Engaging the senses to explore community events

Community events are often staged by local authorities as a way to boost the local economy, improve social cohesion, and foster a sense beloging. However, although it is arguably comparatively straightforward to conceptualize how events may contribute in terms of economic impact, it is much more difficult to understand and assess how events may contribute in terms of economic impact, it is much more difficult to understand and assess how events can contribute to feelings of connectedness and belonging. To date the focus in the event management literature has been very strongly focused on what people think of event, this study instead draws our attention to what people do and how this may provide clues as to how they feel in terms of engagement. Recent studies in tourism, geography, and urban studies have started to explore the role the senses play in our engagement and participation in events. Turning to the senses as a means to explore our bodily engagement with an event provides an opportunity to examine inclusion and exclusion at an event from a new prespective. This article takes an interdisciplinary ethnographic approach to examine a case study of community and the Noosa Jazz Festival in Australia. finfing suggest that festival, though their embodied participants, can facilitite feelings of inclusion in a community. sound, vision, and the festival ambience emerged as being of key importance. The research demonstrance the benefits of interdisciplinary research, particulary drawing from sensual geographies, when exploring intangible constructs such as connectedness, inclusion, cohesion, and belonging