This paper aims to develop an illustrative case study of power and hegemony involved in the creation of a local community festival, through the representations of local communities' cultures from various ethnic groups within the city of Derby.
Drawing on observational analysis of the steering group and the planning forum processes, this paper will deconstruct the discourses utilised, deployed and reinvented in the Derby Jubilee Festival. Power is revealed as a pervasive and constructive set of forces that are both enabling and disenfranchising.
The definitions of cultures used in the construction of the festival are demonstrated to have significant outcomes for the communities involved or to be excluded from the community festival. Further elaborates how the paper positions are constructed on the basis of different discourses of power.
Few studies have developed an analysis of power and hegemony within festivals. The study shows how the values inscribed within exclusive definitions of “culture” can exclude participation from community festivals.
