SPUR Project

2010 winner (3 of 19)

Mapping food festivals: a pilot study of the meanings of food festivals in the UK

Supervisors: Dr Joanne Hollows, Dr Steve Jones, Dr Ben Taylor (Communication, Culture and Media)

The project will examine how food festivals as cultural and economic events can be conceptualized within key ways of understanding cultural policy. The students will be involved in mapping the locations of food festivals in the UK and classifying food festivals into key types, conducting a textual and discursive analysis of marketing materials for food festivals and coverage of food festivals in the UK press and relevant lifestyle magazines. The student will gain experience of interviewing through accompanying staff on preliminary interviews with food festival organizers, performers and/or vendors and will produce documentary evidence of a food festival in the East Midlands.