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Festivals and special events are a growing business in the world’s current trends. With special events growing and generating more and more money for communities and nations this assignment will take an in depth look how special events and festival have a positive and negative effect on the environment the economy, society and culture. Festivals especially have developed dramatically since the first known weekend long concerts in California in the summer of 67. With new technology and production it has allowed festivals to improve the quality of events and provide more n ways of entertainments to meet guests needs.
This in turn also allows festivals and special events to allow more people to attend the event than before. “A special event is a unique moment in time celebrated with ceremony and ritual to satisfy specific needs. ” (Goldblatt, J. (2002). Special Events: Twenty-First Century Global Event Management) . It is an occasion or a function that holds a specific outcome. Reasons for running a special event can include raising money, raising awareness, gaining publicity or recognising successes.
These goals can be reached by running events ncluding functions, dinners, award nights, fairs, grand openings and general fundraising events. Special events can range in sizes from a small scale private wedding to a large scale state circus. Alan L. Wendroff states that there are seven goals for running a successful special event ; 1- Raise money 2- Update your mission statement to educate your consistuency 3- Motivate board members and major givers 4- Recruit volunteers and future board members 5- Expand the organizations network 6- Market the organization 7- Solicit endorsements (Wendroff, L.
A (2004). Special Events; Proven Strategies For Non-profit Fundraising). These seven goals guide event managers and fundraisers through the process of achieving there aims through running a special event. Annual special events used for fundraising purposes can have multidimensional goals resulting from designing and implementing a strategy that positively affects the attendees and supporters of the annual event. The end result of the seven goals already stated is to turn attendees into supporters by holding a social gathering under the term special event. Festival is an event, a social phenomenon, encountered in virtually all human cultures. (Alessandro Falassi (2012). ) There are many types of festivals for example music festivals and food festivals and are held to serve specific needs to its audiences. Festivals are a time for religious, social and geographical groups to celebrate together. They can also be used to teach for example the more recent festivals are used to educate audiences of traditions with in a specific culture or ethnicity. ” A festival is a public community event”. Goldblatt,J. (2002). Special Events: Third edition). These events are signified by a mixture of experiences that discover eaning to the lives of its audiences. These significant events involve, arts and crafts workshops and media that bring entertainment and pleasure to spectators. Such festivals and fairs have seen tremendous growth with smaller towns and cities improve tourism in towns at times where tourism is low for example a seaside resort in the winter. Festivals can also be focused to weekends to appeal to the typical weekend travellers.
Festivals themselves create infinite opportunity to celebrate culture by providing and explaining. The main reason behind holding festivals and special events is to make money. Most festivals and special events are non-for profit however some special events are held purely to make more money. The Disney Land main street electric parade is perhaps one of the most famous special international events in the world and is visited by people all over the world but in fact was only created because Walt Disney needed an Idea to increase his profits after 5pm when most customers would exit the park.
This is when Robert Jani (now manager of one of the most successful event management production companies in the world) came up with the idea of a night time parade with lights and fireworks. This type of international event becomes symbolic to a company and brings people from all over the world together for an enjoyable entertaining event whilst also generating massive profit in the surrounding parts of the Disney land parks through tourism. The Olympics is a special event that is also a hallmark event.
The Olmpics generates massive capital for host countries the Beling Olympics in 2008 raised 1 bn yuan ($146 million) in operating profit. It also can be the cause for regeneration for a town for example the bid for the London 2012 games meant the transformation of stratford nd its run down rail lands into a major business and shopping location including new homes and schools and of coure following the successful bid the London Olympic park in the new ‘stratford city. This also bought 30,000 Jobs to stratford with the olmpic and Paralympic events themselves creating over 100,000 Jobs.
Internatinal events like this also bring nations together in support for their countries athletes and encourage and promote sport and healthy living to the world. National events create opportunities for for nations to come together and make a difference . Perhaps one of the UK’s most famous national events is the cancer research ‘Race for Life’ which sees women all over the country complete a sponsored 5k run in aid of cancer patients. Since 1994 race for life has bought together 6 million participants and raised E493 million, the most successful UK fundraising event series for cancer.
This type of national event brings communities together to support each other with everyone across the country whilst raising money and awareness. Reading and Leeds festival are examples of national events that are purely held for entertainment value. People come together for a celebration of music. Whilst reading and leeds are well known fairly large towns festivals like latitude in Lowestoft a smaller town brings people from across the country improving the towns revenue by tourism of UK citezans. It also brings the community together in he setting up of the event to make it the most successful it can be.
For example the farmers around the local area paint all there sheep different colours to improve the atmosphere for festival goers. Community events are smaller scale events used as a celebration, to raise money/ awareness or to break records. A well known celebration between communities is onfire night where many towns people come together to watch a parade and to burn guy forks on the bonfire which is then ususually followed by a firework display. The people in the parade are normally local societies and charities using the parade parade travels through the town.
This is a good way of the community being entertained whilst also knowing there money is going back into making there environment safer and nicer and helping improve societies and charities within there local town. Other community events can be to break records. Hastings in East Sussex hold an annual pirate day each year . 012 saw the residents of hastings break the Guinness book of records again with 14,231 participants. This event as well as many others during the summer are important in keeping hastings historic old town running as during the winter months it is not visited as much.
These kinds of community events give a sense of pride to residents and again bring people together in celebration. The economic impact of an events is the total amount of extra expenses generated within a specific segment , as a direct consequence of holding a special event or festival. Measuring the economic impact of an event is a persistent ay to retrieve evidence of the financial benefits holding an event may or may not have had and allows public sector bodies to evaluate there economic return on investment.
Measuring this also allows event managers to develop and maximise these benefits and demonstrate how events can help improve a town’s/countrys/ citys economy. Festivals themselves are generating more to improve the UK economy. in 2009 large scale music events in the UK saw at least 7. 7 million visitors reulsting in a positive contribution of E864m to the I-JK economy whilst creating 19,700 Jobs with almost one fifth of its total spend coming from overseas tourists. Tourists spent E196m on concerts and $47m on festivals in 2009 with UK residents spending E652m on concerts and E499m on festivals.
Events in the UK in 2009 had an end expenditure of El . 4bn with nearly half being spent on non-music events at hotels, local businesses, restaurants etc. the biggest contributing place was London with tourists and UK visitors spending a minimum ofE400m and sustaining 4,500 Jobs. The table below shows the improvement of expenditure and Jobs due to I-JK music festivals. (http://www. bbc. co. uk/news/business-13405724) Another example is the London 2012 Olympics that boosted the economy by 0. % however the economy shrank again after this by 0. % from September – December 2012. These forecasts show how festivals and special events boosts the I-JK economy but the negative side is that when an event such as the Olympics is over there isn’t any more money to boost the economy and that’s what event managers and the government need to consider. The event can improve the economy for a certain amount of time but it’s the on-going events that make the most difference. Hallmark events such as world cups can boost a countries economy during it; it’s what happens after that needs to be considered.
Different events have different levels of impact upon the surrounding environment. With festivals and sporting events noise levels is something that must be considered especially if the venue is surrounded by housing and housing estates. Pollution and littering however are the biggest concern for communities hosting these events. Especially in the case of large summer music festivals, the summer rain fall in England often causes the venue fields to flood and with people constantly treading on it, it ruins the field which can stop the community using it after the festival and can look unattractive.
It also ruins the habitats of the local wildlife and cause danger to them with litter not being controlled. Pollution is also a big environmental factor in these types of events as there are many people travelling by car and a lot of electricity used in the running of the event which massively increases carbon emissions in the surrounding areas. However the weather costs a lot to the event industry with premiership football games constantly being cancelled and postponed throughout the season it means the hiring of everything from the venue to the staff and to ticket holders is lost and must be escheduled.
A prime example of the environment ruining and event is Creamfields festival in the summer of 2012. The festival got cancelled on the Sunday due to heavy rain Friday and Saturday which resulted in most parts of the arenas and campsites being severely flooded. However festivals like Glastonbury do have a green policy in order to try and maintain a healthy environment and keep residents happy in order to hold the event annually. On there website they have a list of ways that festival goers can ‘be green’ by recycling, using public transport and taking litter home with them.
The festival organizers themselves recycle electrical and electronic equipment, commit to maintaining high levels of bio-diversity and protecting vulnerable habitats, tree and hedge planting, using locally sourced wood, composting food waste, selling fair trade tea, coffee and sugar, and they also take a year off holding the festival every five years in order to restore the environment and give the community a year’s rest. Festivals and special events have many positive social impacts on society. “Carlson (1996) suggests performance of all kinds can help to raise the profile of traditionally arginalised groups (e. . Ethnic minorities, women and homosexuals), allowing them to express and explore issues relating to self and society, objectification, exclusion and identity. ” (Pickard, D. Robinson, M. Festivals (2006)). Festivals, Tourism and Social Change: Remaking Worlds). With special events and festivals allowing the communism of diverse audiences it allows room for awareness of political issues such as racism. For example the founder of WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) Peter Gabriel stated about his WOMAD festival “The festivals have allowed many enjoyment of music.
Music is a universal language, it draws people together and proves, as well as anything, the stupidity of racism’ (WOMAD, 2002) there are however some negative sides to the social aspect of events. With I-JK trends changing so quickly and the even quicker development of the internet and software, some more traditional communities feel these events are not respecting their culture and what they stand for but instead a newer more modern approach is being taken, which suggests a criticism against tourism as many festivals started off as small scale local events.
For example the Oxfordshire County and Thame Show which is an event to elebrate harvest festival has been moved from the traditional September to July because that’s when tourists are visiting but, however it changes the whole tradition of the event which has caused disputes. These events also create a lot of opportunity for communities to come together in helping and volunteering at events. Social and culture impacts are very similar and can sometimes be known as socio – cultural impacts.
Where social impacts are described more generally as the ways people change in terms of how they act, live, play, work, help, relate and cope as a ommunity. Cultural impacts are more about what how peoples changes in values and beliefs of individuals who may guide them and allow recognition of themselves inland there society. Whereas Social impacts are how an event changes people’s lives or way of living. Cultural impacts are how an event changes through the process that individuals define themselves and their behaviour upon.
Perhaps the most famous symbolic festival to have a great effect on culture was the USA’s famous hippie festival Woodstock in august 1969. This free festival changed the beliefs of eople with the theme of peace, sex, drugs and rock and roll and the concert being in the location it was and the amount of people who attended. Woodstock festival was iconic and became the new modern after that. Festivals and special events are the best way for raising money/awareness and of entertainment.
Although festivals especially in the I-JK are more of a seasonal thing the money they generate throughout the summer months helps towards improving the countrys economy through boosting tourism. In terms of the environment special events need to be well controlled for example having police at football matches to ensure surrounding reas do not get vandalized by intoxicated supporters after the game. Festivals need to improve the way they look after the environment theyre working upon.
Festivals organizers should think about having a gap year like Glastonbury Festival so that the environment can in a sense be refurbished and avoid any long term damage that could eventually stop the festivals from happening. The biggest impact that special events and festivals have is its socio-cultural impact of society. The coming together of communities in turn is the coming together of different cultures and ethnicitys nd especially where fundraising is concerned brings them all together and avoids stereotypical grouping and a sense of belonging to the whole community as they unite.
If festivals and special events continue to grow as rapidly as there are now the money they generate for countries through tourism could be unstoppable especially after the success of the London 2012 Olympics where the country became proud and tourism has improved since. Festivals and special events are celebrations and something done for leisure if the UK’s industry continues to succeed UK music reputation on the I-JK Just like the London Olympics.