The Festival as Form

Festivals are a vital part of the UK's creative economy. Over a third of UK adults have visited one (source: Ticketmaster), and alongside the 350 designated literary festivals, many of the large general ones now include literary zones for poetry, theatre and discussion. Festivals are also changing how people access new work: market analysts Neilsen Bookscan argue that the 66% rise in poetry sales between 2012-2017 has been substantially driven by the appetite for contemporary poetry encountered at festivals and live events (Bookseller, 13.4.18).

Yet despite the large amount of anthropological background on festivals, there has been little research into the way contemporary festivals shape the performances within them (Comunian, 2016), and almost nothing on the relationship between festivals and modern literature. Debates on music festivals often turn on the degree to which festivals' countercultural credentials have been appropriated by the market; the literary festival, too, suffers 'a crisis of identity', claims Johansen (2012), torn between being the vehicle for star authors, and a means for readers to feel more like genuine participants in a discussion. But research which tracks questions of status alone has reduced the immersive richness, contingency and complexity of the participants' experience within the overall festival flow, notes Jamaingal-Jones (2014); it cannot register the hyper-abundant, border-dropping experience of festivals (Turner 1974), and it by-passes the role the arts themselves play in articulating questions of status and inclusion.

This proposal is to examine the contemporary literary-artistic festival as a form. Like a stage or a page layout, the festival is a mixture of a cultural genre, an economic project and a physical space, which frames the arts within it and its audience in distinctive ways. By observing the way selected artists adapt a work for the festival, we aim to understand more of the creative pressures and feedback loops into the work which the festival generates for artists. We will get audiences to do some 'narrated photography' of their experience, asking how they adapt during the festival as consumers, friends, citizens, fans, identity-seekers and co-creators of the festival for their own social media outlets. Interviewing curators and a wide range of stakeholders, we will build up a picture of how the festival as a genre shapes literary creativity, and we will set this within a longer history of its role in modern literature. Our research questions are:

How does the contemporary festival as a genre shape the literary performances within it?

How do festival-goers understand literary events in the light of their all-round experience of the festival?

How have festivals supported the creation of and engagement with works of literature since the early twentieth century?

We will produce a report outlining what festivalization is doing to literature for academic critics, arts professionals and creative directors. And naturally enough, we will invite audiences to make their own response to the research through events at those festivals in subsequent years.