Festival Agora? The Academy of the Finest Arts as a Case Study of the Festivalisation of the Public Sphere
Festival Agora? The Academy of the Finest Arts as a Case Study of the Festivalisation of the Public Sphere

Author(s): Marta Kupis
Subject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Music, Sociology, Culture and social structure
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Pol’and’Rock Festival; Station Woodstock; Academy of the Finest Arts; Jerzy Owsiak; Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity
Summary/Abstract: The Academy of the Finest Arts is an initiative that was introduced to Pol’and’Rock Festival (formerly Station Woodstock) in the year 2006 and has since become a stable element of this largest music festival in Poland. Its main purpose is to serve as an arena for discussions with people playing major roles in Polish public life. The initiative can serve as a case study for how festivals are changing and how they change various aspects of social reality, in this case public discussions.The theoretical frameworks used here include festivalisation, understood as the increasing role festivals play in contemporary reality, and deliberative democracy. The first of those approaches should help to understand how festivals encroach on public life, whereas the latter may aid in understanding how the content of discussions in music festival circumstances changes in comparison to more formal environment. Hopefully, this case study will serve as a basis for general reflections on the festivalisation of politics—and the politicisation of festivals.

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