Engaging the Senses to Explore Community Events

Community events are often staged by local authorities as a way to boost the local economy, improve social cohesion, and foster a sense of belonging. However, although it is arguably comparatively straightforward to conceptualize how events may contribute in terms of economic impact, it is much more difficult to understand and assess how events can contribute to feelings of connectedness and belonging. To date the focus in the event management literature has been very strongly focused on what people think of events; this study instead draws our attention to what people do and how this may provide clues as to how they feel in terms of engagement. Recent studies in tourism, geography, and urban studies have started to explore the role the senses play in our engagement and participation in events. Turning to the senses as a means to explore our bodily engagement with an event provides an opportunity to examine inclusion and exclusion at an event from a new perspective. This article takes an interdisciplinary ethnographic approach to examine a case study of community and the Noosa Jazz Festival in Australia. Findings suggest that festivals, through their embodied participants, can facilitate feelings of inclusion in a community. Sound, vision, and the festival ambience emerged as being of key importance. The research demonstrates the benefits of interdisciplinary research, particularly drawing from sensual geographies, when exploring intangible constructs such as connectedness, inclusion, cohesion, and belonging.