Life after a festival: local leadership and the lasting legacy of festivals

This article considers how local leadership capacities can be developed through locally organized festivals and argues that this skill development can be an important legacy of festivals. It draws on the case study of SnowFest, a festival held annually from 2000 to 2003 in a small rural town in New...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Davies, Amanda
Format: Journal Article
Published: Cognizant Comm. Corp. 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/11428
_version_ 1848747802816937984
author Davies, Amanda
author_facet Davies, Amanda
author_sort Davies, Amanda
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description This article considers how local leadership capacities can be developed through locally organized festivals and argues that this skill development can be an important legacy of festivals. It draws on the case study of SnowFest, a festival held annually from 2000 to 2003 in a small rural town in New South Wales, Australia. It is argued that festivals provide a useful setting for the development of local leadership capacities. Through reviewing the events leading up to and following SnowFest it was found that seven followers learned new leadership skills through their involvement in SnowFest. Four of these followers had since moved into leadership roles in the community. The particular nature of the leadership of the SnowFest leaders was important in enabling followers to develop their own leadership skills. The article contributes to the growing body of scholarly work that argues the impacts and benefits of locally organized festivals can extend beyond the spatial and temporal limits of the festival event and therefore beyond the scope of typical evaluation tools. The findings of this study are particularly relevant to small rural communities that are negotiating major socioeconomic changes, where effective local leadership has been identified as being crucial to the success of bottom-up community adaptation initiatives.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T06:54:57Z
format Journal Article
id curtin-20.500.11937-11428
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T06:54:57Z
publishDate 2015
publisher Cognizant Comm. Corp.
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-114282017-09-13T14:54:24Z Life after a festival: local leadership and the lasting legacy of festivals Davies, Amanda This article considers how local leadership capacities can be developed through locally organized festivals and argues that this skill development can be an important legacy of festivals. It draws on the case study of SnowFest, a festival held annually from 2000 to 2003 in a small rural town in New South Wales, Australia. It is argued that festivals provide a useful setting for the development of local leadership capacities. Through reviewing the events leading up to and following SnowFest it was found that seven followers learned new leadership skills through their involvement in SnowFest. Four of these followers had since moved into leadership roles in the community. The particular nature of the leadership of the SnowFest leaders was important in enabling followers to develop their own leadership skills. The article contributes to the growing body of scholarly work that argues the impacts and benefits of locally organized festivals can extend beyond the spatial and temporal limits of the festival event and therefore beyond the scope of typical evaluation tools. The findings of this study are particularly relevant to small rural communities that are negotiating major socioeconomic changes, where effective local leadership has been identified as being crucial to the success of bottom-up community adaptation initiatives. 2015 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/11428 10.3727/152599515X14465748512524 Cognizant Comm. Corp. fulltext
spellingShingle Davies, Amanda
Life after a festival: local leadership and the lasting legacy of festivals
title Life after a festival: local leadership and the lasting legacy of festivals
title_full Life after a festival: local leadership and the lasting legacy of festivals
title_fullStr Life after a festival: local leadership and the lasting legacy of festivals
title_full_unstemmed Life after a festival: local leadership and the lasting legacy of festivals
title_short Life after a festival: local leadership and the lasting legacy of festivals
title_sort life after a festival: local leadership and the lasting legacy of festivals
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/11428