Shared memories and the structures of identity at music festivals: how leisure experiences mediate attendees’ lifeworld

Music festivals have been widely examined within festival studies as sites of liminality, belonging, identity formation, and collective experience. At the same time, event and leisure industries increasingly commodify experience, positioning it as a marketable form of consumption. Phenomenologically, however, individuals are not simply consumers of experience but are constituted through it, engaging in ongoing processes of meaning-making. This paper builds on festival studies by examining how festival experiences continue to shape identity beyond the event itself. Drawing on social phenomenology, experience is conceptualised as a negotiated process through which subjective intentions, social relationships, and memory contribute to the development of the lifeworld. The study explores how shared memories mediate identity among music festival attendees. Data generated through Descriptive Experience Sampling, self-recorded conversations, and follow-up interviews were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Findings indicate that festival experiences shape identity through the social negotiation of memory, with shared remembering enabling experiences to remain active within autobiographical narratives long after participation has ended. The study contributes a meta-conceptual framework integrating lived experience, memory, sociality, and lifeworld development. By bridging festival studies and phenomenological psychology, the study demonstrates how festival experiences become incorporated into autobiographical narratives and the ongoing development of the lifeworld.