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Like a winter without Christmas: new book investigates music festivals in a pandemic

In a new book, researchers explore how cultural and musical spaces were recreated in the Corona pandemic.

By Camilla Wissing Mortensen, , 6/27/2022

The festival season is once again upon us, and this week this year's Roskilde Festival kicked off.

The traditional festival is always long expected, but this year is very special. The festival will open its doors for the first time since Corona shut down Festival Denmark back in 2020 - the year Roskilde Festival was even supposed to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

The book "Remaking Culture and Music Spaces. Affects, Infrastructure, Futures" focuses on how we recreate culture and music spaces during a pandemic.

The project behind the book

The book has been produced as part of a European research project on music festivals, Festiversities.

Read about the project here

Buy the book

The book is edited by Ian Woddward, Jo Haynes, Pauwke Berkers, Aileen Dillane and Karolina Golemo as part of a larger EU project on music festivals and is a collection of Danish and international research in the field. 

Buy the book here

The book is edited by Ian Woddward, Jo Haynes, Pauwke Berkers, Aileen Dillane and Karolina Golemo as part of a larger EU project on music festivals and is a collection of Danish and international research in the subject.

In the book, the researchers explore how cultural and music spaces were recreated during the Covid-19 pandemic and how cultural producers navigated the uncertain conditions by creating, designing and organising new events and by making alternative combinations of practices and spaces.  

Like winter without Christmas

The book contains a chapter by three cultural sociologists from the Department of Sociology, Environmental and Business Economics, Annette Michelsen la Cour, Mette Kousholt and Emilie K. Holse, who have investigated what the cancellation of Roskilde Festival meant for the festival participants.

About the Roskilde Festival project

The book chapter presents a major research project conducted by Mette Kousholt, Emilie K. Holse, Annette Michelsen la Cour and Matlthe Sebastian Rye Thomsen in 2020. In addition, Sara Witte was responsible for the quantitative analyses in the project.

In the research project, they investigated what the cancellation of Roskilde Festival meant for festival participants.

Read about the project here

What would the festival participants do with this sudden void?

In the chapter "Like a winter without Christmas: Interaction Rituals and the disruption of Roskilde Festival", the cultural sociologists explore the rituals and traditions of festival participants at Roskilde Festival - and they investigate how, after the closure of the festival, festival participants reproduce these rituals and traditions outside the festival site as a reaction to missing Roskilde Festival. 

Buy the book here

Book

Editing was completed: 27.06.2022