Returning to pandemic research

Our research revisits interviews conducted for the Centre for Cultural Value’s UK-wide study of COVID-19’s impact on the cultural sector. This informed the Centre’s 2022 report, Culture in Crisis, and included research into how 13 Scottish festivals responded to restrictions.

The interviews revealed the vulnerability of smaller festivals with limited staff, funding and infrastructure, alongside their remarkable ability to adapt through online activity and collaboration. Returning to the evidence, we noticed a strong theme of “commoning”: people sharing resources, collectively solving problems, creating experiences and caring for their communities.

What do we mean by commoning?

A “commons” is traditionally a resource collectively used and managed by a community. Commoning as a practice shifts attention from the resource to what people do together - the relationships and shared responsibilities through which something is created, sustained or protected.

For festivals, this can mean sharing knowledge, equipment and contacts; solving problems together; involving audiences and volunteers; making space for play, experimentation and collective expression; and enabling people to offer one another practical support and care.

Not every festival is a commons. Most operate within competitive funding and commercial systems with organisers controlling programming, pricing and acceptable behaviours. However, festivals can create opportunities for commoning when audiences, artists, volunteers and organisers share resources, shape experiences and build a temporary community. The pandemic highlighted the importance of these relational aspects when formal structures and familiar delivery models were disrupted.

Commoning as a way of surviving the crisis

Festival organisers faced more than the challenge of moving activity online. They had to learn new skills, interpret changing restrictions, support freelancers and maintain audience connections. Festivals shared knowledge about streaming, digital platforms, funding and programming, generating informal networks which enabled organisations to learn from peers, suppliers and other cultural partners.

These networks provided expertise and capacity that many festivals could not have developed alone, as well as reassurance and solidarity at a time when many small teams felt isolated and uncertain about their future. Commoning strengthened resilience through both practical resource-sharing and the relationships that supported experimentation and collective problem-solving. As one Paisley Book Festival interviewee explained:

“There has been a book festival network developed in Scotland… we are sort of willing to help and support each other.”

This reflects a finding from the Centre’s wider pandemic research: the “loose networks” that emerged across the cultural sector supported its crisis response. Cultural infrastructure is not limited to venues, organisations and digital systems; relationships are also vital.

The research also raises questions about whether the networks formed during the pandemic have continued. Some were developed to share practical resources and build partnerships; others worked more like informal support groups. Both helped organisations respond to the crisis, but sustaining them beyond a crisis requires time and investment.

Creating a shared time without a shared place

Festivals help communities mark the passage of time. Their value lies not only in bringing people together physically, but also in creating a shared moment. During lockdown, one Orkney Folk Festival organiser recalled:

“... people getting dressed up at home and watching it… texting their friends and family”. Although apart, they were still participating together.”

Big Burns Supper’s online Burns Night combined local landscapes and stories with Scottish and international performers. As one organiser explained:

“Our sense of place has really been strong throughout…it has to be more than the visitor economy. It must be about social value.”

This connected audiences worldwide with Dumfries and Galloway, reaching more than 300,000 people compared with the usual audience of around 3,000.

These examples demonstrate a “temporal commons”: a shared experience of time that supports cultural identity and belonging. Digital activity need not reproduce a physical event; it can create a different collective experience built around shared attention and connection.

Audiences as co-creators

Commoning challenges the idea of audiences as passive recipients. Festival organisers described working more closely with audiences and communities to develop ideas and shared digital experiences. Online spaces where people could gather and “hang out” allowed audiences to maintain the social relationships surrounding a festival.

Paisley Book Festival sent attendees a “participant pack” containing digital backgrounds and other materials to help them create a festival environment at home. It also recruited volunteers to blog about the programme, partly recreating the informal post-festival conversations that might usually take place between participants in pubs or restaurants. Similarly, Orkney Folk Festival audiences used props, dressing up and digital tools to recreate some of the atmosphere of attending in person. The festival experience was therefore not produced by organisers alone; audiences completed it through their actions, conversations and imagination.

These contributions gave participants agency and transformed digital consumers into co-creators. At a time when many online interactions were functional, festivals enabled play, creativity, sociability and temporary escape. The question this raises for cultural organisations is not only, “How do we reach an audience?” but also, “What role can people play in making the experience meaningful?”

Volunteering as active participation

Volunteers contributed more than additional labour. For some festivals, they helped shape the organisation and festival experience. Bute Festival is run entirely by volunteers. One organiser described everyone “pulling together”, with volunteers going on stage so audiences could see who had made it happen. Their work was “for the benefit of the island, not for financial gain”.

This visibility recognised volunteers as part of the festival rather than an unpaid workforce behind the scenes. Volunteering in this case became a form of commoning: people contributing their time, knowledge and relationships to create something of shared community value.

However, the relationship between volunteering, community and participation differs considerably between festivals. Volunteering can reproduce inequalities when organisations rely on unpaid labour without enabling volunteers to shape decisions, develop skills, build relationships or feel ownership.

Making space for play and challenging norms

Festivals allow people to experiment, have fun and express different sides of themselves. During the pandemic, collectively creating space for play, transgression and imagination became especially important. We identified this form of commoning as the “comedy of the commons”.

Big Burns Supper’s Drag School gave young people a safe space to explore performance, humour, gender expression and identity. By creating a drag persona, participants could play with social expectations and imagine different ways of presenting themselves.

But when it came to challenging norms, film festival Africa in Motion described how “the minute we move online, suddenly we have all these problems”. Moving online extended the festival’s international reach but brought different national laws and censorship into play. For example, films shown legally in the UK might be restricted elsewhere. Despite the risks, the festival enabled audiences to encounter work that challenged established norms.

The “comedy of the commons” was not something festival organisers produced alone. Participants created it by recreating the fun, freedom, and experimental atmosphere of an in-person festival through how they dressed, interacted and responded.

Commoning as care and solidarity

Some of the most valuable digital activity focused not on audience growth, but on sustaining relationships. Africa in Motion created an international community space where people could reflect, mourn and express solidarity during a period shaped by the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd.

Bute Festival decided that recreating its main event online would not meet local needs. Instead, performers streamed gigs from home to raise money for the island’s foodbanks, expressing what organisers called “Bute’s sense of people caring”.

These examples show commoning as collective care. Festivals used their relationships, platforms and identities to help communities support one another. This is an important reminder that digital delivery is not inherently inclusive or valuable. Organisations need to begin with the needs, resources and character of their communities, rather than assuming that moving an existing offer online is always the right response.

Reconnecting with core social and cultural value

When festivals lost their physical settings, familiar measures of value around tourism, regeneration and place branding became less prominent. What remained was culture, people and connection.

Most festivals have understandably returned to in-person delivery. However, abandoning all digital practices risks losing some of the accessibility, flexibility and international reach they enabled. This does not mean every organisation needs an extensive hybrid programme; digital work takes time, skills and resources. Instead, organisations might identify how commoning practices can be strengthened through digital engagement by asking who can participate, how audiences and communities can contribute, which networks can help them adapt and what would sustain the most valuable elements.

The pandemic revealed that the value of festivals lies not only in programmes or visitor numbers, but also in relationships: sharing knowledge, creating experiences, expressing identity and caring for one another.

This article draws on “Landscapes and Cyberscapes of the Commons: Scottish Festivals in the Pandemic and Beyond” by John Wright and Alice Borchi, published in the International Journal of the Commons. The original interviews quotes in this article formed part of the Centre for Cultural Value’s COVID-19 research programme.

Photo credit: Orkney Folk Festival / Sean Purser.