The overall aim of the project is to analyze the way in which mixed- or single-arts festivals constitute sites of cultural expression and performance of relevance for European identity-in-the-making and for the European public sphere.

More specifically, the project objectives are to:

• Explore how festivals use aesthetic forms to symbolize, represent and communicate social and political life (European / national / sub-national) from the perspective of different actors, including programme directors, funding promoters, performing artists and the audience.
• Study the way in which festivals frame the discourse of identity in relation to arts with particular attention to the local / European and local / global interfaces as well as conundrum of difference (diversity) and similarity.
• Analyze how festivals represent sites of competition for access to resources, status and power and how this competition impacts on debates about representation, openness and the public sphere.