Dr Graham Berridge

The urban museum has become a multi-functional institution that transcends the functional display of artifacts. The museum has become, in cities, a hybrid institution that keeps its doors open late to support a wide variety of special events. This study explored London’s “Museum Lates” programs and event characteristics, theoretical views of museums as cultural and creative tourism attractions. Furthermore, the study applied the contextual model of learning to understand visitor attendance motivations. The authors employed an interpretive approach using interviews with two types of participants: event visitors and event coordinators. The findings suggest that attendees possess personal, physical, and socio-cultural motivations for participating in “Museum Lates” events. The characteristics of late events—extraordinary quality and evening-time atmosphere—produce different effects from those of current museum exhibitions held during regular operating hours. “Museum Lates” events can contribute to achieving cultural sustainability, adding a cultural construct to the traditional three pillars of sustainability.

There has recently been a significant upsurge in popularity in cycling with not only increased participation evident but also new participants taking up cycling, especially in the UK, parts of Europe, US, and Australia. The branch of cycling that has witnessed the largest growth, in both numbers of events and participants, is the “gran fondo” or “sportive” cycle event. However, very little is known about either the organization of these events or the cultural experiences of cyclists participating in them. The focus of this article is to provide an exploratory narrative of the characteristics of a gran fondo or sportive, explored via a participant observation approach and interpreted through the use of experience theory. Drawing upon the exploratory stage of a larger “experiential ethnography” of cyclists at these types of events, the article presents observation findings from 12 event days to identify key characteristics of these events as experienced by participants. These are understood and contextualized within a discussion around the nature and concept of event experiences and related to the need for professional event organizers to identify experience components by applying models of experience within a management framework.

This article contributes to the canon of literature on spectator emotions by examining spectator emotions at a major hallmark event. Spectator experience emotions were surveyed via an online questionnaire resulting in 188 valid responses. This resulted in three groups of spectators being surveyed: 1) those who watched live from the roadside, 2) those watching via a spectator viewing hub, and 3) those watching on television. Variables tested were via PANAS scale emotions. They included the positive emotions of interested, excited, strong, enthusiastic, proud, alert, inspired, determined, attentive, and active. The negative emotions were distressed, upset, hostile, irritable, scared, nervous, afraid, guilty, ashamed, and jittery. There are also nine categories within the model, which are (1) attentive, (2) excited, (3) proud, (4) strong, (5) distressed, (6) angry, (7) fearful, (8) guilty, and (9) nervous. The highest positive value feelings of "interested, excited, and enthusiastic" occurred during the live action by those watching on the roadside. Negative feelings were more variable but a highest rating for "afraid" increased during the event, suggesting feelings of not wanting to miss anything (action). Further exploration of the emotions experienced before, during, and after an event is required in order to more fully understand the complexity of the factors. For those planning and staging cycling and similar multistage or multisite events the mapping (route) and layout of the active spectator and participant arena can be carefully constructed to provide potential emotional hot spots. Emotions vary across time and this appears to be related to mode and location of spectating. It implies that event organizers can utilize different "experiential components" within an event setting to create conditions that would be conducive to an optimal viewing environment.

Purpose

"The Routledge Handbook of Events explores and critically evaluates the debates and controversies associated with the rapidly expanding domain of Event Studies. It brings together leading specialists from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, to provide state-of-the-art review on the evolution of the subject. The first edition was a landmark study which examined how event research had evolved and developed from a range of different social science subject areas and disciplines. The Handbook was the first critique of the extent to which the subject had developed into a major area of social science inquiry. This second edition has been fully updated to reflect crucial developments in the field and includes brand new sections on ever-important aspects of Event Studies such as; anthropology, hospitality, seasonality, knowledge management, accessibility, diversity and human rights, as well as new studies on 'the eventful city' and the benefits of events in older life. The book is divided in to four inter-related sections. Section one introduces and evaluates the concept of events. Section two critically reviews the relationship between events and other disciplines such as the contribution of Economics, Psychology and Geography to the critical discourse of Event Studies. Section three focuses on the business, operational and strategic management of events, while the final section crucially focuses on critical events as a new paradigm within the burgeoning literature on Events. It offers the reader a comprehensive and critical synthesis of this field, conveying the latest thinking associated with events research, edited by two of the leading scholars in the field. The text will provide an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in Events Studies, encouraging dialogue that will span across disciplinary boundaries and other areas of study. It is an essential guide for anyone interested in Events research"--