Community art festivals and sustainable rural revitalisation

Experiencing art from a field of rice: How farmers relate to rural revitalisation and art at Japan's Echigo‐Tsumari Art Festival

“…However, some have criticised the gap between Kitagawa's ambition and the reality of what ETAF has achieved. Klien (2010a, cited in Qu & Cheers, 2021, p. 14) characterises ETAF as ‘urban/global/elitism and cultural colonisation’ because of its strategy to use ‘pure art’ attractions, catering mainly to the needs of tourists and imposing outside influences on disadvantaged communities (Klien, 2010b; Qu & Cheers, 2021). Klien (2010b) further considers the art at ETAF as an attempted panacea used to create local autonomy to solve structural problems in local communities.…”

“…For example, Mahon and Hyyryläinen (2019) applied the endogenous perspective to compare the effects of two rural art festivals in Ireland and Finland on local development. Other researchers have examined rural art practices that demonstrate endogenous quality, defining these as practices ‘that [emerge] within the rural social, cultural and political context’ (Gkartzios et al., 2019, p. 586); this includes local craft traditions (Fois et al., 2019) and small‐scale, community‐led art festivals (Qu & Cheers, 2021). Finally, some research grapples with whether and how art could support a neoendogenous approach to community development.…”

“…Since the early 2000s, arts-led initiatives have taken a leading role in revitalising rural communities across the world via art festivals, biennials and triennials. Scholars have approached this phenomenon from different disciplinary vantage points: Social science research has ranged from studying the economic gains derived from these art initiatives Mahon et al, 2018;Woods, 2012) to recognising their social benefits (e.g., Anwar McHenry, 2009McHenry, , 2011Anwar-McHenry et al, 2018;Balfour et al, 2018;Gibson & Gordon, 2018;Koizumi, 2016) and facilitation of sustainable community development (e.g., Black, 2016;Hjalager & Kwiatkowski, 2018;Qu & Cheers, 2021). Meanwhile, arts and cultural studies scholars have examined how art is mobilised for rural revitalisation and community building and what this means for arts' social potential, autonomy or political-corporate bridge-building capacities (e.g., Borggreen & Platz, 2019;Klien, 2010aKlien, , 2010b.…”

Events and sustainability: why making events more sustainable is not enough

“…Each article stands on its own; however, we have presented the papers in broad thematic groupingscommunity events and social sustainability (Hassanli et al, 2020;Koenig-Lewis et al, 2020;Musikavanhu et al, 2021;Qu & Cheer, 2020;Stevenson, 2020), policy, practice and governance relating to sustainable events (Maguire, 2020;Quinn et al, 2020;Zhong et al, 2020;Werner et al, 2020), the business/management of sustainable events (Hatipoglu & Inelmen, 2020;Higgins-Desbiolles & Monga, 2020;Orefice & Nyarko, 2020;Wong et al, 2020), and finally diverse perspectives on events and sustainability (McClinchey, 2020;Ong et al, 2020;Wood & Dashper, 2020).…”

“…A common theme running through the papers on events and social sustainability is the importance of community, whether this is defined as a geographical or place-based community, ethnic community or as a community of interest. Qu and Cheer (2020) examine the role of community arts festivals in sustainable rural revitalisation, taking a small peripheral community in Japan as its focus. Like many other rural communities, Mitarai is struggling with the effects of aging and depopulation.…”