Community, Social Capital and Festivals. A Pandemic Perspective

Abstract

This paper focuses on the complex relationships among social capital, community development and festivals. The Covid-19 pandemic put a lot of pressure on festivals, forcing an entire industry to adapt and recreate itself. In the restricted sanitary context, the pandemic festivals redefine the sense of events, of community and of social interactions. The empirical data, comprising in-depth interviews with the organisers of the first festival in Romania after lockdown, have revealed the prioritisation of social benefits and the growing connection between festival and community. This study therefore suggests that festivals could be involved more deeply in the community by assuming social charitable causes. Festivals create their own communities of fans but also shape the local communities where they take place.