Civic event atmosphere and the phenomenology of participation in festivalized protest spaces

Public assemblies increasingly incorporate sensory, aesthetic, and performative elements, transforming urban protest spaces into event-like civic environments. While protest participation has often been explained through political motivation, collective identity, and mobilisation, less attention has been paid to how participation is experienced and formed within the atmosphere of protest spaces. This study examines participation formation in festivalized protest spaces by introducing the concept of civic event atmosphere. Drawing on van Manen’s phenomenology of practice, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 participants who had experienced large-scale civic gatherings in Seoul between 2024 and 2025. The findings identify four interrelated experiential structures: affective accessibility, atmospheric dwelling, embodied synchronisation, and reflexive ambivalence. These structures show how participants entered through perceived safety and social legitimacy, remained through atmospheric comfort, synchronised through collective rhythms, and reflected on enjoyment, seriousness, spectacle, and civic responsibility. The study contributes to tourism and event studies by extending event experience research beyond commercial or leisure-oriented settings to civic and politically meaningful urban gatherings. It also offers a framework for understanding participation as a lived, embodied, and atmospherically mediated process within civic eventscapes.