Alba Colombo

• PhD
• Associate professor at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Popular festivities and traditional events are important moments in which symbolic content, deep emotions and community solidarity are developed. However, there has been little research on the relationship between such events and their social networks and the power relations within these networks. This paper explores the ability of community events...

Purpose There are two main aims of this conceptual paper. The first is to explore the issues associated with staging events in public spaces, and to produce a typology of different event spaces. The second is to explore if and how events should be designed into parks, streets and squares and whether this might reduce some of the negative impacts an...

Festivals and events are important to cities, residents, cultural workers, and visitors, growing over time to have an inseparable relationship with the places that host them. In this article, we are concerned with the way outdoor urban public spaces in two self-identified Festival Cities are used to host festivals and events, including the tensions...

In recent years, cultural events have proliferated in many European cities, incorporating not only local celebrations, but also cultural industry festivals and celebrations from diverse parts of the world. The use of spaces by these cultural events generates tension especially when different celebrations share the same locations. This chapter focus...

L’objecte d’aquest document és recollir el treball dut a terme sobre l’anàlisi textual dels pregons de les festes de la Mercè des del 1975 fins al 2020. Aquest estudi té la finalitat d’observar els recorreguts discursius que es troben en els textos dels pregons que s’han fet al llarg de tots aquests anys. S’hi volen identificar, doncs, tant els con...

Music festivals are meant to create a unique experience for those who attend them, and this occurs through multiple phenomena. Among these phenomena are various cultural identification processes, which may be directly connected to festivalgoers’ emotions. In this scope, the main aim of this research is to understand how music festivals trigger, sha...

Music festivals are meant to create a unique experience for those who attend them, and this occurs through multiple phenomena. Among these phenomena are various cultural identification processes, which may be directly connected to festivalgoers’ emotions. In this scope, the main aim of this research is to understand how music festivals trigger, sha...

While discrepancies exist with regard to what ‘sustainability’ means in the fields of tourism planning and event management, there is consensus that the social sustainability of events is important for managing potential impacts on the local communities of the event destinations. Drawing from a music festival context, this chapter focuses on two di...

Previous studies of linguistic mudes in minority language contexts, this is, biographical junctures where speakers enact changes in their linguistic repertoire, have contributed to our understanding of how linguistic codes are appropriated across the lifespan using a largely temporal frame of reference. However, our research in Catalan contexts als...

Music festivals have become an important element of cultural and touristic programmes in Western cities. These events have several intangible impacts, including sociocultural and emotional effects, which could be related to personal identity and subjective well-being. Following this perspective, we establish two research aims: firstly, to propose a...

This special issue of Event Management, on ‘Events as platforms, networks and communities’ presents a selection of papers from the Association for Tourism and Leisure Research and Education (ATLAS) conference in Copenhagen in 2018. We are aware that networks in particular are a frequent subject of events research (e.g., Getz, Andersson & Larson, 20...

This paper investigates if and how cities conceive of festivals staged in outdoor public space as a means of achieving cultural inclusion policy objectives. The inclusion of culture in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) creates an imperative for cities to scrutinize their approaches to making their cities inclusive. Festivals offer potenti...

This article explores the relation between motivation and experience in attendees at different types of events. There has been relatively little research into the experience dimensions of event attendees, or to what extent different motivations affect the experience, even in the events literature, motivation has been a central topic. Both academia...

This chapter presents a case study focused on the network value generated by a specific globalised event. We analyse the value generated by Sónar, the Barcelona International Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art, identifying how the event generates different forms of value in a local and global context. The network effects of events are im...

As the economy becomes more globalised a growing number of events are exerting an influence on activity and innovation globally in different fields. We argue that ‘eventful cities’ can therefore act as important catalysts for eventfulness in other places as well. This paper analyses the case of the Sónar electronic music festival, an event that ori...

As the economy becomes more globalized, a growing number of events are exerting an influence on activity and innovation globally in different fields. Therefore, we argue that "eventful cities" can act as important catalysts for eventfulness in other places as well. This article analyzes the case of the Sónar electronic music festival, an event that...

In recent decades, cities have used events as tools to address concrete challenges, such as urban regeneration, social cohesion, and economic growth. An eventful city generates programs of events to support long-term policy agendas, and increase "eventfulness." However, little attention has been paid to how variables such as event size, type, polit...

The Value of Events fills an important niche in the literature on events, being the first book to comprehensively deal with the subject of value creation and measurement, as opposed to impact assessment and programme evaluation. Value creation and measurement is often done routinely from specific perspectives such as tourism, event management, corp...

The increasing number of events has generated a growing research interest in assessing impacts of the events. So far, most empirical studies have analysed economic impacts, whereas social, political or cultural impacts have been taken into consideration only to a limited extent. The aim of this paper is to propose a conceptual and methodological mo...

Events have become an important channel for the exchange of cultural symbols at global level, with sporting events such as the Olympic Games, cultural events such as the European Capital of Culture and business forums such as the Cannes Film Festival helping to generate and circulate symbolic value. In doing so, many of these events help to configu...

Throughout their programme, cultural institutions express their outlines and their vision of culture, selecting what it is considered essential and adequate for their audience. On this situation could be considered that the programme is part of the mission and definition of these institutions and should be reported as such as singular element. No...

This article describes an educational innovation project called SIMULACRE, funded by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC) through a grant awarded under APLICA 2011. This project focuses on the design, development, implementation and evaluation of a ne...

Varias disciplinas se han centrado en el análisis de los efectos de actos concretos, aunque cada una de ellas se haya aproximado al objeto de análisis en función de sus intereses y sus objetivos. Al observar este tipo de estudios, y sobre todo el que hace referencia a los impactos que la cultura genera para el desarrollo, es importante reflexionar...

Given the growing of social and cultural exchanges, provoked by migration, social movements and global economic instability, arts and culture programs shall be strategic and important element solving problems identified as collectives. Cultural events presenting different traditional arts experiences may be strategic elements for a new leisure in...

Given the growing of social and cultural exchanges, provoked by migration, social movements and global economic instability, arts and culture programs shall be strategic and important element solving problems identified as collectives. The public expressions of traditional arts may be a strategic aspect observing rather there is a effect provoked...

As was explained in the historical report, the Sónar Festival reached its current size and appearance around 2003 and over the past few years the event has remained relatively stable in terms of venues, artistic proposals, symbolic strategies and audience attendance. In these respects, the 2009 edition does not present significant changes in progra...

En la era de la información y la comunicación el consumo de productos cul-turales y la conducta del mercado cambian constantemente regidos por leyes digitales. El consumo pasa a ser privado, invirtiendo así la secuencia entre el espectáculo vivo y la industria cultural, es decir, primero se consume el produc-to cultural de forma individualizada par...

Uno de los ejes principales del marketing es el de creer que el éxito de un producto tiene que satisfacer alguna necesidad o deseo del mercado, de manera que para poder satisfacer esta necesidad o deseo hay que conocer el mercado. El desarrollo y la creación de públicos está estrechamente relacionado a este concepto, ya que para poder desarrollar e...

Having examined the conceptualisation of economic impact studies as well as the underlying methodological aspects, this paper analyses the following three economic impact studies of arts festivals: European Capital of Culture Salamanca 2002 (Spain), XI Festival de Flamenco de Jerez (Spain), and Glastonbury Music Festival (UK). The analysed data are...

Culture is playing an increasingly important role in the economic development of industrialised countries. Thus, the management of large cultural events and the relationship between cultural management and cultural policies will be key elements in the development of the so-called cultural economy. This article looks at the concept of cultural econo...

La cultura desempeña cada vez un papel más importante en el desarrollo económico de los países industrializados. En consecuencia, la gestión de grandes acontecimientos culturales y, así mismo, la relación entre gestión cultural y políticas culturales serán elementos clave en el desarrollo de la llamada economía de la cultura. Este artículo efectúa...

La cultura té cada vegada un paper més important en el desenvolupament econòmic dels països industrialitzats. Per això, la gestió de grans esdeveniments culturals i també la relació entre gestió cultural i polítiques culturals seran elements clau en el desenvolupament de l'anomenada economia de la cultura. Aquest article fa una aproximació al terme...