Evolver Questival (2003)

2014

Positive Living Newsletter, 2021

From: Wong, P. T. P. (2021, June). A festival to celebrate the human spirit [President’s Column]. Positive Living Newsletter. http://www.drpaulwong.com/a-festival-to-celebrate-the-human-spirit/

2011

This report identifies the perspectives of visitors on the crucial question of how festivals can best engage publics. This is an exploratory study which therefore relies upon open-ended qualitative data to supplement the quantitative results. The overall patterns in this study show a remarkably high level of satisfaction with the visiting experience at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas. It also highlights various aspects of the Festival that visitors found valuable. A minority of respondents indicated they were so inspired by the Festival experience that they intended to undertake more formal learning through further or higher education. This report points to the potential value of arts and social sciences-oriented festivals for engaging publics with new ideas. Now that a range of outcomes from the festival visit experience have been identified, future research can begin to test the prevalence of such outcomes through the use of more direct measures of impact.

2002

Art Council Malta blog, 2019

2016

A later version of this article has been accepted for publication in IJMR. Festivals are an important sub-field within event studies which, until recently, have not been studied as separate experiences. A systematic review of the emerging literature on festivals reveals several key characteristics. While festivals are diverse in nature and geographical location, scholarly interest focuses on five main themes across these variations: the motivations for organising, funding, and attending festivals; the experiences of festival attendees; the relationship between festivals and their local environments; the economic and socio-cultural impacts of festivals; and the management of festivals. Despite growing interest in festivals as research sites, little attention has been afforded to investigating festival processes. In particular, considerations of how festivals are established, and which individuals are involved in their initiation and regular staging, offer opportunities for research. This article highlights the significant role festivals play within their local communities, including their facilitation of social cohesion and regional identity. Our study reveals that the literature rarely discusses the development of festivals over time and the wider networks in which festivals are embedded. This critical review of festival research identifies various research gaps and directions for future research to develop theory and practical understanding of festivals.

Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture: 7(1): 1–14., 2015

International Journal of Music Education, 2008

The purpose of this article is to explore the desires and tensions inherent within the act of facilitating creative music-making workshops. Following the introduction, the article is divided into three sections: (1) a discussion of the workshop event as a contingent structure through which creative music-making may take place; (2) an exploration of the facilitation process as a mechanism of engaging participants in creative music-making; (3) as a heuristic framework, a notion of the gift is shown as a means to think through face-toface musical encounters. This article concludes that the ideas and concepts presented may assist workshop facilitators in thinking more deeply about the processes they engage in.

Consulting with young people can be a complicated task with many things that need to be taken into account. Listening to young people is central to the consultation process and in listening to what they say you ensure that future events are successful and fun. Included in these guidelines are the principles behind a successful consultation. This is based on experiences of running such events and through asking young people what they think, as well as what needs to be considered in terms of the reasons you are consulting. Safety also needs to be thought about along with the kind of facilities that are going to be required. These guidelines provide useful and practical advice in running consultations.

This section of the journal collates articles and other content arising from The Art of Participation Forum, which took place on the 7th & 8th of May, 2016, at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. The event brought together an international group of artists and academics who are involved in participatory arts in a variety of ways and who hail from the many corners of this wide field of activity. We wanted to explore the inherently practical phenomenon of participatory arts by doing as well as discussing, which meant that the Forum took a practice-as-research approach. To this end, we curated a programme comprised of condensed versions of academic presentations and practical workshop sessions, together with longer performance pieces. To further embed the spirit of participation within the structure of the event, we devised an innovative, non-hierarchical format, in which all attendees both lead a session and participated in each other's. This fostered a feeling of joint-ownership of the Forum amongst those present. In the Organiser Conversation video, we, the organisers, introduce ourselves before reflecting on questions such as 'why we wanted to make the Forum happen,' 'who we wanted to attend,' and 'what was original about it?' The video is somewhat playful in nature, which reflects our attitude in facilitating the event. To continue some of the conversations that were had over the weekend, we gave all participants the opportunity to respond to it. The presentation of these are mixed, in that some are more academically inclined, whereas others are of a more performative and reflective nature – this is a true reflection of the variety of voices we had at the forum. These have been compiled with an introductory article, exploring how the event was developed and run, as well as reflections on it, which functions as an extension of the video. The final element of this section is an interactive Twine, which offers an interactive way of engaging with all the contributions and elements. Within the Twine, readers are able to follow particular themes throughout and also try to find some of the hidden, bonus content, thus evoking both the playful nature of both the Twine and the Forum itself. The three elements that frame the contributors’ material reflect the innovative nature of the Forum event itself, by trying to find different (and interactive) ways of engaging people with the topic of participation.