Emily Stone, Edinburgh Science
Since the first Edinburgh Science Festival in 1989, Edinburgh Science have been Programming for the Planet. The organisation’s ethos is to help people see the relevance of science to their everyday lives. Increasingly this means helping people to respond to the climate emergency - practically and emotionally. As well as the science festival, Edinburgh Science also delivers a programme of engaging science shows and workshops in primary schools Scotland-wide, runs Careers Hive connecting sS2 pupils to jobs of the future, and has recently developed a climate workstream which includes the NetZeroToolkit, empowering small organisations to reduce their environmental impact through educating them on how to do so. They realise the influential power that festivals have in educating audiences about sustainability and their commitment to doing so across all programmes has led to them seeking out, and sharing, best practice in climate communications.
Stephanie Maia is a Communications Officer specialising in climate communications. In 2022 she took the Media Trust’s Communicating the Climate course where she learned from experts such as George Marshall of Climate Outreach. With the knowledge gained on this course she developed Edinburgh Science’s Climate Communications strategy, tying positive and empowering communications through the organisation’s work.
Emily Stone is Climate & Sustainability Business Development Manager, leading on Edinburgh Science’s Climate workstream which comprises the NetZeroToolkit, Climate Co-Lab and wider organisational climate communications activity.
Session 2B: Festivals and community
Chair: Prof. Lynn Minnaert
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Mapping community engagement with the festival city through creative and participative methods
Dr Louise Todd, Edinburgh Napier University
I will present details of two interdisciplinary and collaborative research studies that used creative and participative methods within a public engagement methodology. Both aimed to gain an understanding of community stakeholders’ engagement with Edinburgh as the self-named world’s leading festival city (Gold & Gold, 2020). The festival city title is a recognised destination branding strategy (Richards 2017), pointing to a lively urban setting where collective and experiential consumption of events are encouraged (Dooghe, 2005). With its first festivals emerging in 1947, Edinburgh has a long and recognised history of staging cultural internationalism through its festivals (Jamieson & Todd, 2022). Today, eleven city-based festivals take place annually, to the point of eternal festivalisation (Smith, 2016), and collectively these form the Festivals Edinburgh strategic brand umbrella. Framed by recent media and community narratives around inclusion, access, and use of urban space in Edinburgh (McGillivray, Guillard & Reid 2020), both of my studies attempted to ‘map’ how secondary community stakeholder groups (Todd, Leask & Ensor, 2017) engage with the city’s festivals sector. Firstly, I will discuss a study that explored visual digital and analogue mapping produced by management and community stakeholders to reveal semiotics of Edinburgh’s festival city place-myth (Todd, 2022). I will then discuss aspects of an online peripatetic mapping study undertaken with Edinburgh residents. Outcomes from this were the development of a geolocated sonic map and online walking event. I will conclude by reflecting upon the potential of participative and creative methods in engaging communities and other actors in festival city settings.
References
Dooghe, D. (2005). Festival City, Rotterdam. In: C. Newbold, C. Maughan, J. Jordan, and F. Bianchini (Eds). Focus on festivals: contemporary European case studies and perspectives. Goodfellow Publisher Limited, 2627.
Gold, J. and Gold, M. (2020). Festival cities-culture planning and urban life. Routledge.
Jamieson, K. and Todd, L. (2022). ‘Negotiating privileged networks and exclusive mobilities: The case for a Deaf festival in Scotland’s festival city’. Annals of Leisure Research, pp.1-18.
McGillivray, D., Guillard, S., and Reid, E. (2020). Urban connective action: The case of events hosted in public space. Urban Planning, 5(4), 252.
Richards, G. (2017). Emerging models of the eventful city. Event management .21, no. 5: 533-543.
Smith, A. (2016). Events in the City: Using Public Spaces as Event Venues. Abingdon: Routledge.
Todd, L. (2022). Semiotics of Edinburgh’s festival city place-myth: management and community stakeholders’ visual representations of festival spaces. In: A. Smith, G. Osborn and G. Vodicka (Eds.): Festivals and the City: the contested geographies of urban events. University of Westminster Press.
Todd, L., Leask, A., and Ensor, J. (2017). Understanding primary stakeholders' multiple roles in hallmark event tourism management. Tourism Management, 59, 494-509.
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Performing and Sustaining the Transitional Power of Edinburgh’s first Deaf Festival
Jamie Rea
The Convention of the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage (2003) and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expression (2005) make way for important connections to heritage, language and experience, which are crucially identity-affirming in the Deaf community. This paper critically reflects upon Edinburgh’s first Deaf Festival (2022) and its potential to performatively pluralise Deaf identity through a programme of theatre, film, comedy and art.
This paper critically considers the transitional power of intangible cultural heritage through Edinburgh’s first Deaf Festival, both at the point of production and consumption. In so doing, it explores the festival as a means of 1) extending cultural recognition of Deaf identity, 2) recasting Edinburgh’s public spaces as Deaf space, 3) welcoming international deaf visitors and artists, and 4) future-making deaf heritage relations and opportunities. The paper contributes to a growing body of work that aligns festivals with radical inclusivity, transition, transformation and social justice.
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Music for all at the Dunard Centre: Problematising new arts and cultural venues as drivers of social sustainability in festival cities of the future