Description
As the first collection of studies to explore the use of edutainment within festival experiences, 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.
Although there is an ample amount of studies concerning festival experiences, as well as the use of edutainment within tourism, few have explored the use of edutainment within festival experiences. This oversight has created a lack in knowledge and understanding, despite the clear benefits of enjoyable learning experiences - edutainment. Moreover, it has created a gap between academia and practice, as the contributing authors have demonstrated, festivals are utilising edutainment to enhance their audience experience, yet scholars have failed to acknowledge this. In response to this oversight, the editors have assembled a carefully curated collection of chapters that include a wide range of international case studies, from science and food festivals to heritage and dark festivals. Through a variety of methodologies and methods, including interviews, observations, databases, netnography, and social media analysis in both face-to-face and digital interactions involving the festival participants, organisers, and other relevant stakeholders, the contributing authors have provided a well-rounded global perspective on how edutainment is applied within festival experiences.
This book is valuable for scholars, festival organisers, policy makers and students interested in or studying festivals, events, edutainment and/or experience design. Other tourism industry scholars, professionals and students of, for example, visitor attractions, museums, theatre and hospitality services, may also find this book of value considering their established use of edutainment within their sectors.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Planning edutainment
1. Introduction
Brianna Wyatt and Giulia Rossetti
2. Science Non-Friction: Balancing operational and legacy agendas for a university based science festival
Kathryn Jones, Cherry Canovan and Paul Fallon
3. Witch City’s ‘Haunted Happenings’: Managing authenticity and edutainment in Salem, Massachusetts
Hannah Stewart, Louise Todd and Jane Ali-Knight
4. Edutainment in Disney’s EPCOT International Festival Cycle
Carissa Baker
5. SouthWestFest: Edutainment through the lens of a cultural community festival, and its delivery partners
Joanna Goodey
Part 2: Audience engagement
6. Music festivals, edutainment, and audience engagement in a digital world
Xiao Lu
7. Science in society: exploring science festivals and valuable leisure
Elspeth A. Frew and Amaia Makua
8. Maintaining festivals’ "sense of community" through educational activities for locals and festival tourists during the Covid-19 crisis in Greece
Sofoklis Skoultsos and Nicholas Karachalis
Part 3: Sustainability and EDI
9. The Winterage Festival in a Learning Landscape
Angela Wright
10. Managing inclusivity and diversity with edutainment for festivals
Cemile Ece, Efnan Ezenel and Elif Şenel
11. Edutainment actions in a Mexican film festival - Cinema Planeta, the first film festival in Morelos, Mexico
Driselda-Patricia Sánchez-Aguirre
Part 4: Experiencing edutainment
12. Edutainment through Storytelling, Nostalgia and Living History in 1940s Festivals and Events
Zoe Leonard and Julie Whitfield
13. Playing with your food: fun, frolics and learning at food festivals
Ingrid Kajzer Mitchell, Christine van Winkle and Will Low
14. Learning (with) Negative Emotions: The Future of Science Festivals
Adalberto Fernandes
15. Afterword: The future of edutainment in festival experiences
Brianna Wyatt and Giulia Rossetti
