Between Environmental Burden and Utopia: Music and Art Festivals as Prefigurative Spaces for Sustainability Transformations

Sammanfattning: There is a need to identify leverage points for a broader cultural transformation that addresses the root causes of the nature-climate emergency. Music and art festivals are creative free spaces outside the everyday workings of society that have the potential to plant the seeds of a holistic, sustainable future. I combine prefiguration and the three spheres of transformation in a framework to investigate the role of music and art festivals to prefigure sustainable futures in the personal, political, and practical spheres. To this end, I conducted qualitative interviews with 12 festival organizers and analyzed these using qualitative data analysis. Results indicate that festivals can contribute to a sustainability transformation as prefigurative spaces to create communities, convey a positive societal vision and promote intrinsic values. In addition to providing possibilities for personal transformation and experiential learning, they can be spaces for innovation and build new social norms and organizational structures.