Festival Places

Chris Gibson is Professor in Human Geography at the University of Wollongong. John Connell is Professor of Geography at the University of Sydney. For well over a decade they have been researching and writing about music, tourism and festivals in Australia and beyond. More recently they were part of a team undertaking Australia’s largest ever study of rural festivals, with 480 festivals participating in the research. Insights from that research project feature throughout this book.

John Connell is Professor of Geography and Head of the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney. His research interests span mobility, tourism, music and place identities. He has published widely on urbanisation, migration, and tourism. His books Sydney: Emergence of a World City (Oxford University Press, 2000) and Small Worlds, Global Lives: Islands and Migration (Pinter, 1999).

Chris Gibson is Professor in Human Geography at the University of Wollongong. John Connell is Professor of Geography at the University of Sydney. For well over a decade they have been researching and writing about music, tourism and festivals in Australia and beyond. More recently they were part of a team undertaking Australiaâ??s largest ever study of rural festivals, with 480 festivals participating in the research. Insights from that research project feature throughout this book.

John Connell is Professor of Geography and Head of the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney. His research interests span mobility, tourism, music and place identities. He has published widely on urbanisation, migration, and tourism. His books Sydney: Emergence of a World City (Oxford University Press, 2000) and Small Worlds, Global Lives: Islands and Migration (Pinter, 1999).

Gibson and Connell’s volume on festivals provides a wide angle perspective on what is going on ‘out there’. Academics and students, community development practitioners, government policy-makers, are among those who will be interested in the insights, strategies, and festival outcomes that are discussed...while the volume focuses exclusively on Australia, it is a useful reference for identifying and understanding what is occurring in relation to festivals elsewhere in the world, notably in rural North America and Europe. The in-depth discussions entered into with the case studies provide rich snapshots of the challenges and opportunities that go hand-in-hand with rural community and regional economic development.

Graeme Turner, University of Queensland, Australia:

Festival Places is a rich and diverse collection of studies of the function of the cultural festival in constructing place and community in rural Australia. While deeply grounded in its individual case studies, the mix of disciplines and methodologies demonstrate the value of continually seeking new ways to perform cultural research. This is both a fascinating and an extremely useful book.