‘Festivals implicate others’: Framing cosmopolitan encounters at a European festival

Abstract

In the complex scenario of our contemporary culture, festivals are consciously planned and experienced as a resource for engaging with diversity. More than ever nowadays ‘festival implicates “Others”', or at least there are the conditions for this to happen. The chapter explores this prospective form of contemporary festivals by applying the concept of cosmopolitanism. What features should a festival that promotes transnational experiences have in order to become a ‘cosmoscape’, or a space that is capable of encouraging the formation of (real or imagined) cosmopolitan social ties? The author tries to answer this question by carrying out a case study on the 2013 edition of the Festival of Europe (Festival d’Europa), an event dedicated to European themes that is held every two years in the city of Florence (Italy).