Rising to the challenge of community engagement: the case of Australian Folk Festivals

Abstract

The impacts, both positive and negative, of public events on their host communities has been an area of increasing researcher focus over the past decade. While acknowledging this, little effort has been directed at identifying those practices purposefully employed by the organisers of such events for community engagement purposes. This exploratory study, undertaken in the Australian context, seeks to go some way towards addressing this gap in the literature by examining a type of public event, folk festivals, which anecdotally have a reputation for being proactive in this area. Specifically, this enquiry seeks to: determine the drivers for community engagement; identify community engagement practices being employed by this event type; determine those factors that serve to facilitate or hinder the development and use of these practices; and ascertain the broad community groupings involved in the engagement process.