Literary festivals have a variety of functions. They celebrate excellence and diversity in writing, promote and distribute literary culture, and introduce readers to new writers and tourists to new towns. The rhetoric that surrounds literary festivals reflects this, emphasising their ability to showcase talented writers, support the local publishing industry, and encourage tourism through a programme of events designed to facilitate cultural engagement, participation, diversity, and community development.

This chapter explores the association between this representation of literary festivals and creative industries discourse . Creative industries and cultural policy perspectives have been chosen as the focus of this chapter for a number of reasons. They are used by government and festival practitioners as a means of creating official linkages between literary festivals and locations’ cultural identities, justifying support for literary festivals and simultaneously using those festivals to promote certain values and ideologies. The creative industries perspective draws together technological, economic, and cultural imperatives to create an economic rationale for policy and funding that encourages the support of cultural and social projects. This offers cultural practitioners a mechanism by which they can argue for the support of ‘the arts’ that is resonant with capitalist governance. The concepts associated with creative-industries-style promotion have been synthesised into the cultural policies employed by many contemporary Western governments. The comparative recency, however, of the articulation and introduction of creative industries discourse into these governments’ policymaking is such that it is important to acknowledge that this perspective is also still in the process of being explored and reformulated. This is true both in a practical context, when actually applied by governments, and in a theoretical context through the work of researchers and university departments.

In using the frame of creative industries discourse as a means of discussing the representation and promotion of literary festivals, I draw on idealist expressions of creative industries projects, such as Richard Florida’s (2002) influential assertions about the centrality of creativity to a successful contemporary economy. I also mobilise more critical perspectives that question the viability and universal application of these ideas, as well as their tendency to homogenise very different cultural, creative, and professional spaces in their representations of the value of creative practice to the economy. To what extent can practices as disparate as slam poetry and software engineering, both framed as ‘creative’ industries, really be considered cognate in their contributions to cultural, social, and economic development? Are economic rationales as central to the way people ‘value’ literary culture as promotional rhetoric might suggest? What other roles might literary culture play in contemporary society that elude traditional impact studies focusing on this kind of principally economic valuation of the arts, but that could be discovered using a more critical, relativistic, or qualitative approach?

In addition to these questions about the theoretical applicability of the creative industries rationale for supporting cultural engagement, this chapter explores ethical issues regarding the real-world application of the creative industries approach to urban development . Critics (Bennett and Silva 2006; Brouillette 2014; Hesmondhalgh 2008; Miller and Yúdice 2002; Neelands et al. 2006; O’Connor 2011; Pratt 2011; Stevenson et al. 2010b) have documented the reliance of creative -industries -focused urban development projects on creative-workers’ continued self-exploitation; these projects’ prioritisation of the needs of the young professional over those of other demographics which are not part of the creative elite; and their tendency to mask, rather than address, issues of marginalisation and social inequality. In exploring, then, the extent to which literary festivals promote and form part of the creative industries project, this chapter also investigates the extent to which literary festivals might be implicated in these problematic aspects of creative industries rationales for cultural development.

Mobilising these criticisms of creative industries projects, and using literary festivals based in Australia and the United Kingdom as examples, this chapter explores how books and literary culture are used to further economic and cultural projects in different national contexts. Finally, looking at the networks that connect these different metropolitan and regional literary festivals with one another—such as the UNESCO Cities of Literature network, the International Organisation of Book Towns , and the Word Alliance —this chapter suggests some of the ways in which it is possible to situate literary festivals within geographic, economic, and cultural interpretations of the ‘literary field’ (Bourdieu 2006).

Cultural Policy and the Literary Festival: Historical Context

Literary Events and Ideological Projects

Literary events and the public promotion of literary culture have always entailed a certain degree of ideological positioning. These events have been promoted, supported, and funded by governments for several centuries as promotional ventures for nationalist versions of cultural identification and as markers of cultural achievement and prestige. I trace this through a history of these events’ development.

Competitive Eisteddfodau celebrated Welsh literature alongside music and drama throughout the Middle Ages, and their revival in the late eighteenth century was part of a broader revival of Welsh cultural identity and patriotism.Footnote 1 Eisteddfodau spread through other parts of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries in the late nineteenth century; their popularity can be seen as part of the enlightening and civilising attitude towards culture propagated by prominent political and cultural figures (such as Matthew Arnold ) during the late nineteenth century.Footnote 2 Nationalist patriotism and nation-building projects also coordinated celebratory literary events elsewhere in Europe. For example, Italy’s day of unification, 17 March, was marked and celebrated in subsequent years by ‘a grand literary festival, in commemoration of the illustrious writers and thinkers of Italy’, as part of which local councils were required by royal decree to choose and celebrate a local writer (‘Literary Gossip’ 1865).

Australian literary events in the early twentieth century were similarly harnessed for celebratory and patriotic projects. In 1927, the Associated Booksellers of Australia and New Zealand organised an ‘Australasian Authors’ Week’, which comprised displays of Australian and New Zealand books in schools and libraries across the country, as well as a number of lectures on Australian writers (‘Australian Authors’ Week’ 1927; ‘Authors’ Week’ 1927a, b). The aim of this event was to encourage patriotic support for Australian writers and publishers and to urge the public not to overlook Australian writing for its international counterparts. One of the key precursors of the contemporary literary festival, the Australian Authors’ Week (1935), was an initiative organised by the Fellowship of Australian Writers , which aimed to develop a readership for Australian writing and featured talks, displays, essay competitions, and social events themed around Australian literature.

By contrast with the 1927 event, which was organised by the Associated Booksellers more as an extensive series of book fairs and promotional displays and talks, the 1935 event was strongly connected to the cultural and nationalist projects forwarded by the Fellowship of Australian Writers. Its mission was a mixture of nationalism and audience-building, the stated goal being ‘to encourage the development of our national literature, especially by bringing the work of our authors before the general public and schools’ (Fellowship of Australian Writers, quoted in Dever 1992: 101). Functioning simultaneously as a marketing exercise and a genuine attempt to promote a sense of cultural nationalism, the Australian Authors’ Week can be seen as a precursor of the contemporary literary festival. As a nation-building and audience-building project of interwar Australia, it has a clear connection to ideological imperatives of contemporary Australian society. These imperatives are clearly expressed by the then Governor-General, Sir Alexander Hore-Ruthven, in his opening speech:

In the development of a nation, literature played an important part […] A nation, through its literature, became self-conscious, realised itself, and found a soul. The achievements of its authors helped to establish it in civilisation, to give it a status, and to command the respect of other nations. (‘Authors Week Official Opening: Governor’s Speech’ 1935)

Hore-Ruthven’s words clearly promote literary engagement—its civilising, enlightening influence—as a prestigious space, marked out by ‘achievements’ and offering ‘status’. As with other nationalist Australian sentiments of the interwar period, the focus is self-consciously on Australia’s ability to establish itself in an international space, demonstrating the type of ‘cultural cheerleading’ which is ‘the mark of insecurity and provinciality’ typical of the Australian ‘cultural cringe’ (Castro 2000: 38).

A general connection between the projects of governments and cultural bodies and the work achieved through the promotion of literature through literary events can be clearly traced through these brief historical details. The remainder of this chapter looks at the situation of the contemporary literary festival in relation to the political directives of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

The Contemporary Literary Festival

The Cheltenham Literary Festival , which staged its inaugural event in 1949, is generally considered to have been the earliest contemporary literary festival (Cheltenham Festivals 2016). By the 1960s, with the growing enthusiasm for grassroots and community culture, live readings and literary events increased in number and popularity (Stevenson 2004: 183). The inaugural Adelaide Writers’ Week was held in 1961 (Starke 2006: 156); four years later, the Royal Albert Hall in London hosted a flower-bedecked crowd of 7000 for the First International Poetry Incarnation (Stevenson 2004: 183). Literary festivals continued to multiply and grow over the following decades, with a number of the largest and most successful beginning in the 1980s: Toronto’s International Festival of Authors was first held in 1980 (‘International Festival of Authors’ 2015), the inaugural Melbourne Writers Festival was held in 1986 (Melbourne Writers Festival n.d.-a), and the first Hay Literary Festival—which has since expanded its cultural focus to include music, comedy, and film, becoming the Hay Festival for Literature and the Arts, and subsequently the Hay Festival—was held in 1988 (Hay Festival n.d.).

The origins of these literary festivals vary significantly. Some were established by existing cultural organisations and from the start received government support. The Melbourne Writers Festival was initially an arm of the trans-arts Spoleto Festival. It was established jointly by the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts and the City of Melbourne, as a response to a perceived lack of literary components in the Spoleto lineup and as a promotional, celebratory activity in response to the vibrant literary scene of the 1980s (Melbourne Writers Festival n.d.-b; Rubbo 2015).Footnote 3 Some literary festivals grew directly out of local literary groups. The International Festival of Authors developed out of the Canadian Festival of Authors, which in turn grew from a series of volunteer-run poetry readings (Zubek 2012). Some festivals were initiated only by interested members of the local community, without investment from existing arts groups (whether voluntary or commercial) or state support. The first Hay Literary Festival was organised by a group of friends based in the Welsh village (Hay Festival n.d.) and funded by the actor Peter Florence with the winnings from a poker game (‘Festival History’ 2005).

The inauguration and development of literary festivals—as events, as organisations, and as communities—have in many locations been supported (or undermined) by the funding and other provisions made available by local, state, and federal government bodies’ cultural funds. The funding accorded to literary festivals can have a significant influence on their success, longevity, and reach. This is demonstrated, for example, in an Australian context by the relative funding and attendance statistics of the Sydney Writers’ Festival and Melbourne Writers Festival. The Melbourne Writers Festival was heavily underfunded and significantly in deficit by the mid-2000s (Perkin 2006). This began to change in 2005 when the Victorian government increased its funding from $100,000 to $140,000 (Perkin 2006). At the time the Sydney Writers’ Festival had about double this amount of funding (Dow 2007). Less funding for Melbourne meant limited funds for marketing and promotion, and fewer events could be held, featuring fewer well-known writers, and, again, fewer of the events offered free admission (Dow 2007). This led to the Sydney Writers’ Festival attracting a far larger audience (65,000 in 2006, in comparison to Melbourne’s audience of 36,000; Dow 2007). In the lead-up to the state election in 2006 the Victorian government again increased the Melbourne Writers Festival’s funding for the following year to $250,000 (Perkin 2006); three years later, it was $360,000 (Perkin 2009). This increase in funds meant that the event was able to move to a more accessible location in Federation Square, include free events, and have a generally broader programme: this led not only to increasing audiences but also to increases in attendance of non-traditional demographics such as 20-to-34-year-olds (Perkin 2009). The funding accorded to the Melbourne Writers Festival, as well as its accessibility, popularity, and ability to reach a broad range of different audiences, was key to Melbourne’s successful bid to become a UNESCO City of Literature in 2008 (Melbourne City of Literature n.d.).

It is perhaps self-evident that an increase in government funding can lead to the programming of more prestigious, A-list writers, an increase in event size and profile, and, consequently, a broader audience reach for the festival. As demonstrated in previous chapters, literary festivals are strongly valued by the individuals who attend them, for the immediate enjoyment and intellectual stimulation they provide, for the access to local literary community that they sponsor, and for the ongoing professional connections and career development opportunities that they afford. In consequence of these individuals’ constitutive relationship to local literary communities , I surmise that one effect, at least, of the literary festival is to stimulate the development of these communities, and that an increase in government funding, and the resulting increase in the reach of the festival, would be likely to increase this positive effect. This is certainly one way to frame governmental involvement in literary festivals, and it is important to acknowledge that it is likely to be at least partly valid. However, there are several things that this straightforward explanation does not take into account. Firstly, it overlooks the way in which other governmental projects—such as addressing issues of social exclusion through cultural participation and education , regenerating urban areas through place-marketing and event-based tourism , or promoting literary engagement and literacy among school and pre-school-age children—use the literary festival to further these causes. Secondly, it overlooks the influence that these projects might have on the experiences of the literary festival audience and the potential flow-on effect for the local literary community. Thirdly, it does not consider the response and resistance of these individuals—and the community more broadly—to these social engineering projects. How might it be possible to understand the role played by political power, social moulding, and vested economic interests in shaping governmental support for literary festivals?

Despite the importance of government funding to literary festivals’ success as cultural and community projects, and to the success of literary production more broadly (Galligan 1999), literature has not generally received as much support from government as other cultural fields. The relative accessibility of literary production—the writing of a book being something that an individual, with relatively limited resources, is able feasibly to achieve—means that it has received comparatively little funding in comparison to the performing arts, which require groups of people, performance spaces, and expensive equipment.Footnote 4

As a consequence of the more limited funding earmarked for literature, it has not been a key focal point for governmental enquiry into the social impact of the arts: ‘[a]rts impact research assessment has tended, so far, to focus on those areas that are more heavily subsidised from public funds—such as the visual and performing arts’ (Belfiore and Bennett 2008: 19).Footnote 5 Eleonora Belfiore and Oliver Bennett (2008: 29–30) warn against the use of mainstream impact studies methods to determine the value, impact, and function of the arts in society. Instead, they argue that the arts’ role in society demands attention which is critical, relativistic, and specific, and which ‘recognises the limits of what can be known, generalised, and claimed’. In making this claim they point to the utilitarian and instrumental attitude that the impact study brings to the arts, and consequently its frequent methodological overlooking of academic and theoretical perspectives. But they also emphasise the complexity and heterogeneity of ‘the arts’ in general and literature in particular, and the equal complexity and variety in the impact of different literary works on different individuals (Belfiore and Bennett 2008: 17–19, 23).

Taking these reservations into account, the remainder of this chapter seeks neither to justify particular projects purportedly forwarded by literary festivals, nor to condemn particular economic or utilitarian attitudes to cultural production. Rather, it explores why these projects and attitudes have come about, and their ramifications for the public promotion, and perception, of contemporary literary festivals.

Contemporary Cultural Policy: Cultural and Creative Industries Perspectives

The Emergence of Cultural Policy in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the United States

Cultural policy in the United Kingdom initially grew out of post-World War II reconstruction, with the establishment of the Arts Council of Great Britain , considered the first arm’s-length cultural funding body, in 1946 (Fisher and Ormston 2011). In the 1960s and 1970s there was a strong community arts movement in the United Kingdom—and in the rest of the English-speaking world—which also led to the establishment of numerous local and regional arts organisations (Fisher and Ormston 2011). This coincided with a broadening of the definition of ‘legitimate’ forms of art for public subsidy (O’Connor 2011). The Literature Board was also established as a specific part of the Arts Council in 1965 (Stevenson 2004: 154). During the 1980s, the Conservative Thatcher government increased the pressure on arts organisations to obtain private as well as public funding and introduced the Business Sponsorship Incentive Scheme, which matched private sector investment with public (Fisher and Ormston 2011).

Despite the prevailing influence of economic nationalist Thatcherism in the 1980s, there were significant ‘calls to action’ that represented more interventionist and ethical engagement with the arts and promoted governmental involvement with the commercial sector. These attitudes came notably from UNESCO, via the head of the French Ministry for Culture , Augustin Girard , and from the Greater London Council’s left-wing Labour administration (Hesmondhalgh 2008: 555–556; O’Connor 2011: 27). The Conservative government controversially abolished the Greater London Council in 1986, as part of a push for more ‘efficient’ governance and resultant cuts to services that were deemed ‘inessential’.

In 1994, under John Major’s re-elected Conservative administration, the Arts Council was devolved into the Arts Council of England , the Scottish Arts Council , and the Arts Council of Wales . Also in 1994, the National Lottery was established, which significantly increased governmental funding to the arts: as of 2015, the lottery had made over 450,000 grants, and raised £34 million every week for distribution through the specialist arts, sports, heritage, and community development councils across the United Kingdom (National Lottery 2016, n.d.). Tony Blair’s New Labour government, elected in 1997, created eight Regional Cultural Consortia in 1999. This initiative acted to legitimise and emphasise the role of local and regional cultural practices in bringing a more comprehensive and coherent understanding of culture and cultural interests to policy development (Stevenson et al. 2010a: 161).

The formation of the Australian Council for the Arts under John Gorton’s economic centralist Liberal–National government in 1968 and its redefinition and renaming as the Australia Council over the period 1973–1975 as part of the major reforms of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government were the first of several moves towards consolidating government support for the arts in Australia (Galligan 1999: 122; Gardiner-Garden 2009; Throsby 2001). This newly redefined Australia Council subsumed the old Commonwealth Literary Fund and the Commonwealth Arts Advisory Board , combining the administration of these previously disparate arts funding and advisory mechanisms. As part of this restructure the Literature Board was established, and Australia’s first national cultural policy was also introduced in 1973 (Carter and Ferres 2001: 153; Galligan 1999: 122; Gardiner-Garden 2009; Shapcott 2006: 160; Throsby 2001; etc.).

Although government support for literature had already been increasing throughout the 1960s, these changes in policy and administration emphasised the importance Whitlam and his government placed on the role of the arts in general—and literature in particular—in developing national identity, and the importance of government subsidisation and a coherent governmental attitude in creating a culture of artistic excellence (Galligan 1999; Gardiner-Garden 2009). From its outset, the Australia Council provided support both to individual writers and to the publication infrastructure that realised the distribution of Australian literature (Galligan 1999: 131–132).

Canadian cultural policy—and widespread support for governmental funding of the arts in Canada—developed in the wake of World War II. It grew out of a nationalist conviction that literary culture was important to the production of a distinct national identity, and the belief that concerted and coordinated federal support for the arts was necessary to ensure the survival of national Canadian literature, particularly in the face of strong British, French, and (increasingly) American cultural influences (Milz 2007: 87). The Canada Council for the Arts was established in 1957 and has consistently included literature among its funding areas (Canada Council for the Arts 2004), providing assistance to over 1500 literary readings and festivals on an annual basis (Canada Council for the Arts 2009). Reflecting the trend in Australia and much of Europe, the 1970s in Canada heralded a broadening of the conceptions of ‘legitimate’ culture beyond the realm of high culture; this was connected to a growing recognition of the value of a more functional understanding of the social and economic uses to which culture could be put (Milz 2007: 91).

Until the mid-1960s, the United States’ ‘commitment to keeping the state separate from the production and restriction of meaning, notably evident in the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment’ meant that there was no coordinated governmental approach to culture, in the form of either a national cultural policy statement or any kind of overarching governmental organisation or funding body that provided support to the arts (Miller and Yúdice 2002: 35). The United States established a federal arts funding body, the National Endowment for the Arts , in 1965. This grew out of the relationship between philanthropic organisations and policy established in the 1930s in response to the threat of German nationalism (Miller and Yúdice 2002: 38). The National Endowment is not divided into separate boards or departments to the extent of the British or Australian councils, but has included literature as one of its six core areas of support since its inception (National Endowment for the Arts 2000: 12). It has provided funding support for literary festivals since 1968 (National Endowment for the Arts 2000: 16).

In the mid-1960s, when the National Endowment was established, it represented an attempt to assert a national culture that could address the issues of social segregation and inequality along lines of race , ethnicity , and gender (Miller and Yúdice 2002: 49). Increasing access to and increasing participation in culture across these boundaries are laudatory aims in themselves. But funding was often used as a means of government control, for example to ‘channel the expression of opposition’ into particular urban centres and constituencies (Miller and Yúdice 2002: 49). In their criticism of the mechanisms of cultural policy in the United States, Miller and Yúdice (2002: 50–51) also point to an amendment passed in 1989 under the first Bush administration, which forbade the National Endowment from funding art that was ‘obscene’ or ‘indecent’: an act of Republican administration censorship in response to funding in previous years of artworks perceived to be overtly homosexual and anti-Christian.Footnote 6

Although literature can—and is often claimed to—work to subvert, critique, or transcend dominant power structures, it also has a strongly positive affiliation with both public and commercial institutions, and is constitutive of ‘public, civic and national culture’ and individuals’ cultural identification with the same (Carter and Ferres 2001: 142). Until the end of the twentieth century there was a gradual shift from supply-side to demand-side support for the arts, where supply-side funding directly supports the creation, production, and distribution of cultural products, and demand-side support aims to boost consumption.Footnote 7

The provision of funding to literary festivals can be perceived as both a writer-side and an audience-side development mechanism. On the one hand, grants to literary festivals in the twentieth century were largely a means of provision for writers themselves to attend, and generally covered only the fees or expenses that were paid to the writers themselves (Carter and Ferres 2001: 153; Galligan 1999: 133; Starke 2000).Footnote 8 This is part of—and perpetuates—a conception of literary culture as ‘largely self-regulating with writers considered as independent professionals’ (Carter and Ferres 2001, 153).

On the other hand, however, subsidy for literary festivals has certainly broadened beyond the provision of funds to facilitate the attendance of individual writers (as the discussion, above, of the funding of Sydney Writers’ Festival and Melbourne Writers Festival demonstrates). More general support put towards the success of these literary festivals operates as both an investment in the circulation of literary texts and a means of audience development and market stimulation (Carter and Ferres 2001: 153). There is some evidence to suggest that the focus of cultural policy support is shifting back to a model based on subsidy, as a consequence of the emphasis on the ‘creative professional’ that creative industries discourse promotes (see Garnham 2005: 27; Hesmondhalgh 2008: 559). Nevertheless, there has been an evident continuance of literary festivals as successful recipients of government grants in the decade since these observations were made. If, as David Hesmondhalgh (2008) argues , one of the functions of the emphasis of creative industries’ rhetoric on individualism was a shift away from demand-side provisions, another of its functions is the emphasis on the ability of events-based tourism and place-marketing to stimulate and regenerate urban economies, creating a further, previously under-utilised rationale for supporting literary festivals.

Broadening Conceptions of Culture and the Introduction of Cultural Industries

From the 1970s onwards, there was a shift away from the discussion of ‘arts policy’ and towards that of ‘cultural policy’, a shift generally understood to mark a corresponding ideological change from narrow to broader conceptions of culture and a corresponding enlargement of the forms of cultural participation considered ‘legitimate’ (O’Connor 2011: 31). Justin O’Connor connects the broadening conceptions of culture with an extension of various values held by ‘autonomous’ art into the realm of ‘commercial’ art—that is, popular culture. These values and priorities include experimentation, a sense of the attention paid to formal artistic features, and a determined break with convention and political and economic agendas. As a result of the incorporation of these values into popular culture, the 1970s and 1980s would see ‘not just the culturisation of art but also the “aesthetisisation” of culture’ (O’Connor 2011: 33). This resulted in the expansion of policymaking that addressed itself to community arts and urban social movements, and also led to aspirational ideas of democracy and meaningfulness in the way in which new cultural products were created and consumed (O’Connor 2011: 34–35).

The concept of ‘cultural industries’, as both a critical line of enquiry and a form of policymaking, was introduced in the late 1970s as part of this shift, as (certain, usually left-wing) political parties in the United Kingdom and Europe recognised the importance of the enormous consumption of commercial culture in contemporary society. They argued that for policy not to acknowledge and engage with this would be both elitist and irresponsible. In order to democratise access to culture, and to mitigate negative tendencies—such as ‘concentration, monopoly, cross-ownership, vertical integration, ever increasing levels of capitalization’ —to which the cultural industries were prone (O’Connor 2011: 27–28), it was necessary to redefine the cultural spaces that merited government attention.

As the name ‘cultural industries’ implies, research and methodological positions in this field of study offer a rethinking of the influential, profoundly pessimistic Frankfurt-School critical theory view of the ‘culture industry’ (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944]). Building on the critical analysis of both commercial culture and political economy offered by critical theory, cultural industries offers both a study of cultural practice and a political, ethical critique.

Unlike the work of the Frankfurt School, however, the theories gathered under the banner of cultural industries are not fundamentally opposed to the construct of commercialised capitalist culture, offering a more pragmatic, although still critical, attitude to the way in which cultural and economic goals are combined. Reframing the ‘culture industry’ as the plural ‘cultural industries’ is also a nod to the social, historical, and cultural specificity which become a focus of post-modern pluralist and located studies of cultural production.

The introduction and uptake of this more situated concept of the cultural industries demanded a reconceptualisation of artistic production not as an independent or necessarily individualistic pursuit, but rather as firmly rooted in a certain social, political, and economic context: it now ‘had to be set within a wide range of professional, managerial and commercial services’ (O’Connor 2011: 28). A recognition of the relationship ‘between culture and economy, and between meaning and production’ (Hesmondhalgh 2008: 552) not only as a point of critique of commercial culture (by comparison with the ‘culture industry’ of the Frankfurt School) but as a necessary basis for pragmatic policymaking can be seen, then, as the basis for the vast majority of post-1970s cultural policy . As Carter and Ferres (2001: 154) write in their analysis of the role of public policy in shaping Australia’s literary culture at the end of the twentieth century:

[The Australia Council’s ] policy statements are exemplary in their disaggregation of the aesthetic object across industrial, commercial, private and public, individual and institutional domains [… t]he arts are recognised as a complex field involving individual creativity, professional careers, training and skills, marketing and promotion, legal rights, and participation, access and equity issues.

This perspective represents cultural industries as a field of study which perceives the production and dissemination of culture as a series of diverse and complexly interacting industries, vying for limited resources and consumer capital in a competitive cultural context. The study of cultural production as ‘cultural industries’ generally implies a critical political economy perspective, which explores the power relations between different agents operating in the fields of cultural production. This attitude is significant because it offers an ‘explanation of certain recurring dynamics, rather than polemically bemoaning the processes of concentration and integration that are a feature of capitalist production’ (Hesmondhalgh 2008: 553).Footnote 9

Cultural industries was influential in shaping policymaking in Europe and the United Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in its compatibility with economic nationalist governmental attitudes that conceptualised public policy ‘in terms of a return on public investment’ (Hesmondhalgh 2008: 556; emphasis in original). The discipline’s focus on circulation and dissemination—rather than production—as core functions of culture-as-industry influenced a shift in British public policymaking away from a model that primarily subsidises the production of cultural works towards one that supports their distribution and exhibition (Garnham 1990, discussed in Hesmondhalgh 2008: 555). Another marker of cultural industries’ influence on public policy is in the increased emphasis on the benefits of investment in the cultural sector as a means of promoting broader economic growth; a project that is generally understood to be realised through increases in tourist or retail spending or through the influx of businesses and highly skilled workers to the area (Hesmondhalgh 2008: 555–556).

However, while the introduction of cultural industries to policymaking might be understood to signify an acceptance of the commercial market forces intrinsically connected to the contemporary production and circulation of culture, government engagement with this space was perceived also to be the means to forward social and democratic projects (O’Connor 2011: 29). This can be contrasted with the subsequent introduction, in the late 1990s, of the creative industries project, which (crudely) can be characterised as taking an almost diametrically opposite attitude, perceiving the propagation of culture and the forwarding of social values and civic benefits as the means to greater economic success. Hesmondhalgh’s critique of creative industries, as both discourse and policy instrument, similarly compares it with earlier cultural industries approaches, and characterises the creative industries approach as exhibiting a lack of ethical engagement with the power structures that underpin the production of culture. This makes it complicit, frequently, in the neoliberalist attitudes to capitalist culture that perpetuate exploitation and inequality (Hesmondhalgh 2008: 567).

If I frame contemporary policy engagement between the twin poles of commerce and culture—subscribing, then, to conceptual frameworks of either ‘cultural industries’ or ‘creative industries’—it follows that I need to consider how literary festivals’ promotion and support are connected to each. I must consider how an understanding of literary festivals’ cultural relevance, valuation, or impact might be influenced by this connection. The following section identifies key creative industries perspectives and compares their formulations with literary festivals’ constituents, promotional discourses, and situation within cultural and governmental structures. This provides the foundation for subsequent evaluation of the extent to which literary festivals are bounded by the social, political, and ethical critiques of each of these frameworks.

Key Proponents of Creative Industries

The 1990s saw a key shift in policy discourse, from ‘culture’ towards ‘creativity’. This was formalised through policies such as Australia’s Creative Nation in 1994,Footnote 10 and also through the rise in popularity of ‘creative industries’ and ‘creative cities’ as formal policymaking strategies and areas of academic discourse. This shift emphasised the importance of promoting creativity and innovation across workplaces: not just in traditionally ‘cultural’ fields of production, but elsewhere in the business sector as well. This led to a series of more economics- and market-driven approaches to culture, which strongly appealed to the fiscally conservative governments prominent during the late 1990s and early 2000s, and which cemented the inclusion of economic rationales in the vocabulary of arts administrators applying for funding and promoting their cultural activities.

One of the foundational ideas for creative industries discourse was that of the ‘creative city’, which began to be widely circulated and publicly recognised in the mid-1990s, particularly following the publication of Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini’s short treatise on urban regeneration, Creative City (1995), which Landry later developed further into the monograph The Creative City : A Toolkit for Urban Innovators (2000). The economic and social success of certain cities in the 1980s and 1990s was, Landry contends, largely due to a combination of ‘visionary individuals, creative organizations and a political culture sharing a clarity of purpose’ (2000: 3). This combination of creativity and shared goals made communities resilient: it helped them to grow sustainably and while doing so to ensure a high quality of life for their residents. Creativity is seen as the foundation for models for economic growth that simultaneously address environmental and social issues: models that can generate both ‘value and values’ (Landry 2000: 259). The popularity of these ideas also led to the organisation of a number of creative-city-themed conferences in Continental Europe and the United Kingdom in the 1990s, as well as driving several research projects that explored the ways in which the concept of the creative city had been successfully put into practice in specific locations (Chatterton 2000). John Howkins’s The Creative Economy : How People Make Money from Ideas (2002 [2001]) suggests the broader significance of creative practices to cities’ contemporary economic success, translating many of Landry’s points about the centrality of creativity into a market- and value-based language. Howkins explores the ways in which creativity is given material form—as creative products—and the way in which these products are accorded economic value. Hiss book can consequently be summarised as a general discussion of the ways in which a particular type of symbolic capital—creativity—operates in contemporary local and global marketplaces.

Richard Florida’s book The Rise of the Creative Class (2002), the most influential work promoting the creative industries perspective, synthesises Howkins’ and Landry’s arguments around creativity, economics and cities into an authoritative promise of future social and economic success for any place that followed his instructions. Crucially, he foregrounds an economic rationale for social and cultural progress, making his argument particularly appealing to the arts organisations and other cultural projects needing a rationale for grant applications that spoke the language of neoliberal politics. These discussions have been central to cultural policy—and as a result to the rhetoric surrounding the promotion of cultural activities—since the beginning of the twenty-first century. They resonate with the promotional discourse that surrounds literary festivals, as well as with those festivals’ relationships with the international networks of creative cities and creative organisations that have been developed on the basis of creative industries rationales. Florida’s work operates as a comprehensive—and snappy—articulation of the relationship between city, community and individual, and positions economic growth as the necessary result of the cultivation of certain cultural and social values. Florida proposes that places that are tolerant, diverse, and open to creativity are appealing to creative people and foster the growth of creative talent (2002: x). Creative individuals are the key resource necessary to the success of businesses operating within the contemporary economy; consequently, these businesses move to cities where this resource is available. As a result, creative cities are more economically and technologically successful than other cities (Florida 2002: 6–7).

These arguments are rooted in an assertion that the fundamental social changes that occurred in the later decades of the twentieth century were not due to technological advances, but to ‘incremental shifts in human behavior and social organization’ (Florida 2002: 17). Florida (2002: 15–17) argues that it is only in recognising these progressive, human components of social change—rather than looking to technological advances or attempting to recreate the close-knit communities of ‘a bygone era of VFW halls,Footnote 11 bowling leagues, Cub Scout troops and Little League’ (Florida 2002: 16)—that contemporary urban development can be socially and economically successful.

As shown in subsequent sections of this chapter, the popular paradigms that writers like Landry, Howkins , and Florida put forward can be used to explain several of the observations about literary festival audiences made in earlier chapters. But these creative industries paradigms also have significant ethical and practical issues, which problematise other interpretations of the cultural and social value of these events.

Comparing Creative Industries Discourse and Literary Festivals: Key Constituencies

The broadening of ‘arts’ to ‘culture’ and increasing governmental support for community arts and urban social movements in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the related acknowledgement of and engagement with commercial culture, occurred simultaneously with the beginnings of contemporary literary festivals, as outlined earlier in this chapter. With the introduction of creative industries discourse—and its ability to speak to the economic agendas of neoliberal governments—a new rationale was developed for the public support and funding of literary festivals. Literary festivals were now reconceived as providing support for individuals professionally engaged in literary production, cultivating the social democratic and inclusive values that are fundamental to the development and attraction of a ‘creative class’ and branding the place in which they are situated as an appealing cultural destination, and they also were claimed to have direct economic impacts in their function as both tourist attraction and distribution point for books and literary events.

A key argument that Florida makes is that for a creative community to be successful in the contemporary economic climate, the lifestyle amenities on offer must be attractive to a diverse body of people. Many towns develop parklands and schools in order to attract stable family units and middle-to-upper-income professionals; but it is increasingly important to develop amenities that appeal to individuals from a diverse range of demographics (in relation to age, family situation , sexuality , race ), particularly as these individuals form a large percentage of the ‘creative class’ (Florida 2002: 294–295). As shown in previous chapters, a key issue that has been raised in relation to literary festivals is the dominance of middle-class, white females among the audiences. This ties into concerns that these festivals cater primarily to this ‘more general and well cashed-up’ demographic (Lurie 2004), rather than attracting a broader segment of the population or, indeed, a segment of the population that is defined through its specific ‘love for literature’ (as refuted by Ommundsen 2009). The idea of the creative class can be put to work to reframe this perspective.

On the basis of quantitative and qualitative data, this volume has already established that literary festivals offer individuals a professional entry point into the creative sectors. In other words, the demographic-based criticism of literary festivals’ inability to reach a truly engaged—rather than a casual—audience is unfounded.Footnote 12 Creative industries theorists talk about the development of technological competence, the fostering of talent, and the encouragement of tolerance being appealing to the creative professionals who are claimed to drive the contemporary economy. It is possible to connect these features to the running and management of literary festivals, particularly those aimed at young creative professionals, but I also point to the desire for cognate experiences among less stereotypical (or less stereotyped) audience members at the larger, more mainstream festivals. It is possible to further extend this representation and describe the literary festival as a ‘re-entry’ point, whereby individuals who have been working or raising families for a number of years and who are aware of the changing creative, technological, and economic climate can re-enter the realm of creative consumption and production.

In making this comparison, it becomes clear how the combination of cultural engagement with professionalism and economic skills—the blending of bourgeois and bohemian values that Florida represents as a defining feature of the creative classFootnote 13—might equally be used as a description of the key constituents attending the literary festival. Key proponents of creative industries approaches to urban development argue that cultural engagement and economic and industry revitalisation are not only compatible but mutually constitutive; the literary festival operates, then, as part of the broader professional, as well as social and cultural, geography of the contemporary literary field. Further, to build on the discussion of audience experience in Chap. 3, literary festivals offer these individuals the chance both to cultivate and to utilise these skills: they are as much a microcosm of the broader literary field as they are a means of personal professional development.

Comparing Creative Industries Discourse and Literary Festivals: Shared Social Values and Agendas

Several crucial aspects of the creative industries perspective are relevant to the promotion and funding of literary festivals, and they are not only seen in creative industries discourse, but also replicated in the promotional public discourse circulated both by government funding bodies and literary festivals themselves.

Richard Florida (2002: 284) speaks directly and at length to the importance of an ‘authentic urban neighbourhood’ and a ‘sense of place’ in promoting urban locales to members of the creative class. He argues that this concept of authenticity is crucial in ensuring the presence of an attractive cultural ‘quality of place’ and creative ‘social structure’ (Florida 2002: 292–293). Here Florida is building on Landry’s ideas about cultural heritage acting both as a kind of consecration of past cultural capital and as a source of locally sensitive information to guide future progress in social and urban development. The concept of ‘authenticity’ dovetails with the use of literary festivals and literary culture—particularly in the form of public deliberation, by a consecrated author figure, on topical points of interest—as a vector for generating the perception of civic involvement in political spaces and decision-making processes. In the first instance, authenticity is generated with reference to local architectural and conceptual touchstones, and in the second, through the vetting process of publication and its attendant evaluative practices. The two simultaneously uphold existing structures of cultural value and use these as the starting point for building new knowledge and opinions.

There is a continuation of this parallel, too, in the other formulations that Florida identifies as attracting and developing the creative class. Florida argues that this creative class is enticed by atmospheres in which new knowledge can be developed, which are seen to be populated by a diverse range of intelligent, creative, entrepreneurial, and industrious people and to blend eclectic and authentic social and cultural programming to cater to the ‘in’ lifestyle tastes, and which are tolerant and open to new ideas and new ways of doing business.

Connecting this kind of environment to those provided by universities, Florida (2002: 292) discusses how universities provide the necessary context for developing new technology, attracting and supporting talented people, and, through open, educative values, fostering a climate of tolerance and diversity. If the community in which the university is embedded also works to provide the lifestyle and business amenities required by start-up companies and creative professionals, Florida argues that this will assist in the economic growth of the broader community. Again, this presentation of the university is resonant with the promotion of the literary festival and, crucially, individual audience members’ descriptions of their motivations for attendance discussed in previous chapters. This representation sees the university as the paragon of, firstly, intellectual engagement and the production of new knowledge, and, secondly, of diversity, of both opinions and demographics, and an openness to each; and, thirdly, it sees it as a space which is culturally and socially ‘vibrant’, in which new, interesting, and exciting things are happening. Similarly, the literary festival is perceived to stimulate intellectual engagement, entertain, engage, and provoke, and provide access to a diverse range of perspectives and life experiences. If the university’s focus on intellectual engagement, diversity, and vibrancy can be seen as providing the basis for the development of a creatively disposed urban area, then the literary festival’s emphasis on the same may be seen as a celebration and further dissemination of these values of creative culture.Footnote 14

Reservations Regarding the Creative Industries Framework

Negotiations Between the Cultural and the Commercial

As Brouillette (2014: 34–35) observes , there is a tension inherent in the picture of the creative individual espoused by proponents of creative industries: they are at once the creative, independent figure—the paragon of disinterested, autonomous art—and an essential ingredient for economic success. Mirroring David Brooks’s (2000) picture of the ‘BoBo’, or ‘Bourgeois-Bohemian’ , Florida suggests that this distinction between self-serving economic goals and the disinterested engagement in artistic production has collapsed into a certain lifestyle paradigm of ‘the creative ethos’ (Florida 2002: 7, also 9, 175; see also Brouillette 2014: 36–37). The concept of artistic autonomy is co-opted as the marker of authenticity and individuality which creates value; the means by which artists express their desire to be free from the constraints of consumer capitalism is appropriated for furthering that very system.Footnote 15 It is in negotiating this relationship, and mediating between commerce and art, that the individual is at the core of creative industries visions of progress.

Much of the critical public discourse around literary festivals expresses a distaste for the commercialised values that the festival is perceived to propagate: literary festivals are frequently condemned for their subjugation to promotional imperatives and their inability to attract ‘true’ lovers of literature. With reference to the creative industries models discussed, I want to suggest two possible interpretations of the cultural situation that prompts the circulation of these kinds of criticism. The first of these interpretations is that such criticisms are potentially indicators of a problem with the way in which the complex relationship between artistic and economic value is negotiated by the literary festival. Subscribing to this interpretation, scholarship engages with critics’ opinions more or less on their own terms: it perhaps evaluates the extent to which these disavowals of literary festivals’ commercial or populist leanings are substantiated or refuted by the writers programmed, or by the way in which the festival audience engages (cf. Ommundsen 2009).

The second interpretation of the cultural significance of these kinds of criticism builds on this idea of the co-option of authenticity and autonomy by an economy reliant on creative products. This reading frames criticism of the populist, commercial side of literary festivals—and other cultural formations—as forming part of that negotiation between economic and cultural value. These criticisms become central, then, to the performance of autonomy by the cultural sector that itself creates value. I argue that this suggests a further role for the literary festival in individuals’ accrual of cultural capital . With the festival positioned as a visible symbol of the economic–cultural duality of the broader literary field , cultural practitioners develop their credentials both through engaging with and distancing themselves from the festival.

There is a parallel here with the ‘strategies of condescension’ that James English (2005: 217–246) observes artists using to simultaneously distance themselves from and participate in the awarding of cultural prizes. These artists employ ‘acts of acceptance or refusal, tactics of embrace or condescension’ (English 2005: 234) to manage and negotiate the terms on which they use cultural prizes for the conversion of economic capital and populist approval into symbolic capital and artistic consecration. Writers’, academics’, and journalists’ ritual disavowals of literary festivals’ populist or commercial tendencies are reframed as performances of autonomy by the literary sector and, consequently, as markers of their own cultural standing. As cultural practitioners, these critics are necessarily writing from a position of dependency and contingency within the field they are criticising; their denunciation can never be independent critique, but is rather a conscious act of position-taking . It is through employing these manoeuvres that creative practitioners are able to simultaneously distance themselves from and participate in these contested cultural, commercial, and populist spaces.

English’s exploration of the way in which prestige circulates—and is contested—in the contemporary prize circuit looks, in particular, to the ‘scandals’ that have developed and been publicised around these prizes, framing scandal as the ‘instrument par excellence of symbolic action’ (Bourdieu and Haacke , quoted in English, 2005: 190). These scandals are visible markers not only of the level of public interest and investment in these prizes, but of the structuring tensions—between social, cultural, political, and economic interests—that compete in these public arenas. In the next chapter I return to these tensions, and this idea of scandal , as part of a further interpretation of the critical, public, and journalistic discussion surrounding literary festivals. These ideas provide some perspective on the ethical reservations with creative industries projects that I discuss in the next sections of this chapter. They also reframe the way in which these kinds of public cultural project are ‘valued’ and their impact assessed.

Lack of Ethical Engagement with Social Issues

In its focus on economic returns and ‘place-marketing’, the shift from cultural to creative is essentially a broadening of the scope of cultural-industries-based policy, and a formalisation of the belief that intellectual labour is crucial to continued economic growth (Hesmondhalgh 2008: 559). By placing this emphasis on labour, the creative industries perspective forwards a particular world-view based on the supremacy of economic concerns, and uses culture as a tool to forward this project (O’Connor 2011: 31–35). This shift also acts to distance policymaking and attendant discourse from the intrinsic emphasis on normative and ethical questions that cultural industries scholarship had at its core.

Consequently, as a number of commentators have observed, there is a danger that policy decisions focused on developing creative cities prioritise the lifestyle requirements of young, single professionals, at the expense of the needs of people from other social, class , and ethnic backgrounds and in other age groups (Hesmondhalgh 2008: 557; see also O’Connor 2011; Pratt 2011). This prioritisation of the young professional further displaces the importance of people who are not a part of this mobile creative elite, while simultaneously relying on creative individuals’ continued self-exploitation. The viability and success of this creative class are predicated both upon the existence of an underclass of low-wage, low-autonomy workers in services, agriculture, and heavy industry (Brouillette 2014: 46) and, simultaneously, upon the development of a freelance or project-based, highly educated, non-unionised, deregulated creative workforce, which supports the increasing commercialisation and capitalisation of the creative sector (McRobbie 2016).

There is a further fundamental and ethical problem with the promotion of engagement with cultural projects as the primary means of forwarding social and economic agendas. Focusing on an economic agenda connected to promoting the influx of a bourgeois creative class does not effectively address or even directly engage with wealth inequality (Pratt 2011). The emphasis that these kinds of agenda tend to place on promoting universalist, ‘cosmopolitan’ culture further marginalises local and particular cultural practices, again generally to the detriment of marginalised subsections of society.

It is possible to interpret this as essentially a manoeuvre by which the responsibility for these inequalities and the task of addressing them are shifted onto the disadvantaged individuals themselves (Stevenson et al. 2010b: 262). It is a foregrounding of the impact of disadvantage—this impact being the lack of access to symbolic cultural participation and self-realisation—and an attempt to address this impact only through encouraging cultural engagement. This leads to a consequent masking of more fundamental systemic issues such as socioeconomic status , class, race, and so on (see also Bennett and Silva 2006). Neelands et al. (2006: 106–107) make similar arguments in their discussion of the support provided by Britain’s New Labour government to dancers with disabilities, distinguishing between ‘affirmative’ and ‘transformative’ action. While affirmative action—such as the provision of grants and scholarships to dance students with disabilities—can assist in increasing the level of participation in dance of individuals with disabilities, more fundamental transformative action is needed to address ‘the political-economic and the cultural-valuational structures that generate economic and cultural injustice’ (Neelands et al. 2006: 107). This is a primary issue that Miller and Yúdice (2002: 49–50) identify in cultural policy engagement and the rationale for public funding for the arts in the United States, particularly during the Nixon administration, as I discuss earlier in this chapter.

This argument resonates strongly with the way in which literary festivals are represented. Literary culture’s value to broad sectors of society is emphasised by literary festivals’ own promotional rhetoric. The Melbourne Writers Festival, for example, uses its ‘Strategic Direction’ document to emphasise (among other things) its promotion of access to and inclusion and participation in the arts for all Victorians (Melbourne Writers Festival 2013). It is also promoted through festivals’ involvement in outreach and touring programmes, which again emphasises their ability to reach broader audiences: ‘as part of our Booked! Programme of events the [Edinburgh International ] Book Festival has taken authors to 53 schools, libraries, theatres and prisons to reach audiences who were unable to come to Charlotte Square Gardens’ (Edinburgh International Book Festival 2015). Most large festivals have similar outreach and touring programmes and speak similar languages of democratic access: the International Festival of Authors’ ‘Lit On Tour’ programme seeks to ‘offer and be the catalyst for literary programming that reaches a wide range of communities throughout Ontario’ (Lit On Tour n.d.). Similarly, the previous director of the Emerging Writers’ Festival commented on the festival’s 2014 roadshow, declaring that ‘[t]he ability to connect writers like this, to travel and come together to form communities is essential to the work that the Emerging Writers’ Festival does’ (Emerging Writers’ Festival 2014). The capability of literary festivals to engage a diverse range of individuals and promote their participation in and enjoyment of literary culture is both plausible and frequently demonstrated. Both the extensive market research conducted by the festivals themselves and the audience interviews and surveys conducted as part of this research project demonstrate that the literary festival engages a much wider range of demographics than the stereotypical middle-class, middle-aged women.

Rather than detracting from festivals’ egalitarian projects, however, I would argue that these criticisms of creative industries projects guard against governmental co-option of the social-inclusion-and-access projects that literary festivals put forward. Such programmes are undoubtedly beneficial—and successful—in themselves, and they represent affirmative steps towards increasing cultural participation across demographics . But without the development of targeted programmes that work directly to combat structural inequalities, there can be no real transformation of the social and economic issues that act as initial barriers preventing individuals’ engagement with culture.

Literary Festivals and Inter-community Networks

So far this chapter has explored the trends, ethical issues, and language evident in international anglophone cultural policy at federal, state, and local levels, and the connections that can be drawn between this policy and the representation of various political projects in the promotional rhetoric surrounding literary festivals. This concentric-circles-style model of policy support nested around a specific location is not, however, the only way in which political and ideological projects filter through and influence the representation and goals of literary events. Other international and inter-local networks also structure the designation and recognition of literary communities: UNESCO’s Cities of Literature project, part of its overarching Creative Cities network; the International Organisation of Book Towns ; and also the Word Alliance , a network of literary festivals.

The UNESCO Cities of Literature programme recognises the commitment of both private and public organisations within a city to fostering creative and cultural diversity through promotion of literary culture (Edinburgh City of Literature n.d.; Hamilton and Seale 2014). It is a constituent element of UNESCO’s broader Creative Cities initiative, which has similar aims to create a network between cities which demonstrate a commitment to developing communities engaged with various ‘creative’ forms as a strategy for their sustainable urban growth and development (Creative Cities Network n.d.).Footnote 16 Through this, the Creative Cities initiative aims to increase the output and enjoyment of cultural products and to promote sustainable urban development through increased participation in the creative industries. Of the literary festivals employed as case studies for this project, three were situated in Cities of Literature: Edinburgh was the original founding City of Literature (Edinburgh City of Literature n.d.), while Melbourne, the home of the Melbourne Writers Festival and the Emerging Writers’ Festival, became the second City of Literature in 2008 (Melbourne City of Literature n.d.). As Lisa Dempster , the Director of the Melbourne Writers Festival, points out, although the festival itself is focused on the creative individuals of Melbourne, the concept of Cities of Literature works more as a promotional tool and a means of garnering industry support:

[Melbourne’s status as a City of Literature] has helped us promote the great literary talent we have here on a global scale, and connect with our counterparts internationally. But the impact has mostly been at industry level, rather than for the people of Melbourne. (Excerpt from author’s interview with Lisa Dempster, Melbourne Writers Festival Director)

The International Organisation of Book Towns is a programme designed to offer models for the encouragement of regional tourism and urban development through the recognition and promotion of local literary heritage (International Organisation of Book Towns n.d.; see also Driscoll 2016). The booktown network picks up on these kinds of regional interest in books and literature and offers a model for the consolidation or development of literary tourism. Using this model, communities exhibiting this shared interest are brought together to enjoy and celebrate, engage and interact.

Clunes, in central Victoria, home of the Clunes Booktown Festival, became Australia’s first member of the International Organisation of Book Towns in April 2012 (Clunes Booktown 2015), and is an example of a broadly successful exercise in town-branding and the promotion of regional tourism. Although Clunes’s membership of this network was perceived first and foremost as an exercise in branding and accreditation, it provided Clunes with access to international cultural spaces and networks, and as a result membership has been instrumental in developing international partnerships and cultural projects.

From the very beginning, from day one, we wanted to be a booktown. We knew that. That was our focus […] this combination of town revival and culture. […] And we hunted for that membership—for accreditation really, you know, to give us some kind of clout. Once we got it, things changed. We—it affected us more than we thought it would. You know, people say ‘Oh what now, you’ve become a member, who cares, what does it matter?’, and we’d go ‘Oh—it’s accreditation, you know’. […] Anyway, we were invited to present a paper at the symposium that they were having on international booktowns. […] And we, we just worked incredibly hard at that, symposium, that few days, with the people that we’d just met. And you know, endless numbers of meetings trying to work out a way forward. […] We had this half an hour off, I think, in four days […] and the [Korean] embassy official came and found me, and said I’m looking for you everywhere, the ambassador is coming, and you’ve got a meeting in ten minutes. […] And so we all frocked up, and we went downstairs, and we met the deputy head of mission, and a trade delegation. And they just took us aside, and said—you know, basically we want you to do a project with Paju Bookcity .Footnote 17 (Excerpt from author’s interview with Tess Brady , Clunes Booktown Festival Artistic Director)

The Word Alliance is a collective made up of ‘eight of the world’s leading literature festivals’ (Word Alliance n.d.). It provides an interesting point of comparison with UNESCO’s Cities of Literature programme and the International Organisation of Book Towns because, although it, too, speaks the language of creative industries discourse, it is from the perspective of the cultural organisation seeking government funding , rather than that of the government body strategically seeking to align both cultural and economic goals. The aims listed on the Word Alliance’s website emphasise, first and foremost, the cultural credentials both of the festivals themselves and of the international collaborations between the different festivals, but they also speak to the festivals as professional organisations and to the necessity for focused and strategic government support. The Word Alliance’s explicitly elite focus on the cultural standing of the member festivals is particularly interesting given the democratising missions that these festivals individually advertise. Membership also extends well beyond the traditionally anglophone focus of the literary festival, with member festivals taking place in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean (Word Alliance n.d.).Footnote 18 As one staff member at the Melbourne Writers Festival observed in an interview, the priorities of the Word Alliance—and its combination of cultural and pragmatic attitudes—have resulted in ‘more tangible benefits and meaningful relationships’ to the festival and, consequently, the audience, than more conceptual projects such as the Cities of Literature programme.Footnote 19

These kinds of organisation, connecting different cities with one another in transcultural networks, have been deeply influenced by the concepts of the ‘creative city’ and the ‘creative class’ championed by Landy and Florida . Such collaborations also have a tendency to lead to the direct import and imitation of policies, rather than contributing to the ideals of ‘critical comparative analysis and contextual evaluation, adaptation and contestation’ (Stevenson et al. 2010a: 167). On a more conceptual level, however, these organisations are seen as opening up the possibility for the assertion of local identities beyond and across national borders: offering transnational and transcultural touchstones for cities and communities to orient their cultural identities and policy approaches within increasingly globalised fields of cultural production.

This touches on a further critique of the creative industries approach to urban regeneration and city revitalisation: its tendency to be used in a broad range of different locations without due regard for the unique individual characteristics of the specific situation . As Hesmondhalgh (2008: 557) observes:

It surely made sense to emphasize the importance of the cultural industries to a news and entertainment hub city such as London, and such a policy direction may have had some coherence in some smaller but substantial cities where the cultural industries have some growing presence, but in other places the idea that investment in the cultural industries might boost local wealth and employment has proven more problematic.

This corresponds with the critique offered above: that the viability of the creative industries project at once assumes an underclass of available service and industry workers, and at the same time seeks to distance itself from the working class. Consequently, the attempt to map creative industries approaches onto predominantly working-class areas is problematic and largely untenable.Footnote 20

Clunes Booktown Festival provides an interesting point of comparison with these reservations expressed by Hesmondhalgh (2008) and Jaynes (2004). Although the town, and the collective of citizens that would become Creative Clunes, sought directly to integrate the concept of the ‘booktown’ à la Hay-on-Wye into their plans for local regeneration, the festival was conceived as a means of re-integrating cultural engagement and economic growth in a manner that would directly support the strong community groups already existing in the area.

An important part of our thinking, in this, is that prior to World War I, the country was part of the national conversation. It was important politically, and it also was part of the cultural conversation. But after World War I, there was a drop away. People, a lot of country kids, went off for adventure […] and then, you know, a sequence of droughts and so on. And this all led to massive decline. […] What the country had, and maintained, were things like its CFA, its fire-fighting services, its local shows, yeah. We’re—next Sunday, we’ve got 150 years of the local fire-fighting place. We’ve recently had 150 years of the [Clunes Agricultural] Show. So these organisations have been continuous. What, then, the people had here, and still had, was a great sense of community. They had community in spades. But what had been forgotten […] is that creativity, and culture, could be one of the problem-solving devices. So they’d lost that—that conversation had been lost. And the city knowledge had been privileged, in both its power structures, and also in terms of its culture, Australia’s culture. So, you know, what we were about, is actually saying to people—we didn’t want to do traditional community art, which was about building community. We had community in spades. What we had to do was re-introduce art, reintroduce culture, and particularly literature. (Excerpt from author’s interview with Tess Brady , Clunes Booktown Festival Artistic Director)

Recognising the serviceability of books and literary culture to the interests of the community, is an interesting contrast, too, to Florida’s comments about the creative industries providing social cohesion in the contemporary absence of older forms of ‘community’ (his VFW halls, bowling leagues, Cub Scout troops, and Little Leagues). As this interview excerpt demonstrates, Clunes’s version of the creative industries approach worked not as a response to an absence of other forms of social cohesion and community engagement, but as an augmentation and a focus for existing social groups and structures that in turn provided support for the new creative industries venture.

Conclusion

In previous chapters, I have explored the ways in which individuals encounter and engage with literary festival spaces, and looked at how audience members’ experiences with literary festivals might be analysed in the context of their broader literary engagement across live and digital spaces. This kind of individualistic approach is essential to any study of the way in which community events and local events are interrelated: it reintroduces the often-overlooked perspective of the individuals who actually make up both community and event, and ensures that the subsequent analysis is grounded in empirical data. But how can this new understanding of the relationship between literary festival experiences and audience members’ everyday engagement with literary culture be scaled up to form a broader, more complete picture? How can this be used to discover the relationship between the literary festival and the cultural and social spaces in which it is situated? In this chapter I have explored and evaluated the use of creative industries discourses to frame this connection between community and event.

The creative industries paradigm tends towards over-reliance on neoliberal economic justifications for the support of cultural projects. But this does not appear to be a necessary consequence of projects which marry cultural and commercial goals. Rather, I argue that the rationalisation of cultural projects needs to draw from a number of different discourses that speak to cultural, social, and economic aims, but that frequently this balance has not been successfully achieved. Further, creative industries discourse, although its implementation is often flawed, does attempt to construct a rigorous, theoretical justification for the arts that takes each of these forces into account. In other words, reframing the creative industries perspective as a pragmatic way to combine economic, cultural, and social motivators—but one which needs further critical attention, and which is, as a fundamentally cultural policy, unable to address those structural issues of social inequality to which contemporary capitalist society is prone—supports recognition of its positive influences, but cautious distance from its failings.

In my case studies, there is undoubtedly evidence that supports a creative industries perspective. Literary festivals can be used as part of the construction of an alluring locale, designed to attract and develop the careers of creative professionals. Further, where judiciously developed in keeping with the interests and cultural heritage of a particular place, these festivals can contribute significantly to regeneration and cultural tourism in an area. To a certain extent, literary festivals might conceivably move beyond the failings of a purely creative industries perspective. They are demonstrably able to build a sense of political agency and cultural inclusion resonant with particular cultural and social groups. But despite this, it remains impossible to use a cultural project to address more deeply entrenched and intractable social issues that suppress the cultural agency of a particular group. There is significant potential for the literary festival to succeed as a project for urban regeneration, and to build further social and cultural growth in an already socially and culturally active space, but there must be a genuine and compelling resonance between the local area, the local community, and the cultural project.