Socio-spatial authenticity at co-created music festivals

Szmigin, Isabelle; Bengry-Howell, Andrew; Morey, Yvette; Griffin, Christine; Riley, Sarah

Abstract

© 2016 The Authors From the early days of hippie counter-culture, music festivals have been an important part of the British summer. Today they are commercialised offerings without the counter-cultural discourse of earlier times. Drawing on participant observation, interviews and focus groups conducted at a rock festival and a smaller boutique festival, the paper examines how their design, organisation and management are co-created with participants to produce authentic experiences. The paper contributes to research on authenticity in tourism by examining how authenticity emerges and is experienced in such co-created commercial settings. It presents the importance that the socio-spatial plays in authenticity experiences and how socio-spatial experience and engagement can also be recognised as a form of aura.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 18, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Jan 7, 2017
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Apr 21, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 21, 2017
• Journal: Annals of Tourism Research
• Print ISSN: 0160-7383
• Publisher: Elsevier Masson
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 63
• Pages: 1-11
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2016.12.007
• Keywords: authenticity, music festivals, co-creation, socio-spatial, aura
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/897855
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2016.12.007
• Contract Date: Apr 21, 2017