Festivals as Ecosystems of Care: Meaning, Relationships and Sustainable Festival Practice
This Reader was developed within the EUFEAST - Festive Pathways to a Sustainable Tomorrow project as a conceptual resource for festival professionals and their stakeholders. It invites you to explore your festival through care: to understand its relationships, consider what your choices make possible and examine the conditions under which people work together. It combines conceptual reading with reflection on experience. You can use it individually or as a starting point for learning with colleagues.
The two parts support different stages of this process. Part I develops a way of looking. Part II supports a fuller reflection on your own experience.
Begin with Part I and follow the chapters in sequence. Each chapter builds on what came before, gradually developing the concepts through which the festival can be understood as an ecosystem of care. Reading in order will help you follow these connections. You can pause whenever you need to and return to particular topics later.
The explanations and anonymous examples introduce the ideas and show how they may appear in practice. Short questions within the text invite you to connect a particular idea with something you have experienced. The questions at the end of each chapter focus on that chapter’s subjects. You can explore them using what you have read so far.
You do not need to write an answer to every question. Choose those that help you notice something, reconsider an assumption or name a difficulty. A few notes may be enough to preserve a thought you want to revisit. Questions that feel difficult or unfamiliar can remain open.
Continue to Part II after reading Part I. Part II introduces reflection as a practice and offers an extended account of the Sinopale–International Sinop Biennial, in which one of its founders revisits the festival’s history through twelve reflective territories. It closes with a reflective framework through which you can explore your own experience in the same way.
Use the online format at your own pace. Expand additional examples and supporting material when you want to explore further. Follow connections back to earlier concepts when they help, then return to the main reading sequence. The Care Insights offer brief observations to consider alongside your own experience.
You can also listen to an AI-generated podcast to get an overview of the content of the publication.
PART I: Understanding Festivals Through Care
PART II: Reflecting on Festival Experience Through Care
About Mahir Namur
Mahir Namur is a cultural manager, educator, psychological counsellor and existential coach based between Istanbul and Vienna. His work brings together international cultural cooperation, cultural policy, organisational development and meaning-oriented approaches to human relationships and collective life.
He studied civil engineering in Istanbul and construction management and economics in Vienna, and began his career on international construction projects. In 1998, he brought this experience of project management and cross-cultural work into international cultural cooperation. In 2003, he co-founded the European Cultural Association in Istanbul, serving first as president of the board and later as secretary general. Until its closure in 2019, the association worked to strengthen cultural cooperation between Turkey and Europe and to develop the capacities of cultural organisations and professionals. In 2006, he co-founded Sinopale – International Sinop Biennial. He served on the advisory committee of Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture and has been a member of the Strategy Group of A Soul for Europe since 2004.
Alongside this work, he trained in coaching, logotherapy, existential analysis and psychological counselling. He has taught cultural management and project development at universities and cultural institutions across Europe, developed the training programmes Relationship Management and Meaning-Oriented Strategic Planning, and has worked as a coach and counsellor since 2010.
Festivals as Ecosystems of Care grows out of this combination of professional practice, philosophical learning, personal experience and reflection. It invites cultural professionals to reconsider not only what festivals make possible, but also how they are created, whose contributions sustain them and what responsibilities arise through their work.
More information: www.mahirnamur.com
Credits
The INTERREG EUROPE 2021-2027 programme, is a European cohesion instrument policy for interregional cooperation. EUFEAST is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), one of the EU’s structural funds dedicated to strengthening economic, social, and territorial cohesion.
This publication has been produced with the financial support of the European Union. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the EUFEAST partnership and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the views of the European Union, the participating countries and/or the authorities of the Interreg Europe 2021–2027 Programme.