Urban Food Festivals and Hospitable Cities

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Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones and Ben Taylor's research on urban food festivals has recently been published in the Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events.

The article examines urban food festivals, and in doing so it carries out a case study of Nottingham’s food and drink festival (NFDF). It contends that such festivals need to be understood in relation to local contexts, such as the reputation for alcohol-related disorder associated with Nottingham’s night-time economy. Rather than being used to attract tourism, NFDF was primarily directed at existing residents of Nottingham, where it sought to produce particular kinds of guests who would be able to invest in the city’s wider regeneration. Here, the article draws on recent academic work on hospitality in demonstrating how NFDF attempted to rebrand the city centre as a more hospitable place. It concludes by showing how visitors to NFDF exhibited a sense of generosity and pride, and argues that the meaning of urban food festivals cannot, therefore, simply be reduced to the logic of neoliberal governance. 

Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones and Ben Taylor with Kimberley Dowthwaite, 'Making Sense of Urban Food Festivals: cultural regeneration, disorder and hospitable cities', Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 2013.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19407963.2013.774406