Civil Sphere Values and Moral Responsibility in Cultural Production: The Curation of Music Festivals Today

Abstract

Music festivals are a ubiquitous aspect of music economies and wider processes of cultural participation and community regeneration. They are now sites for exploring wider issues related to the environment, inequality, diversity and representation. Whereas contemporary literature productively draws on and reworks classical categories such as ritual, excess, and carnivalesque to frame the significance and meaning of music festivals, it has yet to coherently address how civil sphere values such as democracy, solidarity and justice are incorporated into their design and curation. In this article, focusing on the curatorial strategies of festival organisers, we examine the narratives and practices through which music festivals frame wider social issues as part of the event’s ethos. Drawing on interview data with festival organisers located in Britain and Denmark, our analysis indicates how moral and civil values are internalised as an important discourse of festival curation and the practical management of music festivals. A fundamental requirement is that curators produce events that are both economically and culturally sustainable as well as resonating with important social and cultural issues. The major analytical contribution of this article is to identify and address this central tension faced by music festivals around balancing cultural, economic and civil values within their events. Applying the conceptual resources of civil sphere theory, we point to an alternative way of thinking about what constitutes the music festival today.

Introduction

Music festivals are often taken as exemplars explicating foundational cultural sociological categories. The ideas of canonical authors such as Durkheim, Bataille, Bakhtin and Turner have informed the way cultural sociologists think with categories of ritual, excess, carnivalesque, sacrifice and liminality. These archetypal frameworks and concepts are instructive and have been heavily relied upon in contemporary literature to capture the meaning and value of festivals. For example, research has pointed to a variety of social functions and meanings of music festivals around debates related to leisure, commodification and lifestyle, in addition to themes of community, migration and social inclusion (Anderton, 2019; Bennett, 2020; Bennett et al., 2014; McKay, 2015; Rapošová, 2019). Festivals are also acknowledged as sites of precarity, risk, and as central to shifting techno-cultural configurations and cultural ecosystems (Browne et al., 2019; Fileborn et al., 2020; Ritts and Bakker, 2019; Woodward et al., 2023). However, thus far, questions of civil society and moral responsibility are less prominent. In this article, focusing on the curatorial strategies of festival organisers, we examine the narratives and practices through which music festivals now prioritise and frame wider social issues and emphasise the civil dimensions of their events.

Our research employed a qualitative approach to study the curation of music festivals based on semi-structured interviews with festival organisers in Britain and Denmark. The festival sample includes Boomtown Fair, Bristol International Jazz and Blues Festival and Love Saves the Day in the United Kingdom and Distortion, Heartland, and Tønder Festival in Denmark. The sample of organisers we interviewed are the key figures responsible for planning, curating and managing the music festivals studied in each context. They could be identified by the general role of ‘cultural intermediaries’ (Smith Maguire and Matthews, 2014), but in our conceptualisation they are seen as civil sphere actors operating within the domain of arts and culture. Our findings demonstrate that festival organisers incorporate and translate civil spheres values such as justice, democracy and solidarity (Alexander, 2006) into their events as part of their curatorial practice. Moreover, the incorporation of these civil sphere values is undertaken within an industry context in which there is pressure to maintain financial prudence and economic viability. To develop this argument about the moral and civil oriented nature of music festivals, we draw on Alexander’s (2006) concept of the civil sphere, studies of festivals as civil society events (Citroni, 2020) and cultural activism (Rapošová, 2019).

Music Festivals: From Festivalisation to Civil Sphere Action

Festivals are centrally defined as being a ‘space out of time’ (Falassi, 1987). They are understood as intense periods of ritualised and celebratory sociality in which participants engage in cultural activities separate from routine or everyday life (Anderton, 2019; Bennett, 2020; McKay, 2015). They are conceived as a condensation of ‘the social’ – a ritual form par excellence. For this reason, the festival is a canonical phenomenon in social and cultural theory (Bakhtin, 1984 [1968]; Durkheim, 1995 [1912]; Turner, 1982) and a touchstone for the sociological and anthropological imagination (Collins, 2004; Maffesoli, 1995; Smith and Stoll, 2021). In other literatures, the cultural and economic aspects of festivals are observed. Being organised cultural events, festivals constitute a space where culture is not only ‘consumed’, but classified, commodified, curated, and hierarchically organised (see Crossley and Bottero, 2015; Holt, 2020; Johnson, 2017; Lena, 2012). Such representations have been characterised through the concept of ‘festivalisation of culture’ (Bennett et al., 2014). In the work of Giorgi et al. (2011), this is understood as the turn toward ‘post-traditional’ festivals, signalling the role of festivals as sites for the mediation of social values and issues. Giorgi et al. (2011: 2) note that the ‘explosion’ of festivals in Europe and beyond can in part be explained as a response to migration and cultural globalisation. On the basis of their large-scale study, they state that ‘some festivals are explicitly defined as sites for contestation and democratic debate; almost all carry political messages one way or another’ (Giorgi et al., 2011: 2). Contemporary festivals, they suggest, are public spaces where collective identities are represented and negotiated, often through music performance and audience participation. As McGuigan (2005) has argued, they are one notable component of the cultural public sphere, a social space for the ‘articulation of politics, public and personal, as a contested terrain through affective (aesthetic and emotional) modes of communication’ (2005: 435). Working from this framing, we examine the curatorial practices of festival organisers, understood as civil society actors, and their efforts to imbue events with moral and social values to address wider issues within the civil sphere.

Civil sphere theory emphasises social critique and solidarity forged through interaction, identification and the recognition of ‘others whom we do not know but whom we respect out of principle, not experience’ (Alexander, 2006: 4). Such an idea captures a tacit ongoing commitment to societal improvement despite, as Alexander observes, the pervasive cynicism, weariness and frustration publicly expressed in relation to failing, corrupt and under-resourced social institutions. The civil sphere is a discursive space for argument, interpretation and narration around pressing social and cultural issues. Moreover, Alexander emphasises that beyond merely discursive structures, effective civil sphere action requires a supportive and effective infrastructure of institutions, mediation and regulation. In line with Worden and Gjika (2023), we recognise the ‘art sphere’ as a significant institution which is framed as autonomous and defined by distinct sets of values such as aesthetic value and expressive freedom. We also stress, based on our fieldwork and data collection, how the arts and civil spheres are entangled or rather, how matters and issues in the civil sphere diffuse into the arts sphere. Drawing on Alexander’s (2006) conceptualisation, Worden and Gjika (2023: 3) state that, ‘the arts sphere is exposed to considerable pressure from the civil sphere, as its institutions have proven to be valuable fora for representing civil sphere values and the expansion of civil solidarity’. McGuigan’s (2005) conceptualisation of the cultural public sphere aligns closely with this idea of an aesthetic sphere and includes ‘channels and circuits’ of popular culture, mediated aesthetic experiences and various forms of entertainment.

Where does the music festival fit within this theoretical context? Citroni (2020) suggests that festivals are better understood as civil society events rather than music events per se, as cultural events like the festival are increasingly used by civil society actors for participatory and inclusive purposes and to impact on local social objectives. As described by Rapošová (2019), this capacity of festivals to represent socially marginal groups can sometimes be achieved through both spatial and discursive boundary-work designed to shift and blur categories of belonging and representation. In Lichterman and Eliasoph’s (2014) terms, this may be seen as a form of civic action capturing how citizens coordinate practical and discursive efforts to achieve a broad and inclusive ‘common-good’. Citroni (2020) further recognises that civil society events are critically framed in oppositional ways: first, as a significant expression of ‘civic and political action’ and ‘capable of questioning the post-political order’ or second, framed as initiatives that are symptomatic of the ‘depoliticisation of civil society’ and thus dismissed as mere spectacles that attempt to ‘enhance public life’ through acts of consumption, for example, ‘hog roasts’ (2020: 151). Adjacent theory of the public sphere similarly tends to frame the growing ubiquity of forms of cultural expression such as the festival as signifying a shift from a ‘critical and engaged “culture debating” to a passive “culture consuming” public sphere’ (Sassatelli, 2018: 193). For Citroni (2020), while recognising the contextual significance of these perspectives, his argument stresses the symbolic and wider importance of such events in expressing and championing a vision for societal improvement. Ultimately, and in line with Alexander’s (2006) acknowledgement of the tacit commitment to civil sphere reparation, Citroni’s analysis prioritises the possibilities of what civil society events can achieve even if there is some ambiguity in how they develop and occur. Whilst Citroni’s empirical focus was civil society cultural events rather than music festivals per se, our focus on music festivals also points to discussions of cultural activism (Rapošová, 2019). In this regard, music, art, and cultural practice have the potential to challenge and disrupt wider social meanings and boundaries (See also Acord and DeNora, 2008; Kobyshcha, 2018; Schall, 2019).

In the light of these critical discussions, the idealised music festival can first be seen as a space for expressing moral and civic values and an opportunity to reconstruct solidarities of the civil sphere. Thus, the design, organisation and curation of festival spaces embrace moral and civic dimensions. Not only are they sites for political and social debates (Anderton, 2019; Bennett et al., 2014; McKay, 2015), they are now emblematic spaces for addressing shared frustrations and concerns about numerous social and environmental problems, including issues of justice, representation and inclusion which are central to civil sphere values and processes. Practical examples include the regulation of waste and consumables (e.g. eco-toilets, reusable plastic, and meat-free sites), the integration of eco-transport and carbon reduction strategies, and making the ‘50/50’ pledge for a gender balanced artist line-up. As a consequence, festivals are now routinely sanctioning particular practices, principles, and possible futures. In curating their events, it is incumbent upon festival organisers to find the right balance between the promotion of a ‘carnivalesque experience’ alongside recognition of wider social problems that also manifest within the design and operation of festivals (Wadds et al., 2022: 5).

Second, the practices and principles of cultural curation are a crucial component of festival organisation and underpin a balancing act to manage competing demands. As Farnsworth (2020: 86) notes, ‘[r]ather than caring for a collection, the curator is a representative for many different interests, and must mediate between them in order to create the curatorial project that they want to achieve’. Atton (2014) has also drawn attention to curation as a diffuse practice within cultural production per se and emphasises elements of care and authority as central features which involve reflexive processes of addressing competing historical narratives – for instance, music genres, artist biographies, place histories – in the selection of cultural content. Music selection, its meaning and attributed value whether classified by artist, genre or place, can acquire a moral weight. Festival organisers are now bringing the concerns of the civil sphere into their events, for instance, in considering how compatible an artist or a genre is given the moral compass and ethos of the festival. In addition, the wider acknowledgement that there needs to be better incorporation of marginalised social groups into the civil sphere also translates into curatorial strategies to ensure there is gendered and ethnically diverse music headliners and line-ups included, as well as widening the social constituency of the festival workforce (Swartjes and Berkers, 2023). We further witness how specific crises (e.g. the global financial crisis in 2009, COVID-19, numerous earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires and floods) and global social justice issues (such as Black Lives Matter – BLM – protests, #MeToo movement) have heightened the visibility, sensitivity and tension around economic inequalities, climate disaster, racial and sexual violence, and the lack of diverse representation in the cultural and creative industries (Banks, 2020; O’Connor, 2020).

Festival organisers are akin to key civil sphere actors. In music festival contexts, as we discussed earlier, wider social issues are acknowledged within events and are also performatively addressed by organisers in their curatorial practices. In this way, festival organisers are ‘social actors whose identities and roles compel them’ (Alexander, 2018: 18) to adopt civil sphere values and translate them into the process of festival curation. Put differently, what is promoted within the music festival context is not empty spectacle and hedonistic excess alone, but ‘the invigorating experience of myth and value’ afforded by the collective experience of music and cultural consumption (Alexander, 2014: 20).

Research Approach and Methods

This article draws on qualitative interviews with festival organisers in Britain and Denmark. We interviewed people who had key management, programming and planning roles in the festival organisation. Some of these organisers were original founders (e.g. Love Saves the Day, Distortion) whereas others took on principal roles in relation to managing major domains of the festival, such as music programming, coordination of volunteers, or the design of festival atmospheres. We understand their roles to involve a range of organisational and management activities. We investigated how these organisers conceived, narrated and planned their music festivals. The interviews with them included discussions about the festival’s ethos, history, origins and development, aspects of planning and music selection within the contexts of festival programming, and relationships with stakeholders and wider communities. The goal of interview discussions was to capture discourses through which they narrated what they believed to be the festival’s meaning, value and ethos.

Thirty-four interviews were conducted with festival organisers including multiple, successive interviews with the same organisers (n = 34; 15 DK + 19 UK). These interviews were carried out between 2019 and 2021. While not directly informing the current article, other data collection components included a netnographic study of festival social media and digital practices, participant observations with festival audiences, and analyses of hybrid events. There were six music festivals included in the sample: Boomtown Fair (BTF), Bristol International Jazz and Blues Festival (BJB), Love Saves the Day (LSTD) in the UK and Distortion (DF), Heartland (HF), and Tønder Festival (TF) in Denmark. There are distinct local influences that shape festivals within the British and Danish contexts, such as local histories and music industry structures (Marshall, 2013). Our festival sample includes well-established events running for a minimum of 10 years, and in some cases up to 50 years. It captures key types and modes of contemporary festivals including boutique, greenfield festivals (Heartland and Boomtown Fair); urban and alternative festivals that emphasise dance, reggae/dub and underground music (Love Saves the Day, Boomtown, and Distortion); and traditional genre-based events (Tønder Festival and Bristol International Jazz and Blues Festival). In terms of cultural staging, there are some similarities between events, for instance Distortion is based on a radical co-optation of urban spaces into their festival fabric, while Boomtown is known for its theatrically immersive festival environment. While there are some differences relating to the music genres (folk, dance, blues and jazz), location and type (from urban areas and venue-based to rural, greenfield based), we identified consistent narratives and practices across the festival sample in relation to the expression of civil and moral values.

The interviews were transcribed and the data were thematically analysed with support from NVivo software. Analytical coding frameworks were initially created independently in both national contexts and common thematic categories identified and refined. These themes were further reviewed, interrogated, and integrated to establish the presence of moral discourses in the way in which festival histories, ethos and characteristics were narrated. The data we discuss here are identified by the festival’s name, but the organiser’s individual names have been anonymised to ensure confidentiality. In the remaining sections of the article, we discuss three interrelated analytic themes, which we argue constitute significant narrative frames through which the moral and civil importance of festivals are articulated.

Framing the Moral and Civil Dimensions of Festivals

The interview data with festival organisers show a complex picture including references to the mythical and idealised elements of festivals already discussed – freedom, excess and community – evidenced in extant studies cited earlier. Our analytical emphasis reveals several important threads regarding how moral and civil dimensions are interwoven into curation practices which also include aspects that are related to event management and logistics. We identify layers of talk, crossing multiple narratives of obligation where festival organisers balance competing, and complementary demands related to planning their events. We begin by addressing matters of planning and logistics that demonstrate how relatively mundane matters of festival management have civic and civil dimensions.

Curation and Everyday Festival Management

Festival curation, as noted earlier, involves having to negotiate with numerous stakeholders in order to manage a range of everyday practicalities. Practical strategies connected to festival production emerged as a planning concern from iconic festivals such as Woodstock, as they were considered large scale human and environmental catastrophes from an event safety and planning perspective. Pressure from multiple authorities forced subsequent festivals to account for the ways in which risk and danger could be managed and mitigated on-site. Such demands have continued apace in the ensuing decades. As Andy Bennett (2020: 222) points out, following the increase in global music and mega-events such as Live Aid in 1985, ‘[m]usic festivals became cleaner and safer spaces, where the objective was to manage the flow of humanity rather than to let it take charge of things’. The following extracts from the data exemplify various strands of the practical issues which our festival organisers spoke about in relation to their events. Notably, narration of these practical issues is often framed within concerns about wider social and cultural challenges.

One of our street festivals, Distortion, which has been running for 25 years in Copenhagen, has to manage the extraordinary situation of having up to 100,000 people attend their free parties within the city’s inner districts. Throughout its history, Distortion has become a rather controversial public event. On the one hand, it has been celebrated by TimeOut magazine who nominated Distortion Festival as one of the reasons that the district of Nørrebro was the ‘Worlds’ coolest neighbourhood’ in 2022. It has also been recognised by the city of Copenhagen as a feature of the city’s summer leisure calendar. Yet, many media stories have more recently reported concerns about health and safety, antisocial behaviours, and neighbourhood disruption to local residents and businesses. In this way, we see how other civil sphere actors (journalists, city councillors, and politicians) point to norm violations and public scandals evident in music festivals (the arts sphere). The Distortion team enter into multiple negotiations with Copenhagen Municipality and the city’s Police about such matters, constituting a significant part of the lead-up to the annual event. Although such measures reflect demands and expectations from public authorities, they are also considered by the festival organisers as matters of branding and long-term viability of the event given public backlash is detrimental to the festival’s future. A member of the Distortion team reflected on this tension, and the pressure it generates from residents who live in and around the staged events. He observes:

Growing concern from citizens and also the local authorities and municipality and all those people about the noise in the streets and also maybe some safety issues, and some of the music stages have become bigger and bigger, and they draw in a lot of people into a small space, and they play louder and louder and the music sound systems get bigger and bigger, and it’s like, ugh. And then suddenly people are like. . . ‘This is getting too much’. (DF-D)

Related concerns are noted by the organisers of LSTD in Bristol, another urban festival. While the data from Distortion highlight concern for the city residents, there is also the associated matter of managing and controlling the flow of the festival crowd in the interest of wider public safety and security. Here we see the logistical challenges of getting people in and out of festival spaces in busy neighbourhoods, as a festival organiser points out:

Keeping people off that road and getting people [to walk through the] underpass. That’s the most intense part of the egress. I mean. . . we’ve cracked it, it works, it’s just. . . yeah, it’s quite a lot of manpower and organisation. Getting the police involved as well. (W1 LSTD)

The concern for safety and welfare is not restricted to external regulations regarding the event but is also related to the perception of and concern for the festivalgoer’s well-being.

One common initiative is for festivals to offer support for a variety of mental health challenges that may arise for individuals at the event. The premise of this initiative is that the festival context may provoke a strong response with some people becoming overwhelmed by their sensory experiences. Boomtown Fair, a five-day greenfield festival set in an estate in southern England, provides support workers onsite and even refers to this provision as counselling, as the following remark shows:

Well, we do have a mental health response team who are roaming, and then if there is a mental health issue happening then they will get called out and they will go [. . .] which is separate to all of the other welfare elements that we have too, so a really robust kind of service for people on site to kind of help keep people safe as humanly possible, and provide them with counselling or awareness or education. (10 BTF)

The provision to respond to matters of noise, security, health, well-being, safety and so on are clearly important for fulfilling the festival’s responsibilities to diverse stakeholders and for running a successful event. However, also evident in their narratives are references to wider environmental issues. Boomtown Fair champions various infrastructural initiatives that address environmental challenges, for example around alternative forms of energy generation:

This year we are going to – we haven’t announced this yet – but we are going all bio-diesel on site . . . all generators, everything is going to be bio-diesel, so that is a huge reduction in terms of fossil fuel usage. (10 BTF)

Some of the social issues that festivals take on board also extend to leisure practices at their festivals such as drugs. Drugs are central to the mythos of some music festivals. However, even so, managing drug consumption in festivals has become a challenging task because of the wider public scrutiny of drug use and dealing onsite. Given this, the organisers outlined their considered attempts to shift practices and discourses around festival drug-taking, as the following quotation illustrates:

we have a real opportunity here to actually make a difference and to actually use our platform to shout quite loudly about things that matter. I think we are trying to. . . it is trying to have the conversation in an open, honest and grown-up adult way rather than. . . previously we always used to have to say. . . ‘there was a zero-tolerance: don’t take drugs, don’t bring drugs in, don’t take them. They are just not allowed in the festival, don’t do them’ [. . .] But if people want to take drugs and do drugs, they will find a way, and they have been for centuries [. . .] And nobody has won this war on drugs, so how can a festival do it? It is an impossible feat, but what we wanted to do was make sure that we just change the conversation essentially, and made it much more open and honest and supportive, educational. (10 BTF)

The foregoing discussion of data ostensibly relates to matters of practical management that festivals are obligated to attend to as part of their routine festival curatorial practices. Relatedly, the data also show how these practical matters are underpinned by moral and social concerns, for example in the case of mental health, alternative energy and drugs. It is the explicit cultural-moral register relating to aesthetic content that we turn to in the next section.

Curation and Music Choice

It has been acknowledged that curation is a useful concept to frame approaches to the production and consumption of culture (Atton, 2014; Obrist, 2008). In addition to the practical matters discussed earlier, we extend its use to think about the moral registers entangled with music and cultural rosters at festivals. In this sense, wider civil sphere concerns in the wake of #MeToo and BLM about sexism, misogyny, racism, and sexual and racialised violence, and the lack of diversity in the cultural industries per se, are translated into curatorial choices relating to the ethos and moral values of individual artists, and their music and personal biographies. The purpose of festival curation is therefore about more than identifying and selecting music that ‘works’ aesthetically and economically (see Johnson, 2017), it is also about managing the social and political implications of their curatorial practices and thus dealing with a wider set of stakeholder interests. A festival organiser involved in music selection at Boomtown emphasises the importance of their curatorial practices by saying that, ‘I like to think that we take a position as a cultural curator and quite seriously [. . .] I think we have a responsibility to be visible in doing that. Everybody does feel that’ (12 BTF). While not all organisers identified with the term curator – some Distortion organisers resisted it on the basis of their concerns for representing cultural independence and the values of an authentic underground – they nonetheless acknowledge that processes of music selection remain a critical part of their festival production. In our data analysis we focus on the traces of moral and civil values evident within music curation in several ways: genre-boundaries and authenticity, individual artist biographies, and the spaces and places of music.

Tønder Festival, a long-running folk and roots event held in the far south-west of Denmark, uses the phrase ‘ægte music’ referring to ‘genuine’ or ‘real’ artists that comprise their typical roster. The idea of ‘ægte music’ works as a branding tool, constituting an imagined boundary around particular styles and ways of playing music that may reflect their perceptions of authenticity. The principal booker for Tønder tells us that

a big deal of Tønder Festival is this handmade music, you know real music, I think a lot of our volunteers can see themselves in high quality music. . . because it has to be the real deal. . . Because I don’t want something that isn’t real. (TF-M)

These notions of authenticity and ‘realness’ extend across all festivals regardless of music genre. In the case of Distortion, according to the festival’s director, ‘the red line [bottom-line] is party’, however ‘within the spheres of electronic house and techno, we respect’ (DF-Th). In this case the festival director refers to the wider rules and norms of the house and techno genre, including the ‘party’ lifestyle elements associated with it. Additionally, as pointed out by a director of Boomtown, the ideal of authenticity is a currency that underpins the entire endeavour of their music festival curation:

So that’s a kind of like authenticity element of everything, is the fact that the people that book in the genres in the really specialised levels are people that live and breathe that scene, and that music, which is really exciting, because that’s always been something that we’ve really wanted, to make sure that we are just providing a platform for as many of these genres that are kind of more overlooked in your more mainstream festivals. (10 BTF)

Beyond the genre and event authenticity, we also note how organisers identify how the artists and acts who perform should reflect the festival’s values and ethos, as indicated by a professional from BJB who says, ‘I think it is an art [. . .] how you pull together a varied programme that reflects the ethos of the festival’ (13 BJB). Additionally, it is about the capacity of the programme to ‘inspire, energise and nourish’ (13 BJB). An aspect of this process involves a consideration of the artist’s public profile, in particular their cultural positions or attitudes, as evidenced in this comment by a musical director of BTF:

it’s about what that act means culturally, personally. You know, and then it’s their social responsibility. So, you know, not having artists that are homophobic, not having artists that. . . you know, that are overly misogynistic and things like that are very important. Yeah. (12 BTF)

Festival organisers are sensitive to the potentially damaging impact of bringing the ‘wrong’ artists to their festivals. Curation plays a role in establishing a festival’s musical authenticity as much as it does its cultural reputation and moral stance. In the case of Tønder Festival this is ‘because the festival is important for the area, and for folk music’, and ‘there’s a big pride in taking part in the Tønder festival and creating the Tønder festival. They carry the Tønder Festival logo with very big pride’ (TF-M).

Our data also show that the moral concerns of curation extend beyond the musical roster and into consideration of the spatio-material context of the festival. Music acquires meaning in spatial settings, so festival organisers go to great lengths to ensure the correct alignment between musical genre, event and place to enhance the appreciation of the music performance. However, in some cases the spatio-material context of the festival is connected to the music roster in a historically challenging way. For instance, a BJB festival organiser suggests that their blues and jazz-oriented music curation was a sufficient moral rebuke to wider public criticisms of the ‘problematically named venue’ (i.e. Colston Hall, which was named after the prominent slave-trader – Edward Colston) given its troubled association with the history of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. One festival organiser believed that because this music is rooted in African American musical traditions of the 20th century this sufficiently justified the use of the venue, diluting any wider tensions around racist and racialised local histories, concluding that ‘we are some of the good guys’ (13 BJB).

The data analysis we have just presented illustrates that at the heart of making a music festival today is a core set of principles that entangle music choices with values and ideals pertaining to the moral profiles of artists, genre histories and the semiotics of spaces. In part, such ideas draw upon established translocally formed notions of music genre and authenticity, but these must be negotiated in their particular festival spaces and local contexts. Curation acquires moral and civil qualities when festival narratives align with wider social concerns, for example around diversity, sustainability and progressive cultural ideals. In the next section we explore how such narratives relate to elements of their festival business.

Curation, Values and Business

Our argument is that beyond being a space for cultural expression, music festivals are curated events in which moral and civil expression is an important component of the event narrative and marketing. Evident in our data, a fundamental condition for such an emphasis is the mobilisation of reflexive practice around the meaning and purpose of the festival. Pointing beyond the liminal and hedonistic element of the festival, organisers acknowledge the need to be reflexive about the presentation and curation of their events. In the following quotation, in the context of the changing scale of their event, a Love Saves the Day festival organiser reflects on the necessity to scrutinise the impact of growth on all elements of curation and logistics.

As we’ve become more established, we’ve sort of realised that although it’s really great working with your friends. . .we’ve now got to a point where we’ve got this quite big event happening and there’s a responsibility for us as well to look at. . . we need to look at all of our processes and all the rest of it, so this is an attempt to kind of address that and to try and open up the opportunities. (3 LTSD)

This sentiment was evident in relation to questions of sustainability, a point on which some festivals might feel vulnerable to wider social critique. There was a sense in which the organisers in our sample believed independent festivals were better placed to address environmental impacts compared with what they see as the more tokenistic gestures of larger mainstream festival events. One of the Boomtown Fair organisers suggested that the festival industry was far more conscientious about environmental matters than often given credit for. To this end, she emphasises it is not about festivals doing ‘a tokenistic thing here and there’. Rather, she frames it by saying that ‘we don’t want to be seen as doing good, we want to actually be doing good’. In the next extract, she reflects on this sentiment:

It’s really heartening to be in an industry where they are taking it so seriously. If the supermarkets were taking it as seriously as festivals, then the world would already be in a very different place [. . .] there is no excuse, you have got to do everything you can, and actively be environmentally conscious. (10 BTF)

Demonstrating and narrating care for social and environmental concerns of the festival diffuses through all matters and registers of the organisation. As she suggests, the mobilisation of moral energy and purpose around ‘being and doing good’ is felt as a form of collective and inclusive empowerment:

And it kind of empowers everybody, and it means that everybody is kind of thinking about it, and, ‘Hang on, this isn't just relevant to certain departments, it is all of us’. And that helps embed it as a kind of personal responsibility for all of us that work here [. . .] but also how can. . . that then feed into the audience, and the crew, and the artists and everything like that? So it is quite an empowering opportunity really. (10 BTF)

This sense of moral energy and civil responsibility extends to how the festival operates and engages with the local community and once again she accentuates the difference between looking good (tokenistic) and being good (making real change): ‘in terms of our strategy in the local area to make sure that we are doing everything we possibly can to not just look good, but also be good, and to kind of make sure that we are paying back in as much as possible’ (10 BTF).

Demonstrating responsiveness to perceived community values and civil spirit is visible in other ways in which professionals frame their work tasks. For example, organisers recognise not just that their events may have a longer history which demands careful recognition, but that the historical and material conditions of the neighbourhoods and towns which the festival operates in requires very sensitive engagement. Festivals often choose locations for their events that are historically important or locally meaningful, hence organisers narrate and represent relevant facets of the location and feel a duty to uphold essential aspects of these social spaces. The Distortion festival in Copenhagen occurs around key areas of the inner-city which curators believe reflect essential aspects of the identity and spirit of the city.

I mean, Istedgade and Sønder Boulevard are parallels with each other, but [Istedgade] is the small street with a real working-class vibe [. . .] And this is the core or the famous streets, that represents the spirit of the civil . . . (DF-Th)

While the local community is also significant within the UK festival context, our data revealed a nuanced and intense expression of these ideals in the Danish context which extended beyond the local to a feeling of how the event expressed aspects of the national character. One organiser acknowledged that the festival does the important work of representing a particular vision of community and sociality premised on Danish or Nordic civil sphere values such as freedom, conviviality and respect (see Alexander et al., 2019). In this case, such ideals were discursively associated not only with diverse groups within Copenhagen, but more expansively suggested an idealised sense of nationhood:

Distortion [. . .] used to be a Copenhagen brand and a folkfest, like carnival, where the theme was Copenhagen diversity, use the streets’ architecture, children – where the centre of the thing is not music, where it’s like a real carnival. And the theme of this ‘carnival of all’ is Copenhagen and Danish people. (DF-Th)

The national imaginary is also expressed in the more generic sense of ‘folk’, where belonging with fellow citizens is valued and realised through the common activities of building and participating in the festival. One of the Tønder organisers experiences this sense of connection in his wider engagement with the festival.

Every summer is usually very, very busy [with a] combination of a lot of people and music and celebration and I don’t know how to translate but – at løfte i fællesfolk – you know, standing together for the higher cause, and then you see this explosion of volunteers, and my colleagues, and everything is really something. (TF-Mi)

Our data show how festival organisers narrate their activity and purpose in terms of their festival aligning with wider community values and even imagined aspects of national character or values; but at a more prosaic level, festivals negotiate this in the context of their financial position and market context. Here they must curate a festival event which not only aligns with the idea of a pure celebration, but also demonstrates concern for a prudent financial strategy whilst engaging with significant questions being raised in the civil sphere. Hence, there is common acknowledgement that festivals are not just live moments with an audience, but instead are whole-year enterprises as evidenced in this quotation from the Bristol Jazz and Blues festival: ‘what happens outside of these few days of the festival is something that we are thinking more and more about [. . .] the festival is for life, not just for those three days’ (13 BJB).

Independent music festivals are more likely to think of themselves as aligned with a set of culturally progressive ideals (McKay, 2015). Nonetheless, the longevity and survival of festivals require careful business practices to stay afloat financially. The ideal of the pure music festival and the prudent management of the festival economy are in fact two sides of the same coin. The director of Distortion festival makes this point when he contrasts his ideas as a ‘revolutionary’ as a left-wing view, with having to take care of festival business. For him, this position is nearly untenable as the latter priority (business) often compromises the former (values/ideals).

I am a revolutionary [. . .] It is two different worlds. It’s polarized. And I want to fight for the middle, but it is the community left-wing view and hardcore business. I don’t know. I don’t feel that many people can be on both sides. People just want one. (DF-Th)

We acknowledge that there might be a reluctance on the part of music festival organisers to accept the more business oriented or entrepreneurial labels which mirror the sentiments of others working in the music industry (Haynes and Marshall, 2018). After all, they curate an event which is expected to offer significant opportunities for experiencing freedom, magic and transcendence. However, as should be noted, festivalisation processes must be understood within the context of forms of neoliberalism that have ‘hegemonically insinuated’ themselves into the fabrics of everyday life (Kanai and Gill, 2020: 17). The result, as represented in the narratives of our organisers, is at times either an uncomfortable combination or a tricky balancing act in relation to moral, civil and business dimensions of festival curation.

Conclusion

Our analysis began by noting that festival curation involves having to attend to a diverse range of stakeholders. A fundamental requirement is that curators produce events that are both economically and culturally sustainable as well as resonating with important social and cultural issues. We have identified this as a process of incorporating civil sphere concerns into the artistic sphere of music festivals. The festival organiser’s narratives demonstrated that whilst their curatorial work centres around organising music and entertainment, in their programming they must also present a response to broader civil sphere discourses such as those relating to inclusion, justice and sustainability.

We addressed this central tension by exploring three aspects of how organisers narrated their work within the context of conceiving and planning their festivals. The first narrative thread emphasises the practical aspects of how music festivals are designed and managed. This comprised, for example, systems and strategies for managing festivalgoers, including dimensions of event safety and logistics, and aspects of personal and collective care. Here we note that a vast portion of the curatorial work of organisers is ‘not glamorous’, as one of our UK respondents expressed it (W1 LSTD). However, as our study has shown, attending to numerous practical matters is not bereft of any wider social and moral dimensions. For example, organisers care for and respect the neighbourhoods and locales in which they operate. Additionally, they take a progressive and proactive stance in relation to drug-taking and mental health concerns on site in the light of social and health crises identified beyond the festival. The data show that practical and moral measures are closely entwined within the conceptualisation and development of the contextual and ‘more-than-music’ aspects of music festivals.

The second narrative thread gives full expression to the moral and civil aspects of their event organisation. We noted that music selection may be perceived as a ‘glamorous' component of organisation, whereby sonic and artistic impact is prioritised, alongside financial sustainability (see Johnson, 2017). However, whilst an authentic and exciting music roster is crucial, equally important are the social and political implications of such choices. One element of this is to assemble an artistic roster that is perceived to speak to the cultural and social issues of the day. Another way to think about this is that this strategy is designed to ensure the festival does not attract attention for curating the ‘wrong’ lineup by choosing artists who have expressed values and norms which might be perceived as conflicting with the festival’s profile and the perceived values of the audience (Rapošová, 2019). We understand festival curation and design as a type of balancing act between civil and arts spheres, and suggest that both these dimensions need to be successfully addressed in order for music events to operate successfully within the music festival market.

The third narrative associated with festival curation, whether explicitly narrated or not, always involves economic considerations. Here we observe a potential tension whereby, in order to speak to and address civil sphere issues, festivals must translate broader issues like justice, equality and inclusion into their festival programming. At the same time, they must remain faithful to the template of an idealised festival which is a bedrock for the branding and marketing of their events (Bennett, 2020; Wadds et al., 2022). We identify careful curatorial practices as solving this dilemma – in theory. Curatorial practices include having to negotiate with a number of stakeholders and represent diverse and contradictory interests. As Farnsworth (2020: 86) notes there is a ‘thicket of stakeholders’ who need to be negotiated with whilst maintaining the ‘highest artistic qualities’ and receiving economic support from the public. In their account of civic action organisations such as those directly attending to social justice issues relating to migration, youth participation and gender equality, Lichterman and Eliasoph (2014) also observed a necessary navigation of interdependent spheres of market and moral action.

Our theorisation mobilised Alexander’s (2006) theory of the civil sphere, demonstrating how civil sphere values are incorporated into the planning of music festivals and constitute a bridge between artistic elements and civil sphere meanings and thus where civil sphere values have penetrated and become entangled with activities in the artistic sphere. Central to our argument, from the data we presented, is the identification of curatorial practices which we believe mediate artistic and moral spheres. In this sense, the music festival organisers we spoke to in our study, become civil sphere actors (Alexander, 2018) by which we mean they feel compelled to take action on wider pressing social and environmental issues. Based on our data analysis, we argue that moral discourses and civil sphere values are embedded throughout all aspects of event planning, curation and identity. We began this article by arguing that there has been reliance within the literature on classical categories and tropes of the festival – ritual, excess, carnivalesque and liminality. Using the conceptual resources of civil sphere theory, we point to an alternative way of thinking about what constitutes the music festival today.