Introduction

Festivals in Scotland have a long history and play a significant role in the socio-cultural discourse of the nation. From the ancient origins of the Highland Games and the nineteenth-century inception of Burns Night to the contemporary development of globally significant festivals such as the Edinburgh Fringe, festivals seem intractable from the Scottish collective consciousness. Indeed, a cursory glance at Visit Scotland’s landing page revealed the value of the ‘live’ festival experience as a central pillar of the tourist board’s promotion (Visit Scotland, 2022). A fundamental aspect of any festival is in the act of ‘gathering’ with others – an embodied experience described by Monica Sassatelli as a ‘multifaceted sociable experience’ (2011, p.25). Many of the interviewees referred to fundamental notions of ‘gatherings’ within which the traditions of their festivals were rooted. Returning to places on an annual basis, the language that they used was rooted in ideas of belonging.

However, faced with government restrictions on gatherings in the course of the pandemic, festivals had to quickly adapt and change both their structures of management and operations. Work from home policies also implied viewing from home, which forced most festivals to rapidly develop digital content for their audiences. However, as restrictions evolved, and parts of society opened up, festivals started to experiment with hybrid forms of management and production. In many cases this led to collaborations with local authorities, communities and other festivals. Festivals started to share resources and knowledge with each other and informal networks developed in order to cope with the crisis.

Drawing on empirical data from interviews with Scottish festivals, this chapter explores the effect that digital and hybridised programming, performing and gathering have had on different aspects of belonging and evaluates the extent to which this changed or shifted how festivals might approach future planning. The chapter draws on a thematic analysis of the festivals included in the study and includes a case study in order to explore the complex relationship between ideas of belonging and shifts to digital and live or hybrid festivals. The first section comprises a thematic analysis of the role of place and complex notions of belonging across the festival cohort. The second section constitutes a case study utilising a comparative analysis of Orkney Music Festival and Burns Big Supper, which focuses on the complex relationship between place, people and culture to draw out themes of identity, collaborative and participatory practices, shared resources and tradition.

Notions of belonging

Literature on belonging is extensive and has been effectively applied to many different fields of research. Belonging is frequently associated with emotional attachment and is described by Nina Yuval-Davis (2006) as ‘an act of self-identification or identification by others’ and of feeling at ‘home’ within a specific context be that physical, virtual or spiritual place (p.199). Yuval-Davis identifies an important distinction between belonging and the politics of belonging, suggesting that ‘the politics of belonging comprises specific political projects aimed at constructing belonging in particular ways to particular collectivities that are, at the same time, themselves being constructed by these projects in very particular ways’ (p.199). In other words, belonging only becomes political when it is seen in relation to others within society. Belonging within this broader context is interrelated with notions of identity and the concept of nations (Anderson, 1983); people, geography and places (Woodman and Zaunseder, 2022); and friendship and support structures (Condorelli, 2014). This was evident throughout the interviews we conducted but overtly characterised by one interviewee within a borderland festival who said that ‘our sense of place has been strong; throughout [the pandemic] we were compelled to do stuff by our membership and our community … in our digital work we wanted to show people who we are and where we live and getting people curious about that’. There was a real sense of belonging to communities beyond the immediate close relationships which constitute the festival. This was about the festival both reflecting the identities of a locality and being part of the continual change of those identities.

As noted by Yuval-Davis, the concept of ‘home’ within the broader discourse of belonging presents a complex knot of tensions and interconnections. Mary Douglas (1991) conceptualises a home through grounded empirical research. Douglas states that ‘for a home neither the space nor its appurtenances have to be fixed, but there has to be something regular about the appearance and reappearance of its furnishings’ (p.289). It is this sense of regularity and organisation of space which plays out in the festival context and helps frame this chapter.

Both these notions of belonging are important to our analysis of Scottish festivals because the pandemic disrupted norms of engagement and a sense of regularity and yet opened up the potential for connections beyond local and regional geographic proximities. The neutrality of belonging shifted and was thus charged with an urgency to identify with others through the concept of the festival. A sense of ‘longing’ to be with others was expressed by many of the interviewees alongside a need to create this sense of belonging through different modes of action, which in themselves led to many of the decisions that are discussed within this chapter.

Methodology

The following analysis draws upon empirical data gathered from semi-structured and partially transcribed sector interviews carried out between October 2020 and September 2021. The interviewees have been anonymised for ethical reasons, but their roles in the festivals remain visible as this is pertinent to the analysis. Our research also employs relevant secondary sources pertinent to the festivals. This chapter utilises case study and comparative analysis to draw out key themes. The case studies have been selected for their comparable size and geographic locations in order to effectively draw comparisons.

Drawing on the work of Yuval-Davis and others, this chapter utilises a conceptual framing of belonging through three distinct analytical forms as outlined by Yuval-Davis. These consist of ‘social location’, which takes into account the relational and power dynamics between social, economic and geographic groups. Another is the ‘identification of emotional attachments’ through stories that we tell. Although this chapter focuses on this in a collective sense, this can go further and be about individuals in relation to collective identity. These ‘identity narratives can be individual or they can be collective, the latter often a resource for the former’ (Yuval-Davis, 2006, p.202). Then there are the ‘ethical and political values’ of belonging that emerge in relation to others in society and how they are judged. Each of these are applied within the chapter to explore the different intersections between belonging and festivals but are not exhaustive and present areas for further research.

Place, virtual festivities and belonging

The festivalisation of culture is a phrase which refers essentially to the way in which culture is produced and consumed within society but it also reflects the steady spatio-temporal dislocation of the periodic staging of festivals (Taylor and Bennett, 2014). Festivals are no longer entirely constrained to the seasons, to common land or as part of wider religious holidays. Instead, they are contradictory places where the commodification of culture and the temporary annexation of public space (in terms of physical festivals) lie in tension with the disruptive and transgressive forces forged in traces by collectivisation (Bakhtin, 1963; Bourdieu, 1984). In other words, festivals are places where people come together to escape everyday life. Yet, festivals are often understood by funders, organisers and other stakeholders in economic terms rather than in social or cultural terms. Festivals become profitable and attractive to investors by temporarily enclosing public space and implementing ticketing systems or by creating exclusive events within commercial properties and spaces and, as a result, have increasingly been separated from the common access to space and time with which they were traditionally associated.

The pandemic dramatically changed this state of play and has in some cases forced a reimagining of what festivals should be and how they operate. Throughout the cohort of festivals in Scotland included in this research, these tensions and pressures emerged within specific activities. It became apparent early on in the interviews that all of the interviewees had experienced a sense of loss as their respective festivals were either postponed or cancelled. This experience was further intensified by a sense of survival panic both as a basic human need in the face of danger and on a broader socio-economic plane as festivals and livelihoods came into jeopardy. As a result, many interviewees described the realisation that their usual modes of practice and production were no longer viable. One interviewee described this moment as profoundly changing their role within their community, ‘from organising leagues, printing brochures, etc. to giving advice to our members, writing Covid risk assessments and readjusting insurance arrangements’.

This shift in activity became a shift in purpose for many festivals as they adapted their priorities. Their immediate locality in the communities that form the festivals and that they serve became the primary focus in many cases. Notably, this was felt across the entire cohort, whether they were a highly commercial mega festival, cooperative or a smaller rural festival. This shift in the socio-cultural perspective of festivals manifested in many different ways, but significantly it represented a movement away from the all-encompassing economic drivers. At this point it is important to stress that this was not a complete negation of economic drivers but rather a renegotiation of the festivals’ role within society.

This realignment brings with it a sense of the interconnectedness and interdependence of festivals and their communities through notions of belonging. This was profoundly enacted by several festivals in their support and coordination within their localities. In particular, an island festival producer in the west of Scotland stated that they felt compelled to work with the local food bank. The festival established ‘food bank Fridays’, which were regular live-streamed ‘gigs’ to raise money, awareness and help for the local food bank that became more vital during the pandemic. They stated that they were ‘trying to help everyone else’, motivated by an emotion of caring and a sense of social responsibility because their community was under threat. This was about much more than managing food provision; it reflected a sense of belonging to a place formed in the festival’s interconnectedness with its community as epitomised in the phrase: ‘the island all pulls together’, which was repeated multiple times during the interview.

In Yuval-Davis’s ‘Belonging and the politics of belonging’, this sense of the interconnectedness between communities, culture and sharing of resources when under threat is described as a state where ‘the emotional components of people’s constructions of themselves and their identities become more central the more threatened and less secure they feel’ (p.202). This depth of feeling is described within the discourse of belonging as emotional attachment. Another interviewee summed this up in terms of an ‘emotional and artistic hit, felt very immediately’; during the early lockdowns they ‘felt very cut off, not going to live events, private views and seeing people’. For this interviewee, there was a doubling effect of isolation as they did not live in the geographic location of the festival where they worked. This meant their sense of belonging to the festival was less interconnected with local communities as they identified more strongly with their immediate colleagues and their professional life as an audience manager within the brand of the festival. The sense of belonging between these two interviewees is significantly different: the former is embedded within a local Scottish island context and the latter working remotely for a festival that is located in a large city, yet their respective festivals play a role in their individual constructions of identity through these emotional attachments. Importantly, this identity is never fixed, as articulated by Yuval-Davis: ‘Of course, not all belonging/s are as important to people in the same way and to the same extent. Emotions, like perceptions, shift in different times and situations and are more or less reflective’ (2006, p.202).

Of course, what festivals do in their various forms is provide a sense of place for all involved. This sense of place and togetherness in which people experience collective joy has been theorised by many sociologists and anthropologists including Émile Durkheim in the form of ‘collective effervescence’ and by Victor Turner as ‘communitas’ (Turner, 1977; Durkheim, 1995). This place is at least a partial alternative to ‘everyday life’ albeit both complicit, imperfect and intertwined. However, this sense of place is rooted in the collective memory, traditions and cultures of regular comers, local communities, organisers, artists and newcomers. In short, although festivals are always changing in their content and construction, they provide a nexus for people to feel a sense of belonging because there is a regularity to their appearance, which was characterised by Douglas as ‘memory institutionalised …capable of anticipating future events’, be they seasonally located, same groups of people who attend, art form specialty or geographic location. This was expressed by an interviewee as follows: ‘it’s that coming together to be able to enjoy yourself …it is all down to that community spirit, the hardiness of us Scots, that just get it done’.

All the festivals that we studied were rooted in their physical locations and due to social distancing and restrictions on gatherings were either forced into a form of hibernation or developed new ways of working, often using digital and live-streaming technologies. A plethora of different approaches emerged in the interviews, ranging from repurposed archival footage of previous festivals to live-streamed and Zoom events. One festival even created a series of socially distanced ‘garden gigs’ for the local community, which were then filmed and uploaded as digital content. What was most striking about this activity is that in the early part of the pandemic, it was often free to access. Festivals that adopted this approach emphasised that the feedback that they received from both members of their local community and also from festivalgoers living further away was largely positive, with audiences suggesting that it was the first time they were able to attend the festival because of access issues such as disability or the remote location, including the distance to travel if they were travelling internationally. Indeed, many rural festivals were able to increase their reach in terms of the visitors that could now access their content online.

This openness was created both through the necessity to connect with their communities and also through a willingness to experiment creatively. Much of this initial content and activity, although free to access, relied on other forms of provision, charitable models and reserves, and so was not sustainable in the long term. This raises questions about the socio-economic devaluation of culture and sustainability regarding this free-to-access content, which many of the festival producers keenly expressed in their interviews. This supports the notion that ‘paid for’ cultural consumption (particularly on a scale of mass consumption) is privileged over free-to-access content (Abbing, 2002). Many of the interviewees based in non-profit or smaller partly commercial festivals expressed fears that offering free-to-access content online would decommercialise their cultural production and practice. However, in the Scottish festivals context there is little evidence to suggest this situation has manifested. Of course, this ‘fear’ is part of the economic threat brought on by the pandemic and related to the value of festivals as a commodity, rather than their social value as a place of belonging. Regardless, the pandemic provided many festivals with the skills, knowledge and resources to develop future digital content to run alongside their live events in what has become known as hybrid delivery.

Belonging: comparing Big Burns Supper and Orkney Folk Festival

Festivals in Scotland are both abundant and heterogeneous in nature: it seems that every region has some form of gathering or festival associated with its locality. This implies that festivals cannot be described in generic terms and that they need different forms of support structures including how they are managed and how they are funded. This specificity became acutely visible when government restrictions on social distancing and gatherings came into force in March 2020. The following analysis of Big Burns Supper and Orkney Folk Festival provides insight into the challenges festivals faced and continue to navigate.

Big Burns Supper is a multi-artform festival which takes place annually over eleven days at the end of January. Located in Dumfries and Galloway, the festival is one of the largest in the south of Scotland in terms of its community platform (Big Burns Supper, 2022). The festival’s location is multi-centred in the sense that it occupies venues in small towns across the region. In contrast to Big Burns Supper, Orkney Folk Festival is a rural festival located in an archipelago off the north-eastern coast of Scotland. Unlike Big Burns Supper, its programming and delivery is much more contained within a specific locality and has a shorter duration. Taking place over three days in May, the festival’s history is intertwined with the fishing port of Stromness, where most of the events are held in small venues.

Orkney Folk Festival decided to cancel its live performances after frantic twice-weekly meetings throughout March 2020 as venues and events were closing down. The festival team decided to postpone until May 2021 due to their relatively early position in the festival season and they made the decision to pivot to a digital offering. They stressed that this was not to replace the festival but rather to help mark the occasion. Indeed, both Orkney and Big Burns Supper were forced to take, in their words, a ‘fallow year’. However, both produced digital offerings which were experimental in terms of the specialist skills that were required and also the content which was developed.

There were major differences between the approaches in the festivals’ usage of digital platforms and technology. Big Burns Supper had already begun to pilot the use of digital platforms in its broader programming throughout the year. This was partly a result of the fact that the festival belongs to a parent charity called Electric Theatre Workshop, which is managed through a cooperative model constituted by volunteers and thus embedded in the social structure of governance from the outset. The cooperative’s work extends beyond the festival and was ‘already testing digital’ on a smaller workshop-based programme. By contrast, Orkney Folk Festival had previously decided to run as an exclusively live event and thus had to drastically shift its policies and approaches to a digital model when the pandemic hit.

It is notable in the different approaches to the use of digital platforms that both festivals stated that they were able to learn from other festivals and support organisations such as audio-visual studios and local arts organisations through knowledge exchange and the development of peer-led collaboration. In the case of Orkney, the festival started working with several audio-visual studios which had been set up during the pandemic to provide specific audio-visual resources for festivals and live events production organisations while touring events were cancelled. These studios provided high-quality digital production resources for festivals and events teams to broadcast live to audiences in a Covid-safe environment. Crucially, these studios also provided knowledge exchange regarding how to use the equipment and so passed on new skills, enabling festivals to become autonomous in their use of these resources. These studios were specifically established to share expertise and equipment for a reasonable fee, subsidising access to high-quality equipment for smaller festivals and events organisations that would not be able to afford high-priced broadcasting equipment.

Further, in the case of Orkney Folk Festival this was a mutually beneficial relationship that flourished in a non-hierarchical environment because the expertise and intellectual understanding available in the festival team was shared with the studio engineers. This form of interrelationship between the festivals offers an example of how social location and belonging to highly interwoven parts of the music ecology in these specific areas of Scotland became vital for all parties to adapt their working practices and produce festivals in a new way.

These notions of belonging through social connection and location emerged more clearly as the interviewees talked about the broader networks which developed rapidly over the pandemic. Collaboration and connections between festivals became an important strategy for both Orkney and Big Burns Supper during the pandemic. This is perhaps the most surprising aspect for the festivals that we investigated because they often saw themselves in competition with each other because of the funding landscape (this aspect was seen across the study and specifically in relation to Chapter 6 in the Northern Irish context). In terms of notions of belonging, these connections and relationships were mostly informal spaces for knowledge exchange but crucially they became support structures. As discussed by Condorelli (2014), these forms of informal close collaborations are abundant in the arts sector. Although primarily focused on the field of contemporary art, Condorelli’s ideas are applicable across art forms and at different scales. Condorelli states that ‘[t]‌he notion of support is examined as the physical, economic, social, and political structures that are art’s conditions of possibility’ (Condorelli, 2014, p.2). Condorelli goes on to suggest that in the arts, notions of care are rooted in friendships and close ties which can go beyond the transactional and economic to something close to emotional attachments of belonging. This was particularly highlighted in the second round of interviews with an interviewee at Big Burns Supper who stated that: ‘It’s got even better, there is a project we are working on with partners throughout the UK …there was this kinda block before – I cannot go to Dundee you know – that’s 70 quid and I won’t see the team all day! Communication has totally changed.’

Being able to work with others virtually, especially for a rural festival, has meant that these conversations and connections were able to happen more frequently, which has helped to maintain networks. Indeed, there was a deeper sense of belonging in the way that the interviewees talked about pre-pandemic working, which was characterised as often closed off to sharing ideas, or in the way that they felt like they were not ‘in the club’ compared to some urban or city-based festivals. Now they felt that the pandemic’s impact had broken down some of these barriers, and, as noted by Yuval-Davis (2006), a loose form of collective solidarity had led to multi-unexpected collaborations in the face of a real threat to their livelihoods. Interviews with people from both festivals revealed that these bonds were forged in a deeper sense through the pandemic. Interviewees from both festivals stated that they would not have been able to survive without coming together with other cultural workers and festivals to share resources including equipment, information about Covid-safe practice, logistics, applications for emergency funding and personal stories. This finding supports the ecosystem analysis of Greater Manchester presented in Chapter 9.

At this juncture it is important to return to the interrelationships between belonging and change over time. Big Burns Supper started to work closely with other third sector organisations and local authorities to help manage cultural and social resources throughout the lockdown periods. Specific examples of this occurred during the initial six to twelve months of social restrictions when Big Burns Supper rolled out a digital choir and a socially distanced theatre workshop and also extended its digital services to schools. Interviewees suggested that although working with local authorities, schools and other third sector bodies was difficult at times and fraught with tensions, particularly regarding public health needs and venue capacity, the pandemic had in fact forced an openness in these negotiations about sharing risk and resources, particularly for the benefit of the local community.

The instrumental value of cultural provision shifted in the festival’s thinking as a result of the pandemic. Although Big Burns Supper was already moving towards these forms of practice prior to the pandemic, the crisis accelerated this action. The festival had time to reconsider its role in the community and investigate how it could best utilise the festival’s resources to care for people’s needs. This reveals the ethical and political values of belonging at the crux of these decisions. Defined as much by the festival’s activity within the wider locality as by internal decision-making, these actions were somewhat reflexive as they were forced upon the festival due to social distancing measures and postponement of their events. Nonetheless, they reveal a shift in the purpose of the festival beyond its traditionally intrinsic concept of cultural value and hint at a reimagining of the festival’s relationship with its community. In the interviews the phrase ‘we don’t serve the community, we are the community’ suggests that the festival, its parent organisation and the local population are in fact interrelated rather than entirely distinct entities. This is further illustrated in the festival’s governance model and statement: ‘[a]‌s a unique social co-operative, we have over 170 voluntary members who contribute to our social model through volunteering, sponsorship or advocacy. Anyone can join our membership organisation’ (Big Burns Supper, 2022).

By being an open and free-to-join organisation, the festival encourages local people to be part of the delivery of the festival itself, ensuring in theory that the needs of the local community align with the direction of the festival. This social value became central to the direction of the festival during the pandemic and it describes one of its main goals as to ‘improve the lives of our community who are experiencing high levels of social and rural isolation’ (Big Burns Supper, 2022). Here we have the complexity of the politics of belonging, which was a distinct self-identification by Burns Supper to become community led and root itself in Dumfries and Galloway as a place. Yuval-Davis (2006) describes this complexity as ‘any construction of boundaries, of a delineated collectivity, that includes some people—concrete or not—and excludes others, involves an act of active and situated imagination’ (p.205). Here a collective imaginary of the festival can find a social location within some form of shared values, even if these values differ on an individual level. This was exemplified in the interview data: ‘we really listened to our stakeholders … our community and it was about bringing people together through art … to bring a bit of joy in a really bleak time’.

Although Orkney Folk Festival is structured in a similar way through a volunteer model it does not describe itself as a ‘social co-operative’ in the same way as Big Burns Supper. Instead, the focus is on the festival itself and how the act of staging the festival can bring together different communities of artists, audiences and local people. This is one of the fundamental differences between the two festivals. The festival states that ‘[o]‌ne of the most important characteristics of the first festival that stands true today is the balance of visiting and local artistes [sic]’ (Orkney Folk Festival, 2022). It is clear that akin to Big Burns Supper there is a level of care in their practice, but the difference lies in the delivery of a programme which is solely focused on the ‘gathering’ itself, rather than direct work within the local community.

The most vital stakeholders within festivals are of course the festivalgoers themselves. Orkney Folk Festival was able to create a reduced-price ticketing scheme for its online festival in 2021 because its overhead costs were greatly reduced. Reducing the cost removed a possible disincentive to engage with the festival and broadcasting across free-to-access online platforms such as YouTube ensured broader access than its previous physical iterations. This practice extended further, as articulated by Woodman and Zaunseder in their research on alternative festive gatherings. The authors state that ‘all-comers can potentially join: no tickets, no entry barriers, no security, nothing for sale’ (Woodman and Zaunseder, 2022, pp.108–109). However, in the case of Orkney there were still some potential disincentives, such as a small cost. This aspect of relative freedom in the processes of joining and gathering was further emphasised in the interview with the festival: ‘We heard stories of people getting dressed up at home and watching it … texting their friends and family.’ This sense of community and communal viewing is key to belonging and indicative of emotional attachments created by being with people and feeling a connection to others, and offers evidence that this is possible even in a virtual environment.

In their analysis of the alternative festive context, Woodman and Zaunseder (2022) found that the memory of the relationships between people over many years of returning to a specific location at the same time of year was an important component to the experience of place within the gatherings they observed. This raises the question of whether this aspect of place can still occur in the digital and hybrid sphere. Both festivals created a hybrid programme in 2022, having acknowledged in interviews that it would be impossible to entirely recreate a sense of place in a virtual environment. However, they took different approaches to this process. Orkney identified a key aspect of the ‘placeness’ of the festival as rooted in the landscape of the island and the social connections between people. In its 2020 and 2021 digital iterations this was important to their broadcast. In 2020 it repurposed archival footage to mark the occasion and reach out to its community of artists, visitors and local Orkadians in a national lockdown. The interviewee expressed surprise that this offer was successful with the audience, that the festival was ‘so valued by the local community’, and that they were able to ‘recreate that festival community’ even though families and households were apart from each other. One of the reasons identified was that the festival had a captive audience because stay-at-home restrictions were in place. However, by activating the audience’s memories through archival footage the festival producers were able to partly evoke the festival feel virtually.

One of the tropes of memory in this form of festive gathering is expressed by Woodman and Zaunseder as follows: ‘many, if not most, of the people we encountered had been coming for years, and were not attracted by the line-up of performers, but by the overall ethos of the event, the place where it is held and the friends they encounter there’ (2022, p. 113).

This correlates with the feedback the festival received from its 2020 free digital iteration, which highlighted the benefits of collective viewing through ‘getting dressed up’ and ‘texting friends and family’ even though audiences were physically separated. It was as much about the experience as it was about the content. This reflects the notion of collective joy articulated by Turner in his work on communitas. Turner suggests that ‘this relationship is always a “happening”, something that arises in instant mutuality, when each person fully experiences the being of the other’ (1977, p. 136). This sentiment was expressed in the interviews by both festivals and is theorised by Woodman and Zaunseder, who suggest that: ‘[t]‌his ethos evokes several ways these events produced commons: openness to the other, both human and nonhuman beings and nature; practices of care and nurturance; and the formation of collectives that through these orientations produce solidarity and collective joy’ (2022, p. 118).

These factors come into play within both festivals and importantly this has been recognised by the organisers themselves. The Orkney interviewee suggested that: ‘Because of where we are, people tend to commit before the festival … the artists are kicking about in the pubs and the clubs, they might have a session on and this is a massive appeal to audiences.’ This embodied experience of gathering audiences and artists all in one place in a relatively remote location, which still retains a rural sensibility, is what keeps audiences coming back. It is the spontaneous and unprogrammed happenstances that occur within the festival that evoke this collective joy and create a shared sense of place. Conversely, the popularity of the festival resulted in capacity and accommodation issues on the island and nearby over the last few years, and these were somewhat resolved by its change in presentation. The festival has discovered that digital and hybrid have the potential to help increase capacity by increasing access for audiences who cannot attend in person. Interestingly, in a survey the festival found that over 50 per cent of respondents to the digital festival in 2021 were new audiences, suggesting that adding a permanent hybrid element to the festival can certainly bear fruit in terms of audience development.

Both Big Burns Supper and Orkney Folk Festival produced high-quality live digital broadcast iterations of their festivals in 2021. Learning from their digital work in 2020, these digital festivals were incredibly well attended in 2021 with over 300,000 viewers for Big Burns Supper, owing partly to its free broadcast over YouTube and the fact that Scotland was in another national lockdown at the time. Likewise, Orkney Folk Festival’s live broadcast saw over 2,500 weekend passes being purchased and many more views as again collective household viewing came into play. Both festivals reported that these digital iterations democratised access and inclusion to their festivals: because of their rural locations, international audiences that could not travel or are unlikely to attend every year could experience the festival remotely for the first time. They also told stories of disabled audiences with mobility issues being able to experience the festival.

This unprecedented increase in audiences presents a complication to the notion that the memory of embodied experiences of previous iterations of these festivals provides strong emotional attachments. One of the interviewees suggested that instead of discouraging people from actually attending a live in-person event, live-streaming actually ‘does the complete opposite … if they can see some of the festival without having to travel for the first visit then they are more likely to come back …certainly for folk from America who can’t possibly travel every year but are willing to buy a streaming pass’. Similarly, another interviewee said that: ‘we were able to reach audiences around the world …effectively you’re giving them a window into Scotland on Burns Night if they are a bit patriotic or if they are from America or Australia’.

This engagement with audiences on a national and international scale reveals the complexity of belonging and particularly the intersections between the two distinct concepts of social location and emotional attachment. Geographically, these audiences were distant but elements of a shared culture and recognisable social practices that they identify with became strong motivating factors for them to attend these virtual festivals. Anderson (1983) argued that interrelationships between concepts of nation, identity and belonging are ‘imagined’ and that ‘in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’ (p.6). For Anderson, people cannot know everyone in a nation, and in the festival context audiences cannot know all that attend, especially from multiple geographical locations. The social location of these audiences goes beyond national borders and in this sense becomes attached to histories and to elements of an abstract form of home as conceptualised by Douglas’s aesthetic choices and decision-making by the festivals to commit to some forms of regularity and familiarity in the way they presented their broadcasts (Douglas, 1991). However, we cannot verify the extent to which these audiences have links to Scotland or to specific places and locations. The significant increase in attendance across both festivals points to a potential wider dispersed expatriate or ancestral audience where belonging becomes a powerful motivator in attending festivals through virtual means.

Another important finding from our study was that festivals reported an increase of new audiences. An interviewee from Orkney reported that more than 50 per cent of respondents were new to the festival. On the face of it, this is an outlier in the data and contradicts some of the findings in Chapter 3 on audiences, which suggested that it was the same audiences that were engaging in more online content. Of course, this may have been the case overall at a national scale, but within the festival context and for example at the scale of Burns Supper and Orkney, there was clearly a significant increase in new audiences.

Turning to the future, the hybrid of live-streaming and the traditional live festival is the key legacy of the pandemic that will play out in the development of Orkney Folk Festival. In 2022 this was implemented for the first time with three live shows streamed nightly on YouTube. In contrast, Big Burns Supper continued with a free online broadcast due to the emergence of the Omicron variant and adapted its programming to host a smaller summer festival with satellite events dispersed throughout the year. These digital and hybrid iterations have resulted in a clear change in production and management with the implementation of different practices delivering positive socio-cultural and economic benefits for these festivals. Understanding notions of belonging through virtual and hybrid offerings will be important as festivals begin to experiment with these technologies.

Conclusion

Belonging is a complex phenomenon that evokes emotive responses but also pragmatic notions and connections between people, places and things. Within the Scottish festival context this complexity was manifest in both collective and individual ways. However, this analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on Scottish festivals highlights how the pandemic brought about rapid changes to festivals, together with a real sense of the need to care and provide for their communities. This interconnectedness of art and life instigated practices that had previously been dismissed or simply remained out of view. This is as much about re-evaluation of festivals’ roles within society as it is about hybrid or digital methods of engagement. This chapter therefore represents a jumping-off point for future research and conversations about festivals’ social-cultural, political and economic dimensions within different places.

In closing, I will now return to the initial questions posed in this chapter, namely: What effect has digital and hybridised programming, performing and gathering had on belonging? Has it changed or shifted how festivals approach future planning? Many festivals embraced digital technologies both within their organisations and to connect with their festivalgoers, communities and audiences. The inability to physically gather appears to have accelerated the creative use of online spaces for forms of collective watching, broadcasting and more participatory cultural practices such as artist-run workshops. Many festivals used these digital spaces to evoke a sense of place that cannot replicate the embodied live experience but which has brought their communities together in surprising ways.

The long-term effectiveness of the integration of digital technologies within hybrid forms of festivals remains to be seen. This was summed up by an interviewee as a multitude of meanings to hybrid: ‘I would personally like to see a standing show …but we would also most likely stream shows from Stromness Hall.’ How hybrid manifests really depends on the context and might not even include digital connection. Indeed, jumping to incorporating digital within a live show presents significant challenges for festivals. However, this study suggests that the use of digital within festivals is here to stay, as illustrated by Big Burns Supper and Orkney Folk Festival. The use of digital technologies has in some cases aligned more closely with the social location of belonging by increasing access and removing some disincentives such as the cost and remoteness of some festivals. However, there are already signs of the monetisation of streaming and of weekend passes being replicated in digital spaces, albeit at a reduced cost to attending festivals physically. What is certain is that festivals have changed irrevocably due to the pandemic and that these notions of belonging merit further exploration.