...a festival is...

Thanks to Taunya first of all, for starting this up.
Nuit Blanche promises to be a festival to end all festivals.

So far the Word On the Street festival was a success, and has started the ball rolling in terms of ideas, methodology and materials to study.

In keeping with the last experience, I will get some comments from spectators, participants and organizers. Also, I will keep an eye out for entrepreneurial details, as well as how the artistic converges with the economic. Last, I will try to collect some materials, though I imagine there will be considerably less than at WOTS, but we shall see.

Two comparisons of note: what is the Canadian and Torontonian content compared with WOTS, and what is the flow of the space like for us spectators?

Happy festivalling!

Questions in Progress

Just to get the ball rolling, here are a few questions to consider that might be useful to the project (resulting from our meetings, so far):
- what are the (TO's) cultural policies (past/present) around festivals, and cultivating the 'creative city'?
- are festivals a sign of (high) culture transgressing borders? how do festivals function within the tensions of entertainment/distraction; local/international; authenticity/commercial; representation/construction
- festivals for whom? who speaks? how do communities (self)represent? how is Toronto represented/constructed?
- what do we expect from a festival? (tracing histories of festival as a concept, individual festivals)
- what ground rules are set in place at festivals?
- how is festival space configured and to what effect?
- who writes a festival's schedule? who organizes and gives (linguistic) designations?
- what is the role of the artist/producer?
- who is the audience? how does the festival cater to the flaneur? to the family? to the citizen? (multigenerational; multicultural; etc.)