An Italian Paradox

In 1951, when Noel Coward penned his mocking ode to the Festival of Britain, Europe was in the throes of a post-war boom in cultural festivals. Coward’s satire points to the precarious status of these events: despite their prominence, they invited ridicule both for their grand cultural claims and their commercial character. As Coward writes, ‘We’ve never been/exactly keen/On showing off or swank/But as they say/That gay display/means money in the bank’ (2002, 343). Like other middlebrow institutions, cultural festivals pursue both artistic and commercial goals and this tension creates confusion about their purpose: in Coward’s phrase, ‘Don’t give anyone time to ask/What the Hell it’s about’ (2002, 345). Literary festivals, a subset of cultural festivals, have existed since 1949, exploding in popularity in recent decades. There are well over 300 literary festivals worldwide, with locations ranging from major international capitals to regional towns. The most established festivals are held in cities from Commonwealth countries such as Toronto, Edinburgh, Adelaide and Melbourne. The twenty-first century has seen the emergence of large literary festivals in America, including the Boston Book Festival and the National Book Festival, and across the globe, from the Jaipur Literature Festival to the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival to the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.KeywordsCultural CapitalAudience MemberTwitter UserLiterary EventLiterary CultureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Typography is an important visible element of a cultural festival’s brand mark, yet is overlooked within cultural festival research. An abundance of work has been published that examines cultural festivals from cultural, economic, tourism, and place-making perspectives, yet there is a shortfall in scholarly research addressing the key role typography performs to engage audience participation through cultural festivals’ primary brand driver – the brand mark. This paper critically considers triangulation as a constructive and effective research framework for enquiry into typography deployed in the brand marks of cultural festivals and provides a roadmap to further research. Offering an analysis of how and in what way typography is being used in the brand marks for cultural festivals, this paper contributes a discussion of appropriate research methods in the examination of this material. Triangulation is engaged as a research technique combining the methods 1) content analysis, 2) case study (text analysis) and 3) a semiotic analysis of typography as a framework to advantage three perspectives on typography, capturing the complexities of the phenomenon. Through a pilot study of 20 cultural festival brand marks from English speaking countries in 2016, the findings show that triangulation of three methods is beneficial to uncovering a rich and nuanced understanding of the role of typography in brand marks. Although many research methods are available to design researchers, the authors argue that triangulation, is an appropriate method to analyze typography used in the brand marks of cultural festivals as it allows for the emergence of a heterogeneous understanding of the discipline.

This thesis explores how museums can effectively negotiate the ethical and children’s rights issues involved in the acquisition, interpretation and display of contemporary photographs of children. It does so in consideration of a heightened sensitivity towards child protection that has inspired a struggle for museums in the UK to adopt transparent and confident decision-making processes in their curatorial approaches around such images. This struggle is particularly fraught when photographs of children express a bodily awareness: a marker of the transition from childhood to adulthood.By advancing an ethically-informed discourse around freedom of speech and the sitter’s agency, the research aims to encourage more resilient and responsible decision-making amongst museums and galleries. Significantly, the thesis develops a language and a framework within which such a dialectic can take place.The research is interdisciplinary in nature and, building on the new museum ethics discourse, draws on the experiences of museum practitioners in the US, UK and Europe – including curators, directors and educators. Firmly grounded within everyday museum practice, it identifies innovative curatorial strategies that exchange self-censorship for a more socially relevant way of interpreting and exhibiting photographs of children. The thesis advocates approaches that enable children and young people to express their own perspectives on the ways in which they are represented today.Adopting qualitative research methods, the research relies on interviews and case studies. These include a number of ‘silent’ cases introduced by museum informants that reveal how self-censorship operates through external and internal barriers, and two case studies that embrace curatorial strategies that explore alternative ways forward (at The North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, US and the Fotomuseum in The Hague, The Netherlands).

Cultural events have become a significant component within the strategies of destination branding of a place. Territories are increasingly using events and cultural festivals to enhance their image and boost tourism development. Many destinations worldwide have built events portfolios as a strategic initiative to attract visitors and to develop their own brand. A destination brand represents a dynamic interaction between the destination’s core assets and the way in which potential visitors perceive them. Thus, the visitor perspective is considered as fundamental in triggering processes of destination branding. This paper investigates how the visitors assess the impact of cultural events and festivals in enhancing the image of a tourist destination. The Stresa Festival (Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy) has been selected as a case study. Stresa Festival is undoubtedly one of the best-known European classical music festivals that every year offers performances by internationally famous artists to its audiences. Structured questionnaires have been used as the methodology to carry out the research. Online questionnaires have been handed out to residents and non-resident visitors to the Stresa Festival to extract the opinions and experience from the public on the image effects of this festival. Findings reveal that there is a positive relationship between this cultural event and the enhancement of the city image and its territory.

The essay argues, first, that the book festival is a specific type of formal enclosure, and second, that we might draw a productive analogy with another kind of capitalist enclosure, namely the special economic zone (SEZ). As enclosures synonymous with global capital, SEZs have come under significant scrutiny by economists who hotly debate their local and national impacts, while the activities that occur within the zone are strangely illegible; book festivals are similarly scrutinized by and yet opaque to literary scholars. Using the case study of the long-running Welsh Hay Festival and its international sister festivals as its basis, this essay draws on the archives of the festival, currently being processed at the British Library, and interviews conducted with current staff. It does so to argue that the book festival is a historically specific strategy of space that has emerged out of our modern globalized economy.

This research is a continuation of research and service as well as articles presented in international seminars and Bapenas FGDs. Research, PkM, International Seminars and FGDs from BAPENAS that have been carried out provide an illustration that Papua has great potential in local food, especially those made from sago. This is supported by the availability of sago forests and people who are starting to understand the preservation of sago forests and people who are creative in processing sago food in various preparations. However, the community has not yet found the right form to promote local food well and have a big impact. Conditions like this provide an opportunity for the government and academics to play a role in formulating the right strategy and realizing it in a major activity that can be known by many people nationally and internationally. One of the activities that can support the condition of people who are in this position is the government implementing a Local Food Culture Festival which is held on a scheduled schedule every year. This research aims to create a management model for local food culture festivals which is carried out in 2 (two) stages, namely Phase I (2023) sharing knowledge of the research team with festival management experts at UNY as well as concocting a suitable or appropriate form for festival management in Merauke Regency, as well as Benchmarking at several Cultural Festivals organized by the Yogyakarta Special Region Government (DIY) in September 2023, and Phase II (2024) the research team will carry out education and FGDs for 3 days for the Tourism and Culture Offices of Merauke Regency and South Papua Province as well as the candidates festival participants from the local food business community. The results of this research found that organizing a festival requires high synergy from the organizing team itself and from the government and sponsors. The most important thing is that it is necessary to carry out a survey or initial analysis of the festival theme which can describe the vision of the activities, potential and targets to be achieved by the festival. The budget and activity plan must be determined well in advance so that it can be included in the annual expenditure of sponsors or local governments. The selection of the organizing team must also be a professional team or a combination of a professional team and the sponsor, so that the implementation can go according to plan. Apart from that, the community must also be involved or empowered to participate. What is different about festivals held in the Papua region is the very dominant role of local communities involved in helping to improve the economy of the local population and promoting existing Papuan culture, apart from that there is still a lack of third parties who are willing to sponsor festival activities in Papua, especially Papuan cultural and local food festival.

The article presents an in-depth analysis of the struggle for gender equality in hiring, as well as campaigns for parental leave and demands for improved work conditions, by female workers in manufacturing industry in 1970s–80s Italy. The case study is focused on Fiat in Turin, a highly significant site given its economic role in Italy and Europe, and its history of social conflict and radical workforce. Against the backdrop of dramatic changes in gender relations since the 1960s, ongoing industrial unrest since 1968 and the introduction of new gender-equality legislation, fatefully coinciding with the onset of deindustrialisation and the rise of unemployment in manufacturing, trade union feminism presented an original and, viewed in hindsight, highly significant agenda. The events in Fiat demonstrate the extent to which new demands and ideas regarding the value of women's work became acceptable in the workers’ movement and in society at large, but also reveal the obstacles which the feminist politics of work encountered, and the persistence of gender-based prejudice in understandings of the value of work in all its forms. The analysis is based on archive material, press and original interviews.

An historical research on the development and application of prestressed concrete in Italy.

Italian-Hungarian Support for the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO): A Case Study on the Hungarian Role in Italy’s Aspirations towards the Balkan Region during the Interwar Period

This paper explores the role of entrepreneurial orientation in addressing upward mechanisms of Indian immigrant workers in rural areas. To achieve this purpose, an empirical analysis was carried out to investigate how entrepreneurial orientation may affect mechanisms of professional transition. Precisely, we managed direct interviews among Indian workers (through the support of cultural mediators), local actors (like public and private advisors) and Italian entrepreneurs. Our funding suggests the presence of three Indian workers in Italy (simple workers, intrapreneurs, entrepreneurs), characterised by different entrepreneurial profile acting as engine or barrier to what we have labelled as “upward transition”. Immigrant entrepreneurs play a relevant role in Italy and in our point of view, it is of paramount importance to allow them to access to rural development policies, knowledge, training and education upgrading.

In recent years, an increasing number of cultural festivals have been organized around the world with the aim of revitalizing urban economies, promoting creative industries, enhancing urban social cohesion, achieving urban regeneration, and introducing or repositioning cities in an increasingly competitive global stage. Examples of using cultural festivals for urban regeneration include The Holland Festival that set up in 1947 in order to stimulate economic development of Amsterdam, the Notting Hill carnival that regularly attracts over 1 million visitors, the West End Festival in Glasgow that promote tourism development in the city, and so on. Cultural festivals have now become one of the most popular way of culturally-led urban renewal strategies. In this paper the author takes Edinburgh, which is famous for its annual festivals, as a case study. The results show that while cultural festivals bring many positive effects to urban development, they may also have the potential to bring negative effects to cities. Therefore, it is essential for cultural policymaker to carefully balance the needs of city residents and visitors in order to maximize the positive impact of the festival.

Tourism refers to traveling for business, pleasure, or service. Cultural festivals refer to events held as a means to showcase culture and traditions. The research set out to find the role cultural festivals play in promoting tourism in developing countries, using the Ngondo Traditional Festival of Cameroon as a case study. The study is guided by a review of the literature on the role of cultural festivals in promoting tourism in developing countries, and case studies of successful cultural festivals in other developing countries. It also reviews a brief historical background, what the festival is all about, and its main aim and significance to the people of Cameroon. The research was based on casual interviews and discussions with some randomly selected tour operators, friends, colleagues, and tourists who were all part of the festival. Information was also collected from secondary sources like journals, newspapers, and from other researchers. The results of the study reveal the impact of the Ngondo festival on tourism in Cameroon, the challenges faced in promoting the festival as a tourist attraction site, and the strategies implemented to attract tourists to the festival. The study also provides recommendations that the Government and Stakeholders can use to promote the Ngondo festival. In conclusion, the festival has great potential of becoming a major source of tourism if the challenges it faces are handled properly and the necessary recommendations are implemented.

Aim/Purpose: This research aims to identify the key components of Suzhou’s city brand, evaluate the effectiveness of its integrated marketing communication (IMC) strategies, and propose actionable initiatives to enhance the city's global brand identity. By addressing these objectives, the study seeks to strengthen Suzhou’s position as a cultural and economic hub, providing practical recommendations for policymakers and marketers to improve its global recognition and appeal. Introduction/Background: City branding has emerged as a critical strategy for fostering economic growth, cultural prominence, and tourism development. Suzhou, known for its rich history, cultural heritage, and robust economic profile, faces the challenge of effectively positioning itself as a global city in a competitive international landscape. This study focuses on leveraging Suzhou’s unique assets to strengthen its city brand through strategic IMC initiatives. The research highlights the need to balance tradition with innovation to attract international audiences and investment by aligning the city's historical and cultural identity with contemporary marketing practices. Methodology: This qualitative case study explored Suzhou’s city brand and integrated marketing communication (IMC) strategies through primary and secondary data collection. Primary data consisted of in-depth interviews with 15 tourism brand managers from Suzhou’s cultural tourism industry, selected for their expertise in IMC and branding initiatives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted face-to-face with audio recordings (with consent) and supplemented by notes. Secondary data included reports, academic studies, and official documents, providing historical and contextual insights. Thematic analysis identified patterns within the qualitative data, supported by triangulation to ensure reliability and validity. Member checking allowed participants to review and verify interpretations, further enhancing credibility. This approach revealed both strengths and areas for improvement in Suzhou’s branding strategies. Findings: The study revealed that Suzhou’s city brand is anchored in four primary pillars. First, its rich historical and cultural heritage, characterized by well-preserved ancient architecture, classical gardens, and vibrant traditions, forms the cornerstone of its identity. Second, the city’s economic strength and market potential, driven by thriving industries and an innovation-focused economy, establish it as a regional economic powerhouse. Third, Suzhou’s high quality of life, combining urban conveniences with natural beauty, significantly enhances its appeal as a livable destination. Lastly, its diverse tourism resources, including UNESCO World Heritage sites and picturesque waterways, position Suzhou as a premier destination for both domestic and international tourists. To strengthen its brand, Suzhou has implemented effective IMC strategies. Social media campaigns promote cultural events, festivals, and tourism packages on platforms like WeChat, Weibo, and Instagram. Online advertising leverages targeted ads to reach global audiences, while promotional events such as trade shows, cultural festivals, and business forums showcase the city’s strengths. These initiatives have significantly bolstered Suzhou’s brand recognition, increased tourism, and enhanced its global reputation. Despite these successes, challenges persist. Inconsistent branding messages across platforms dilute the city’s core identity, while limited use of certain digital platforms and insufficient engagement with international audiences restrict Suzhou’s outreach. Addressing these challenges is crucial to solidifying its global brand presence. Contribution/Impact on Society: This research contributes to the field of city branding and marketing communication by providing actionable insights into how cities can leverage their unique assets to enhance global recognition. The study highlights how cities like Suzhou can integrate their cultural heritage, economic strengths, and tourism resources to create a compelling city brand. It also addresses challenges such as inconsistent messaging and underutilization of digital platforms, offering recommendations for improvement. For policymakers and marketers, the research underscores the importance of coordinated strategies for sustainable urban development, attracting investment, tourism, and talent, and ensuring long-term economic and cultural growth. Recommendations: To further enhance Suzhou’s city brand, it is recommended that a stronger synergy between online and offline marketing efforts be developed, a cohesive and unified visual identity be established, and marketing activities across various communication platforms be integrated. Additionally, existing challenges in marketing implementation should be addressed by focusing more on Suzhou’s cultural heritage, drawing inspiration from global best practices, and targeting specific audience segments, all of which would significantly strengthen Suzhou’s brand identity and appeal. Research Limitation: The study is limited by its qualitative approach and the relatively small sample size of 15 informants, which may not fully capture the diversity of perspectives on Suzhou’s branding efforts. Furthermore, the research focuses exclusively on Suzhou, making it less applicable to cities with differing cultural, economic, or social contexts. Future Research: Future studies should explore the long-term effects of IMC strategies on city branding through longitudinal research, offering insights into strategy evolution and sustained impact. Quantitative approaches could confirm variables in city branding and IMC, enabling a more robust analysis. Additionally, research on audience segmentation using demographic, behavioral, and psychographic data can enhance tailored marketing strategies. Comparative studies across cities could also identify best practices and innovative approaches to city branding.

In Ghana, regional and local cultural festivals that recently have been cre- ated or modernized provide an interface between local communities and the state. At these festivals, local political elites formulate demands on the government, and conversely, the government attempts to popularize its policies. At the same time, cultural festivals function as public arenas where local cultural identities are articulated within a framework negotiated by the state and the media. The staging of local culture thus always has a national dimension, even when the material is of local origin. Public self-representation at cultural festivals can also be an important factor in internal integration of local societies. The article examines these themes with reference to cultural festivals in northwestern Ghana which the author has

Examining a database of 2,856 festivals in Australia and survey results from 480 festival organizers, we consider how nonmetropolitan cultural festivals provide constraints as well as opportunities for economic planners. Cultural festivals are ubiquitous, impressively diverse, and strongly connected to local communities through employment, volunteerism, and participation. Despite cultural festivals being mostly small-scale, economically modest affairs, geared around community goals, the regional proliferation of cultural festivals produces enormous direct and indirect economic benefits. Amidst debates over cultural and political issues (such as identity, exclusion, and elitism), links between cultural festivals and economic development planning are explored.