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Events that are designed around the needs of children are particularly challenging to plan and thus choosing the right venue to stage such an event is a substantial task. Venue considerations for such events includes location, access and nearby amenities, capacity and flow, facilities, catering, decor as well as safeguarding. Given that event managers can now choose from purpose-built event spaces, hotels, academic, sporting and unique venues, the decision is even more complex. This chapter provides a comprehensive assessment of key venue considerations for event managers when planning child-centric events and outlines the typical characteristics of a range of venues, as relevant to organising events for family audiences.

Drawing on the confirmation–disconfirmation paradigm and the elaboration likelihood model, this study builds and tests a conceptual model that examines the effect of perceived authenticity on affective and behavioural outcomes as well as the moderating role of consumer involvement on the link between authenticity and satisfaction. The model was tested on data collected from 224 members of a theatre audience using structural equation modelling. Results indicate that perceived authenticity associated with both the core arts product and the venue enhances audience satisfaction which is a strong predictor of intention to recommend. Audience involvement with theatre moderates the link between authenticity of venue and satisfaction, with this association being stronger for low-involvement consumers.

This research subscribes to the on-going process school of construction project briefing. Stakeholders underrepresented in the literature are engaged with by focussing on Formula 1 motor racing circuits. Attention is given to the rationales through which stakeholders define construction projects at such venues. The aim of this paper is to understand the realities experienced by stakeholders and how these resonate with the rhetoric of briefing literatures.

A single case-based research approach, encouraged for studying informality and emergence, was used to study a heritage oriented construction project at Silverstone Formula 1 Circuit, UK. Data included field-notes, interviews and strategy documents. Stakeholder interests cannot be directly accessed; however, language used when defining projects can be. Analysis focussed on how project rationales drawn directly from data could be grouped into interpretative repertoires. These repertoires are linguistic resources, drawn upon by stakeholders, formed partly from sets of rationales oriented around a common interest.

The priorities given to competing rationales are found to fluctuate through time and depending on audience. Project advocates mobilise these conflicting rationales, from different repertoires, to different audiences simultaneously when strategically defining the heritage project. Discursive definitions emerged during analysis through studying both formal and informal briefing practices.

Conflict among stakeholders with competing agendas during briefing is widely recognised however references to discursivity are currently scant.

Coping with discursivity during briefing poses significant challenges for construction professionals.

By interpreting strategic briefing as an on-going and discursive process of project definition, researchers and practitioners can better empathise with realities experienced by stakeholders.

Purpose – Although scholars have long been interested in how social movements use mass media to forward their goals, sociological research almost exclusively focuses on the ability of activist groups to get their ideas and organizations in general audience, mainstream media coverage. This paper contributes to a more systematic understanding of media coverage outcomes by broadening the range of outlets considered relevant to political discourse. In addition to mainstream venues, we consider conservative and liberal/left outlets in our analysis of social movement organization media coverage.

Method – Using negative binomial regression, we analyze how organizational characteristics, organizational frames, political elites, and event type affect the rates of social movement organization media coverage in mainstream and partisan news venues.

Findings – We find that the independent variables play very different roles in mainstream and partisan media coverage outcomes. Specifically, while organizational characteristics and frames often enhance the media coverage outcomes of activist groups in mainstream venues, political elites have no effect at all. In contrast, organizational characteristics and frames do not affect social movement media coverage in partisan outlets, whereas political elites and event type do.

Originality of the paper – Conceptually, this research broadens how scholars think about the relationship between social movement groups and mass media as well as the factors that influence media outcomes.

This chapter tells the story of an intense but rewarding five years of running events for children in Hampshire in the south of England, UK, from 2015 to 2020. Whilst there will be a wealth of theory and academic models presented within this book, here the focus is primarily practical with lessons learnt from direct, and sometimes hard-earned experience. There are of course many formal options for becoming a primary school teacher or trained event host, for example, but we took a more lean and pragmatic approach to designing our off-curriculum activities and events.

In jam festival music scenes, participants build elaborate networks that connect members formally and informally between music events. Largely regional in scope, participants form these networks to develop and perform scene identities and cultivate intimate social relationships. Emerging through cultivated “crews” and “camps,” members build hubs of interaction that sustain and persist well beyond the festival event to create a vital sense of belonging and place. While the affective relationships formed at music festival events tend to be temporary, diffuse, and episodic, scene networks provide a “portable” interactional infrastructure that promotes relational continuity and persistence. These networks also provide more pragmatic benefits to networked members in the form of social and subcultural capital exchanged for symbolic and material rewards within the scene. Drawing from nearly 20 years of formal and informal participant observation in festival scenes, I provide an analysis of these networks and articulate common practices that drive their formation and continuation.

Soil is a non-renewable and increasingly deteriorating resource, yet it is barely protected by European Union (EU) legislation. This constitutes a puzzling gap within the otherwise encompassing and progressive environmental policy of the EU. To explain the integration resistance of soil protection, I draw on insights from rationalist and sociological institutionalist theory. The institutional rigidity of the community method of environmental decision-making limits policy change to favorable interest constellations, but this constraint is usually compensated by agenda competition among the national environmental pioneers. However, successful agenda-setting depends on the skillful combination of political venues and issue frames. Matters of land politics, such as soil protection, are difficult to frame in terms that make them suitable for European policy venues. The theoretical argument is illustrated using an in-depth case study of the agenda-setting, negotiation, and eventual withdrawal of the ill-fated proposal for an EU soil framework directive, with a focus on the changing role of Germany. Reframing of soil politics as locally bound and as essentially national affair, subnational actors extended the conflict to include the German federal chamber as policy venue. As a result, Germany turned from “pusher by example” and first mover to “defensive front-runner,” successfully pursuing a blocking strategy.