Browsing by Person "Platt, Louise"

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Creative Research Methods for Critical Event Studies
(Routledge, 2024-12-06) Platt, Louise; Finkel, Rebecca; Sharp, Briony
Events, in their multitude of forms, are generally understood to be creative endeavours (Silvers, 2012). From design through to implementation of spectacle, they draw on creative skills to deliver experiences that entertain and inspire the audience. Thus, it can be argued that creativity in events requires creativity in researching events. It is from this basis that we, as phenomenological researchers of experiential environments, inquire, are we actually employing similarly creative approaches to research events? In her comprehensive assessment of creative methods, Kara (2020) comments that creativity in research can help us address societal questions that traditional methods cannot, but they are no less robust. Thus far, within event and festival studies, we are yet to see a comprehensive assessment of the use of creative methods. This book will fill that gap whilst complementing work on research methods for critical event studies (Lamond and Platt, 2016). Creative research methods are not simply confined to arts-based methods, nor are they always qualitative in approach. Creativity is also not just about data collection or dissemination. Like all good research that is robust and well designed, creativity must emerge from research questions and contexts of the work. Creativity is not a bolt-on or an afterthought. Creativity can be both methodology and method. In this regard, using creative research methods emerges from the onto-epistemological foundations of the research. Traditional research methods have potential to constrain researchers from understanding complex social issues around events and festivals. They also can marginalise some participants from having a voice in research. It is our contention that employing creative methodologies/methods in how we study events and festivals can facilitate more inclusive approaches to research that do not favour dominant hegemonic narratives and provide diverse perspectives. It is through richer findings that critical event studies can advance as a subject field. For this edited collection, we will present work from across disciplines and methodologies. It will cover what falls/emerges between the cracks, including new pathways or lessons learned from researching during the pandemic and other challenging landscapes. Each chapter will examine creative methodology and/or methods in the event and festival context using case study example(s), or address issues associated with using creative research methods (e.g., ethics). Each chapter will provide a simple ‘how to’ set of guidelines to help researchers to consider employing creative methods in their own work, or a series of ‘think points’ to develop ethical practices. In particular, this will be useful for students studying events and festivals at undergraduate and postgraduate level and provide them with empirical as well as conceptual guidance.
Creative Research Methods for Critical Event Studies [Edited book]
(Routledge, 2024-12-13) Platt, Louise; Finkel, Rebecca; Sharp, Briony; Platt, Louise; Finkel, Rebecca; Sharp, Briony
This timely and innovative book offers an introduction to a range of creative methods, providing both empirical and conceptual guidance. Based upon existing empirical work and richly illustrated throughout, each chapter carefully examines creative methodology and/or methods within an event and festival context. International case studies are incorporated throughout, providing real-world examples of how these methods have been used in practice, as well as highlighting potential ethical issues. Each chapter includes a concise ‘how to’ set of guidelines to help researchers and students employ creative methods in their own work, as well as a series of ‘think points’ to help develop ethical practices. Chapters illustrate new pathways or lessons learned from research during the pandemic and other challenging landscapes. This significant volume offers festival and event researchers and students a different approach to their work that could result in better research, reaching hidden and marginalised groups.
Creative Research Methods for Critical Event Studies: Introduction
(Routledge, 2024-12-13) Platt, Louise; Finkel, Rebecca; Sharp, Briony
This chapter provides a broad overview of creative methods and their application in the social sciences before examining the value for events and festivals research. It will provide a summary of the book’s contents to follow.
Cultural festivals and the city
(Wiley, 2020-03-23) Finkel, Rebecca; Platt, Louise
Cities have always been hubs for celebration and festivity, bringing people together to escape temporarily from the mundane nature of everyday routines. Festivals have often been bridges between people and places, linking personal geography with collective experiences and therefore increasingly of interest to cultural geographers. However, festivals also have social, economic and political aspects that are constructed by societal influences of the time and place. This article presents some of the key debates ongoing in academic literature across disciplines to demonstrate the contested role that cultural festivals play in urban settings and suggests that urban geography is critical to developing these debates. It is simply no longer possible to say that festivity is a simple rupture in the mundanity of everyday life of urban citizens; rather, contemporary cultural festivals now often exhibit complex and uneasy tensions between the socio‐economic strategies of commercialized neoliberal cities and the cultural needs of diverse communities to gather and celebrate. By reviewing the development of festivals as part of the urban cultural economy utilising a geographic lens, this article sets out how cultural festivals are now more often employed by cities for marketing, tourism and other socio‐economic benefits. We demonstrate that cultural festivals and cities have an ongoing relationship, which is now mainly commercialized and politicized, and this has diverse impacts on communities, urban spaces and cultural identities.
Editorial
(Informa UK Limited, 2018-03-07) Platt, Louise; Finkel, Rebecca
This special issue is not intended to be a stand-alone, one time only, acknowledgement of the issues of equality and diversity in the planned events sector. Indeed, we might argue to rename this a 'call to arms' rather than just a 'special issue'. Events management education is often driven by the needs of industry, and we contend that this can hamstring the research that is often supported by our departments. Although bridging the principles and practices of events management is mainly considered the goal of research into planned events, we argue that this sells the subject short. Along with simply responding to industry trends and developments, we argue there is a need to further develop robust empirical research and debate which is underpinned by engagement with critical theory. Long-lasting and meaningful impact and positive change do not happen without this. Structural inequalities need more than tokenism or short-term interventions, as these can do more to disguise a problem that erases it all together (Ahmed, 2012 and also Fletcher and Hylton, 2017).
Gendered Violence at International Festivals: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
(Routledge, 2020-04-28) Platt, Louise; Finkel, Rebecca; Platt, Louise; Finkel, Rebecca
Gendered Violence at International Festivals is a ground-breaking collection that focuses on this highly important social issue for the first time. Including a diverse range of interdisciplinary studies on the issue, the book contests the widely-held notion that festivals are temporal spaces free from structural sexism, inequalities, or gender power dynamics. Rather, they are spaces where these concerns are enhanced and enacted more freely, and where the experiential environment is used as an excuse or as an opportunity to victim-blame and shame. As an emerging and under-researched area, the chapters not only present original work in terms of topics, but also in theoretical and methodological approaches. All of the chapters are cross- or interdisciplinary, drawing on gender, sexualities, cultural and ethnicity studies. Studies from a range of highly regarded academics based around the world examine the subject by looking at examples from a wide range of destinations including; Spain, Argentina, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Australia, Canada and the UK. This significant book progresses understanding and debates about gendered festival experiences and emphasises the symbolic and physical violence often associated with them. This will be of great interest to, undergraduate and postgraduate students and academics in the field of Events Studies. It will also be of use to practitioners or non-for-profit workers in the festival industries, including festival management organisations and planning committees.
Gendered violence at international festivals: An interdisciplinary perspective
(Routledge, 2020-03-24) Platt, Louise; Finkel, Rebecca; Platt, Louise; Finkel, Rebecca
This introductory chapter argues that liminality as conceived by van Gennep (1960) and, subsequently, Turner (1969, 1979, 1982) within the festival literature has been under-theorised and, as a result, has limited event scholars’ abilities to be critical of festival spaces, especially when it comes to gendered power dynamics and structural inequalities. There is an assumption that power is dispersed or even absent under ‘communitas’. However, we argue there is often a neglect to understand how hegemonic cultural structures and social controls still govern these experiential settings. We also argue that festivals are too quickly seen as spaces of rupture when they are more likely to reinforce the status quo. This chapter frames the discussion around the increase in reported sexual assaults and gendered violence at festivals to argue that a persistence to characterise them as uncomplicated, value-free, utopic liminial/liminoid is highly problematic. It then presents the interdisciplinary chapters in this volume focusing on gendered violence at international festivals, and concludes with a ‘call to arms’ to change contemporary praxis in festival environs.
Participatory Research: Case study of a community event
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016-06-11) Finkel, Rebecca; Sang, Katherine; Lamond, Ian R.; Platt, Louise
This chapter explores participatory research from a post-structuralist philosophical perspective. Rooted in the anthropological tradition (see Geertz 1975), participatory research involves the researcher immersing himself or herself into the culture of the group being studied. Put simply, it is utilised as a methodological approach when the researcher wants to discover what people do and why they do it from their own perspective. Further, participatory research views research participants as experts in the field of study and, as such, should co-design research projects from inception through to completion (Gyi et al., 2013). This can be applied to events studies by examining the culture of the event through observation, participation and other sensory and visual techniques. The 'group' and 'culture' being examined are the events audiences and environment. Although temporary in nature, anthropological and sociological frameworks can still apply. This has been successfully done in multiple events studies through the years (see Finkel 2006; Holloway et al. 2010; Goldblatt 2013) and can be considered a viable and useful methodological approach for events researchers and students to employ for impactful and relevant research; therefore, readers of this volume would benefit from its analysis. The case study presented will be based on ethnographic research conducted at the Balerno Farmers' Market (located in Edinburgh, Scotland), which is based on observations of the market, collection of visual data including photos of both stalls and visitors' experiences, and the researchers' personal observations. The authors believe this is an apt and accessible example for demonstrating this kind of methodology, as it is a community event which highlights the societal, economic as well as cultural dimensions and discourses of events studies. It also democratises the research process; research is done with participants, rather than 'on' a community. References Finkel, R. 2006. Unicycling at Land's End: Case Study of the Lafrowda Festival of St Just, Cornwall. In J. Ali-Knight and D. Chambers (eds.) Case studies in festival and event marketing and cultural tourism. Leisure Studies Association Journal, 2 (92), 129-145. Geertz, S. 1975. The interpretation of cultures. London: Hutchinson and Co. Goldblatt, J. 2013. Events and Management. In Finkel, R., McGillivray, D., McPherson, G., Robinson, P. (eds.) Research Themes for Events. Oxford: CABI. Gyi, D., Sang, K., and Haslam, C. 2013. Participatory ergonomics: co-developing interventions to reduce the risk of musculoskeletal symptoms in business drivers.Ergonomics,56 (1), 45-58. Holloway, I., Brown, L., Shipway, R. 2010. Meaning not measurement: Using ethnography to bring a deeper understanding to the participant experience of festivals and events. International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 1 (1), 74-85.