Mapping Waiheke Island's festivalscape: Community activism and festival reclamation
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Authors
Papoutsaki, Evangelia
Stansfield, John
Papoutsaki, Evangelia
Niaah, S.S.
Stansfield, John
Papoutsaki, Evangelia
Niaah, S.S.
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Date
2024-09-27
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Type
Book Chapter
Ngā Upoko Tukutuku (Māori subject headings)
Keyword
Waiheke Island (N.Z.)
New Zealand
festivals
community festivals
tourism
gentrification
activism
New Zealand
festivals
community festivals
tourism
gentrification
activism
ANZSRC Field of Research Code (2020)
Citation
Papoutsaki, E., & Stansfield, J. (2024). Mapping Waiheke Island's festivalscape: Community activism and festival reclamation. In Papoutsaki, E. and Niaah, S. S.(Eds) Island Festivals: A creative ecosystem (pp. 44-70). University of the West India Press, Kingston, Jamaica. ISBN 9789766409678
https://hdl.handle.net/10652/6873
Abstract
WAIHEKE ISLAND IS THE THIRD MOST POPULATED ISLAND in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Situated in the Hauraki Gulf and its Marine Park, and close to the most populated city, Auckland, the island has played many roles. Before colonization, it was a food basket for the region and after colonization it has been a forest to plunder, a holiday and retirement community and a bohemian retreat that is increasingly attractive to the moneyed class, which has contributed to a higher cost of living. The island’s vineyards and art studios, pleasant microclimate and many beaches attract weekend visitors and increasingly unsustainable numbers of cruise ship day trippers throughout the year. Along with its expanding tourism, wine industry and rural gentrification, the island is also known for its growing significance as a maritime suburb as well as a “political hotbed” with an activist culture (Baragwanath 2010, 15).
Waiheke was chosen as the focus for this study because festivals have always been an important and integral part of this island’s community life and are often linked to the island’s rich activist culture, which has used festivals as a way of community building and protesting on social issues. Waiheke’s island identity and economy also contribute in a significant way to the tourism product of the Auckland City. In recent years there has been an increase in cultural tourism events organized by the Auckland Tourism Events & Economic Development, which has resulted in some events taken over from their local island focus to a regional, national and even global cultural festival tourism market, including the Sculptures in the Gulf biennial festival and the Jazz Art and Music Festival that attracts thousands of visitors annually.
In this chapter we explore island festivals and related forms of public culture as performance events that construct and negotiate meaning for the hosting island community and the visitors that come to the island to participate (Magliocco 2001). Through the mapping of Waiheke Island’s festivalscape, we explore related concepts like festivalization and festival reclamation and we discuss the contribution of the island’s festival culture to its identity and community organization. We conclude by linking these to the interconnected concepts of strange island and island imaginaries. Data for this research was collected through in-depth interviews with island inhabitants who have been involved in organizing and volunteering for festivals and ethnographic observations, partly participatory, by one of the authors, John Stansfield, who has been a Waiheke Island community member and activist for over three decades.
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University of the West India Press
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