From ‘clone towns’ to ‘slow towns’: Examining festival legacies

Purpose – Examines the role of grassroots (food) festivals for supporting the sustainability of micro and small producers, whilst exploring potential productive linkages between both stakeholders (festivals and producers) for enhancing a more authentic cultural offering and destination image in the visitor economy. Design/methodology/approach – Exploratory, qualitative and inductive. Purposive sampling, drawing on 10 in-depth interviews and 17 open-ended survey responses collected across 2014 and 2015 - drawing perspectives from traders participating in the EAT Cambridge festival. Findings – Unpacks series of serendipitous [as opposed to ‘strategic’] forms of festival and producer leveraging; strengthening B2C relationships, and stimulating B2B networking and creative entrepreneurial collaborations. Positive emergent ‘embryonic’ forms of event legacy are identified that support the longer-term sustainability of local producers and contribute toward an alternative idea of place and destination, more vibrant and authentic connectivity with localities and slower visitor experiences. Originality/value – Emphasises the importance of local bottom-up forms of ‘serendipitous leverage’ for enhancing positive emergent ‘embryonic’ legacies that advance ‘slow’ tourism and local food agendas. In turn this enhances the cultural offering and delivers longer-term sustainability for small local producers - particularly vital in the era of ‘Clone Town’ threats and effects. Applies Chalip’s (2004) Event Leverage Model (ELM) to the empirical setting of EAT Cambridge, and conceptually advances the framework by integrating ‘digital’ forms of leverage.