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This paper synthesizes perspectives from a webinar on festival tourism, focusing on the evolution and challenges of festivals from traditional African contexts to modern global events. It explores the role of festivals in cultural preservation, community inclusion, and economic development, while also highlighting risks such as over-commercialization, gentrification, environmental impacts, and the lack of sustainable planning
Case studies on film tourism and small-scale festivals are analyzed to illustrate multifaceted impacts and to propose a “systems” approach for responsible festival development that prioritizes community and cultural authenticity.
Introduction
Festival tourism represents a rapidly expanding sector within the global travel industry, attracting visitors through cultural, recreational, and social engagements. The “Festival Tourism” webinar, hosted by Sustainable Travel & Tourism Africa (STTA), convened experts to deliberate on the multifaceted nature of festivals, emphasizing the shift from traditional, community-based observances to larger-scale, commercialized events
This article synthesizes the key points presented, exploring the historical context of festivals, contemporary challenges, and strategies for ensuring sustainable and responsible development.
Traditional Festivals and Community Values
In the African context, festivals were traditionally not large-scale spectacles but rather intimate ceremonies organized to address a specific need or commemorate a significant community event. Examples include ceremonies to pray for rain and harvest festivals. A unique festival of the Mar community celebrated infertile women, where they were honored and blessed in what was a festival of acceptance and inclusion.
Key characteristics of traditional festivals include:
Inclusivity and Celebration of Diversity: Festivals were utilized to integrate societal members and celebrate diversity, such as inter-village wrestling festivals in Uganda that fostered peace and mutual recognition.
Profound Cultural Functions: Fire was widely used in many African festivals to symbolize life, with meaningful narratives behind its use, which contrasts with the modern tourism practice of using campfires without storytelling.
Self-Financing: Traditionally, festivals were self-funded, obviating the need for external sponsorship.
Beyond Entertainment: The value of traditional festivals was not merely recreational or commercial; they were potent expressions of identity and solidarity rooted in religious rites, seasonal cycles, and communal traditions. They provided spaces for community bonding, artistic expression, and intergenerational cultural transmission.
Challenges of Modern Festival Tourism and Commercialization
The growth of festival tourism has prompted a significant paradigm shift, introducing both opportunities and challenges:
- Commercialization and Redefinition: Today, the predominant definition of a festival is often “commercial,” featuring hundreds of vendors attempting to sell products. This raises questions about whether such events retain the essence of an African festival, where the core purpose should be the celebration of African identity and unity.
- Sponsor Dependency: Unlike traditional self-financed festivals, many modern events are dependent on sponsorship, which can alter the festival’s objectives.
- Environmental Impact: Large-scale festivals often lead to significant waste management issues, particularly plastic waste, which has a considerable environmental footprint.
- Health Risks: In a post-COVID-19 world, festivals carry significant health risks, necessitating careful precautionary measures, especially as some communities may be ill-equipped to manage these risks due to inequalities within tourism destinations.
- Cultural Pollution: Organizing festivals outside of their traditional schedules to accommodate VIPs can dilute the event’s original values and principles.
- The Rise of Wildlife Festivals: In African and Asian contexts, there is a rise in wildlife-centric festivals (e.g., Kwita Izina in Rwanda, the elephant naming ceremony in Kenya), indicating tourism’s influence on festival development. These events are often managed at a high level and cater more to a “community of interest” (wildlife enthusiasts) than the “community of place” (local residents).
Case Studies: Film Tourism and Small-Scale Festivals
Professor Martha Soligo, a tourism sociologist, presented case studies on small-scale festivals, particularly film festivals, to illustrate their impacts and challenges:
Film Tourism: This involves travel to locations where a film was shot (e.g., The Hangover in Las Vegas, The Lion King in Kenya). Festivals are also a major driver of film tourism.
Lecco, Italy – Fostering a Local Workforce:
Lecco, a small town near Lake Como, utilized film festivals to develop its local workforce. The Lecco Film Commission acted as a bridge between film producers and the community, ensuring sustainable processes and mediating conflicts.
The goal was to hire local filmmakers, screenwriters, actors, and utilize local services (e.g., camera rentals, dance schools, restaurants).
Special screenings were held at other festivals to promote Lecco as a tourist destination, emphasizing the beauty of the local landscape.
Economic Impact: The festivals generated significant impacts on surrounding restaurants and hotels, as visitors required accommodation and dining.
International Promotion: A three-day Lecco film festival in Las Vegas screened films with English subtitles, capturing the interest of American audiences and leading to screening opportunities in Los Angeles, the world’s film capital.
Highland Park, Los Angeles – Revitalization and Gentrification:
Highland Park was a historic but disadvantaged neighborhood in Los Angeles, with a 70% Hispanic immigrant population, once considered a dangerous area.
Revitalization Through Events: The community sought to revitalize the area through small-scale events, including the Lummis Days Festival, which celebrated the neighborhood’s history and multiculturalism.
Highland Park Independent Film Festival: This festival was hosted at the historic, previously abandoned Highland Theater. The restoration of the theater and the festival helped forge an identity for the city and attracted international filmmakers.
The Risk of Gentrification: Despite its success in revitalization, Highland Park became a classic example of gentrification in the United States. Local businesses and residents were displaced by soaring rents, while larger corporations and affluent individuals from Hollywood moved in. This highlights the need to balance tourism development opportunities with the protection of the local community.
Niche Tourism and Sustainability
Destination Readiness: A major issue is whether destinations are prepared for festival tourism. Small towns often aspire to host large festivals without possessing adequate infrastructure (e.g., parking, restaurants, hotels), leading to dissatisfaction among both tourists and local residents.
“The Day After Newspaper Letter”: This term describes the situation where local residents complain in the press or on social media following a festival due to issues like noise, congestion, or a diminished quality of life. This often results from a lack of communication and community involvement in the planning process.
The “Systems” Approach: To avoid these problems, it is crucial to adopt a “systems” approach. In a system, every node in the network, including residents and tourists, must be considered. If money is the sole objective and sponsors dominate, the system becomes a hierarchy, not a balanced system.
Strategies for Ensuring Sustainable Benefits:
Collaborate with local stakeholders: Offer discounts at local businesses and promote other attractions to encourage repeat visitation outside of the festival period.
Promote word-of-mouth: Encourage visitors to share positive experiences and return.
Avoid a singular focus: Do not concentrate solely on the festival without promoting other aspects of the destination.
Policy Intervention: Governments need to implement policies to protect local businesses from large chains, providing funding and support to ensure sustainability.
Sustainable Tourism Practices:
Individual actions like recycling and using reusable water bottles are important but insufficient. Sustainability is a systemic and global issue that requires communication between micro and macro levels.
Responsible Branding: Branding strategies should focus on sustainability and responsibility, promoting destinations in a balanced manner to avoid overwhelming a specific area.
Cultural Preservation and Authenticity
Festivals are central to cultural preservation, providing systems for transmitting knowledge, wisdom, rituals, and traditions. However, commercialization poses a serious challenge to this authenticity.
- Standardization and “McDonaldization”: There is a worrying trend toward the standardization of festivals, where everything becomes homogenous—a phenomenon termed “McDonaldization.” This is evident when local festivals become “trade shows” with similar cultural crafts sold everywhere, lacking the unique identity of the host region.
- A Call to “Return to Basics”: To strike a balance between cultural preservation and authenticity amidst commercialization, it is necessary to “return to basics” and “ask the people who know.”
- Bottom-Up Development: Festivals should be developed from the bottom up, with community participation, rather than being imposed in a top-down manner.
- Avoiding Cultural Commodification: Culture should not be turned into a product for sale. The community must be respected and involved in the planning process to ensure authenticity is maintained.
- The Diversity of Tourism: It is necessary to challenge the misconception that tourism is for everyone, as factors like wealth, privilege, racism, or sexism still create barriers. Festivals can play a significant role in promoting diversity if their central theme focuses on it and the diverse nature of tourism itself is acknowledged.
Conclusion
Festival tourism offers immense potential for economic development and cultural preservation. However, the shift from traditional community festivals to commercialized events has created significant challenges regarding sustainability, authenticity, and social impact. To address these issues, destinations must adopt a “systems” approach where all stakeholders, particularly the local community, are invested and involved in the planning process.
Prioritizing bottom-up community engagement, safeguarding culture from over-commercialization, and developing adequate infrastructure are critical steps to ensure that festivals provide long-term, responsible benefits for all. Policymakers, researchers, and festival organizers have a crucial role in creating guidelines and standards to balance tourism growth with the preservation of core cultural values.
