Comparing festival management - An exploratory study of established festivals in Norway

Abstract

This exploratory thesis seeks to explore whether established festivals have any common denominators in their management that would lead the festival to be a successful and stable festival year after year. Project management theory provides the background for 11 hypotheses assumed more relevant to festival and events management than other project management industries. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with festival leaders and supported previous research on project management. The most important focus for all involved and all over agreed upon areas were planning, and evaluation of the good and bad after the festival had been wrapped up. Risk management within safety was another big area that all agreed upon, either based on professional companies, or a combination of experience and knowledge of the festival. Another topic that proved essential was having experienced members of the management team and volunteers, and being able to learn from experiences from year to year. These results corroborate with research done previously on success factors in projects, but also tend to be very dependent on the type of festival, size of festival and the type of management team in charge of creating the festivals.