space relationship.

The research identifies a policy shift in the Netherlands towards urban events from expansive, festivalisation strategies to defensive, NIMBYist policies. It exposes contradictions between protecting space as a living resource and the exploitation of space for regenerative purposes. Three future scenarios for urban events are outlined: conflict and competition, growth and harmony and digitalisation and virtualisation.

Develops scenarios for the future relationship between events and urban space.

Provides an analysis of the recursive spatial implications of the growth of the events sector for cities and the growth of cities for events.

Place-based community events fulfil important functions, internally and externally. They provide opportunities for people from diverse communities and cultures to encounter each other, to participate in pleasurable activities in convivial settings and to develop mutual understanding. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the value of such events as a means of resisting or challenging the deleterious effects of territorial stigmatisation.

The authors explore two place-based community events in areas that have been subject to territorial stigmatisation: Govanhill in Glasgow, Scotland, and South Dunedin, New Zealand. They draw on in-depth case study methods including observation and interviews with key local actors and employ inductive analysis to identify themes across the datasets.

The demonstrate how neighbourhood events in both Glasgow and Dunedin actively seek to address some of the deleterious outcomes of territorial stigmatisation by emphasising strength and asset-based discourses about the areas they reflect and represent. In their planning and organisation, both events play an important mediating role in building and empowering community, fostering intercultural encounters with difference and strengthening mutuality within their defined places. They make use of public and semi-public spaces to attract diverse groups while also increasing the visibility of marginalised populations through larger showcase events.

The empirical element focuses only on two events, one in Glasgow, Scotland (UK), and the other in South Dunedin (New Zealand). Data generated were wholly qualitative and do not provide quantitative evidence of “change” to material circumstances in either case study community.

Helps organisers think about how they need to better understand their communities if they are to attract diverse participation, including how they programme public and semi-public spaces.

Place-based community events have significant value to neighbourhoods, and they need to be resourced effectively if they are to sustain the benefits they produce. These events provide an opportunity for diverse communities to encounter each other and celebrate what they share rather than what divides them.

This paper is the first to examine how place-based community events help resist narratives of territorial stigmatisation, which produce negative representations about people and their environments. The paper draws on ethnographic insights generated over time rather than a one-off snapshot which undermines some events research.

This paper aims to explore the social impact that two events, the Adelaide Fringe Festival and the Clipsal 500, have on young residents (16-19 years old) of Adelaide. The purpose of this paper is to examine how young people participate in these events and how this affects their sense of involvement in the event and contributes to their identity development.

A mixed methods approach was adopted in which focus groups and questionnaires were conducted with secondary school students. As an exploratory study, focus groups (n=24) were conducted in the first stage of the research. The results of the focus groups were used to develop a questionnaire that resulted in 226 useable responses. The final stage of the research explored one event in further depth in order to determine the influence of different participation levels.

This study found that young people demonstrated more involvement in the Adelaide Fringe Festival and their identities were more influenced by this event. Further investigation of the Adelaide Fringe Festival also indicated that level of participation affects the social outcomes gained, with those participating to a greater degree achieving higher involvement and increased identity awareness. This is demonstrated through a model which aims to illustrate how an event impact an individual based on their role during the event.

This paper applies two leisure concepts in order to analyse the impact of events. Activity involvement is a concept which examines the importance of the activity in the participant's life. Also of importance to young people is how activities contribute to their identities, especially because they are in a transitional period of their lives.