Understanding Urban Cultural Festivals as Social Infrastructure

This paper is concerned with the role that urban cultural festivals play in enhancing the quality and vitality of social life. It acknowledges that their reputation has become tarnished in recent years and that festivals now frequently feature in debates because they are charged with inciting tensions, exclusions and contestations. However, of note here is that cities tend to narrowly conceive of festivals as temporarily bounded moments of commodifiable spectacle. The fact that festivals function, on an ongoing manner, as embedded, sustained practices capable of supporting urban social living in numerous ordinary ways is rarely acknowledged, much less prioritised. This paper tries to shift prevailing thinking by advocating an understanding of festivals as embedded socio-cultural practices. Specifically, it argues that festivals can be conceived as social infrastructure that comprise distinct but entirely inter-connected components: material/built forms, socio-cultural materialities and immaterialities constructed through year-round practices and, social spaces constructed and enhanced in the moment of their staging. As well as underscoring the societal importance of festivals, using infrastructure as a framing idea helps develop a better understanding of how festivals function to support the socio-cultural well-being, vitality and engagement of urban dwellers.