Culture and Event Management - Essay Example

EMC 263078 Culture and Event Management. Event Management: Introduction An event is defined as unique, one off, special and beyond every day experience something apart from routine activities. It incorporates a ceremony, ritual or need and has physical and psychological components (Goldbatt, 2004). To the public, many events are in the realm of recreation, entertainment, culture and celebration. Many governmental agencies and non-profit organizations produce events or assist the events sector in order to help generate community pride and cohesion, foster the arts, contribute to healthy people by organizing sport events, or conserve the natural environment. All these goals have been fulfilled through professionally well organized events. These are very worthwhile and attract considerable expressions of support. Events are also held to encourage donations for charities and causes of all kinds. May field and Crompton (1995) observed the generic reasons for staging festivals were recreation/socialization, culture/ education, tourism, internal revenue generation, natural resources, agriculture, external revenue generation, and community pride/spirit. The cultural events not only provided a sense of belonging to people, these also created more jobs and provided employment in wholly new field. Elements of Event Management: The management perspective of an event are organizational management which includes marketing, human resources, finance, controls and evaluation, organization and co-ordination. Hospitality management presenting events as service encounters, quality assurance), tourism destination management comprising competitiveness, image enhancement and marketing (Getz, 2000). The cultural event management involves community participation. A psychological understanding about people is useful to plan event activities. But Are Events An Industry There has been a lot of debate, earlier, about whether to term tourism as industry or not. Similar arguments may be raised regarding events. There is no doubt that events have economic impact, these create jobs and generate income. The sector is also encouraging a new expertise in management. The professionals in this field need to work in close association with the stakeholders besides having usual management qualifications. It is already viewed as a new division of tourism industry. Thus they might be called an industry. As well, many events clearly provide services to industries, such as the use of trade shows or exhibitions in marketing products (Getz 2000). The event management has risen in recent years. It is the part of hospitality, tourism, communication and marketing industry. The demand by consumers seeking professionally managed, technically sound good quality management of their events has given boost to this industry. Moreover, the technology has changed the way artists look at their work and present it. Art is every form of creative and interpretive actions viz. Dance, music, writing, films, visual art, ceramics, sculptures, food preparations, Fashion etc. all reflecting influence of culture and traditions requiring various approaches and specialization in event planning (Yeoman et al., 2004). Thus event management is a multidisciplinary field. A figure adapted from Getz and Frisby (1988 as cited in Getz, 2000) shows effect of these components. External environmental forces include policies, resource availability, and demand/supply factors. Venues and physical settings have to be addressed. The internal event management provides, goal attainment and efficient operations. While business management theories and techniques will prove useful, especially given the necessity for most events to become financially self-reliant (Getz 2000) (Fig. 1). Planning and Management of Events: Prior to planning an event a feasibility study preferably with the need assessment is necessary. It should take the stakeholders into account. The first assessment to be done is cost and benefit after considering the duration, location, key program events. Budget requirement, managerial skills needed, sponsors, host community etc (Bowdin et al 2006). Silvers and Goldbatt (2003) stated that the event manager should focus on intent (purpose), extent (scope) and content (program). They advice him that asking yourself what when, where, how etc. Why - provides the purpose of the event. Who - provides the audience and guest profile, Where and when - provides logistical parameters and also creative opportunities. What - gives event content and its context. How - how much resources required and how these to be allocated. The marketing management slogan 'know your customer ' applies here too but there may be many different customers. Culture is how communities define themselves. It may be high culture of various art forms or popular and contemporary culture such as television. Culture is seen as product for e. g. in tourism. The planned event is successful when the outcome is socially positive. The positive experience of a social event is feeling of sharing a community. A motivation to participate in cultural event and also taking it up as a career is emotional high on being a part of such event and a loss or sorrow on its closure. The organizer of a social event should pay attention to how should he organize socially stimulating individual activities so that participants enjoy the event by being a part of it rather than just watch the spectacle or enjoy each others company (Getz 2007). Which puts an emphasis on the target population, selection of venue, content and structure of the event are the primary consideration. The actual planning begins after this homework. The members are designated special tasks viz. budget, venue, technical support, advertising, marketing, catering etc. The tasks are time limited and progress is discussed in regular meetings. Logistics of event management is the flow of services from providers to the venue and is one of the most important aspects of event management. Good communication the key to facilitate this process. This starts very early as bookings are finalized, goods and services checked for quality taking into consideration the type of event being organized. For e. g. the artistic event management is individualistic on the work being presented. Festival and events may be art or sport etc. There can not be same management approach for all culture events. These are the shows where production and consumption goes at the same time. These have various customers of different expectations and management models apply accordingly. Bordieu ( as cited inYeoman et al, 2004) coined the term cultural capital. Culture from being a sector of no economic importance has emerged as one of the fastest growing economic sector 1995 onwards according to European Union. Manchester City Council (2002) has recognized cultural economy and has maximized efforts to get maximum benefit from city's cultural capital (Yeoman et al, 2004) and so are the various other cities the worldover. As our one of the pioneer event organizer, Joseph and Gilmore (1999) give the example of Walt Disney, who rather than creating amusement parks actually created world's first theme parks. Disney's parks invited guests, not the customers or clients, to the rides which not only entertained but unfolded a story. The cast members (not the employee) created a unique show of sight, sound, taste and aroma for every guest. Even today the continuous imaginations offer something new. The authors have rated experience as most important ingredient of the developing imagination and ideas. They went on to suggest managers that when you are short of ideas, provide poor services. It is the poor services that people remember long while good services are there for the moment only. The adverse comments generated would not only rectify the present faults, these would generate many new ideas as well. The question is though, would a successfully running business take such a risk Culture and Event Management: Cultural tourism is the oldest component of tourism as people traveled to places to understand their culture and heritage. Today 35 -70 % tourists are culture tourists internationally. Cultural tourism has surpassed ecotorism as a result the moss tourist activity has affected maintenance of heritage site. Heritage management (Conservation of heritage sites)and tourism management (creating market appeal) are now running parellel (McKercher and Cros, 2002). Tourism may be considered the first event management activity closely related to culture. Food was already inherently associated with the tourism and it has now become a reason for organizing food tourism. The changing lifestyles and role of goods and services in status symbol has encouraged food tourism. Food no longer remains important for local economy , it gives immense business opportunities as well. As a result the expenditure on food as a component of travel and tourism is great giving opportunities to both the government and the business (Hall et al, 2003). There is still need to involve audience in the heritage and other cultural events as emphasized earlier in this article. This need has been put forth by the study of XIE, (2003). He studied visitors views on applebutter festival at Ohio show. Although visitors express strong interest in heritage festival and contribute significant economic impact to the festival, their perceptions of authenticity of the heritage resources remains superficial. Xie's statistical analysis indicates that a stereotypical view of heritage was common and not all visitors regard heritage as a high priority. Hudson and Ritchi, (2006) present a conceptual framework for understanding the film tourism phenomenon and, then, using a case study method, report on the tourism impacts of Captain Corelli's Mandolin on the Island of Cephalonia in Greece. The case supports previous research claiming that films can have a powerful influence on travel decisions. It also shows that film tourism is not always directly related to the success of a film or the marketing activities of destination marketing organizations. It is actually the way film present a concept or destination that tempt people to be there. In fact, films, food are the various ideas for an event manager to create something unique for his clients. Quinn (2005), on the other hand cautions that for cultural events due regards to social values of the place are necessary. He reviews existing literature on urban festivals and argues that city authorities tend to disregard the social value of festivals and to construe them simply as vehicles of economic generation or as 'quick fix' solutions to city image problems. While such an approach renders certain benefits, it is ultimately quite limiting. If arts festivals are to achieve their undoubted potential in animating communities, celebrating diversity and improving quality of life, then urban managers must conceive them of in a more holistic way. Similar views are expressed by Gratton et al (2005) who found that investment in sporting infrastructure in cities over the past 20 years was not primarily aimed at getting the local community involved in sport, but was instead aimed at attracting tourists, encouraging inward investment and changing the image of the city. This, according to them, is a very short living idea for event organization and does not favor thriving culture. They presented a few examples of the trend. The first example of this new strategy was seen in Sheffield with the investment of 147 million in sporting facilities to host the World Student Games of 1991. More recently, Manchester spent over 200 million on sporting venues in order to host the 2002 Commonwealth Games, with a further 470 million expenditure on other non-sport infrastructure investment in Sportcity in east Manchester. In the British context, most of the cities following this strategy of using sport for economic regeneration have been industrial cities, not normally known as major tourist destinations. The drivers of such policies were the need for a new image and new employment opportunities caused by the loss of their conventional industrial base. Conclusion: The cultural events may be a small local affair encouraged by the city mayor or a large international festival , sport event. The professional are of great help to organize these events. Now that culture is recognized to have economic value, its preservation and realistic presentation should be practiced since it defines uniqueness of a community. Putnam's (2000) views that social capital makes a community. Social capital is defined by him as coordinated efforts of society to increase its efficiency. Involvement of people in civil society improves a community's economic performance. He blames television watching as biggest erosion in social capital. The popular culture does dilute or modify the culture intentionally. A well experienced and informed event manager could take clue from Putnam's views to present culture in its purest form to his audience. Gursoy et al (2004) indicated that the organizers' perceptions of the socio-economic impacts of festivals and special events have four dimensions: community cohesiveness; economic benefits; social incentives; and social cost. All these are proportionate when protection of values is aimed and not merely the short-term gains. Fig. 1 Fig. 1 REFERENCES: Bowdin, G. A. J., Allen, J., O'Toole, W., Harris, R. and McDonnell, I. (2006). Events management, Elsevier Goldblatt, Joe. (4 th Ed., 2004). Special Events . New York: John Wiley & Sons . Getz, D. (1997). Event Management & Event Tourism . New York: Cognizant Communication Corporation. Getz, D. (2007). Event Studies: Theory, Research and Policy for Planned Events. Butterworth-Heinemann Getz, D. (2000). Developing A Research Agenda For the Event Management Field. In: Proceedings of Conference on Event Evaluation, Research and Education. Sydney. Gratton, C., Shibli, S. and Coleman , R. (2005). Sport and Economic Regeneration in Cities. Urban Studies, 42, 5-6, 985-999. Gursoy , D., Kim, K. and Ulysal, M. 2004. Perceived impacts of festivals and special events by organizers: an extension and validation. Tourism Management, 25, 2, 171-181. Hall, C. 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