The Well-Being Effects of Developing and Staging a Community Festival During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Abstract

This article considers the well-being outcomes of a community festival that was developed and staged in 2020, during the first lockdown associated with the coronavirus pandemic (hereafter the pandemic). It is an autoethnographic account that reports on well-being benefits as people engaged in a festival project together. Social aspects of well-being were enhanced through collaboration and connection, positivity, and community volunteering. Environmental aspects of well-being were enhanced by activities that reconceptualized and reworked the local environment and enabled learning and sharing. The festival created opportunities for play, laughter, and frivolity and developing a community story of sharing and coping. The conclusion identifies the learning from the process of creating a community festival in the midst of crises in the hope that others will be able to take some of these ideas forward in their own communities.