Festivals and Edutainment

This book extends current knowledge and understanding of festival experiences. Relying on a series of international case studies, this book offers readers unique and important insights that emphasise the benefit of edutainment activities for enhanced audience learning, engagement, and festival satisfaction.

Giulia Rossetti is a Senior Lecturer in Events Management in the Business School, Oxford Brookes University. Giulia's areas of expertise are: understanding festival and event experiences using cultural sociology and serious leisure theories; festival socio-cultural impacts; and the educational value of festivals and events. Her current research interests include: the role of events in generating wellbeing; storytelling and festivals; edutainment at festivals; intangible heritage and cultural tourism. Giulia is the Event Management Journal Social Media Editor. Brianna Wyatt is a Senior Lecturer and the current Postgraduate Subject Coordinator for the Hospitality, Tourism, and Events Management programmes at Oxford Brookes University. She specialises in dark tourism with emphasis in interpretation and experience design, with her most recent publication on re-enactment in lighter dark tourism in The Journal of Travel Research. She also has industry experience working in both heritage and dark tourism, and is a Trustee and Member of the Board of Directors for the Buckingham Old Gaol. She currently sits on the Editorial Boards for the World Leisure Journal and Event Management. Jane Ali-Knight is a Professor in Festival and Event Management at Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland and a Visiting Professor at Curtin University, Australia. A recognised academic, she has published widely in the areas of wine tourism and regional development; destination development; festival and event marketing and management, accessibility, and well-being. Jane is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and Higher Education Academy and a trustee of British Arts Festivals Association; Without Walls: Innovators in Outdoor Arts and Hidden Door Festival.

Part 1: Planning edutainment. 1. Introduction. 2. Science Non-Friction: Balancing operational and legacy agendas for a university based science festival. 3. Witch City's 'Haunted Happenings': Managing authenticity and edutainment in Salem, Massachusetts. 4. Edutainment in Disney's EPCOT International Festival Cycle. 5. SouthWestFest: Edutainment through the lens of a cultural community festival, and its delivery partners. Part 2: Audience engagement. 6. Music festivals, edutainment, and audience engagement in a digital world. 7. Science in society: exploring science festivals and valuable leisure. 8. Maintaining festivals' "sense of community" through educational activities for locals and festival tourists during the Covid-19 crisis in Greece. Part 3: Sustainability and EDI. 9. The Winterage Festival in a Learning Landscape. 10. Managing inclusivity and diversity with edutainment for festivals. 11. Edutainment actions in a Mexican film festival - Cinema Planeta, the first film festival in Morelos, Mexico. Part 4: Experiencing edutainment. 12. Edutainment through Storytelling, Nostalgia and Living History in 1940s Festivals and Events. 13. Playing with your food: fun, frolics and learning at food festivals. 14. Learning (with) Negative Emotions: The Future of Science Festivals. 15. Afterword: The future of edutainment in festival experiences.