The Female Alternative Experience in Music Festivals: Transformation as Ongoing Becoming

Abstract

While festival experiences are often recurrent, the process of personal transformation through repeated participation remains underexplored. Drawing on a feminist becoming perspective and narrative analysis, this study examines how female participants construct transformative meanings through repeated participation in a music festival. It identifies three interconnected approaches used by participants—anchoring, recasting, and limiting—through which they make sense of their experiences over time. The interplay of these approaches constitutes a recursive and dialectical process of transformation rather than a linear or cumulative trajectory. Building on these findings, the study proposes a Constant Becoming Mode of Transformation, redefining transformation as an ongoing, open, and situated process rather than a completed state. Practically, the findings suggest that festival organizers and policymakers should move beyond one-off, peak-oriented experiences and support reflective repetition and multiple engagements to foster more inclusive and socially sustainable transformative experiences.