Abstract

Wellbeing is a rapidly growing area, and wellbeing festivals are becoming increasingly popular in the UK. Usually, festivals are designed for tourism, economic, social, and cultural benefits, rather than to address the needs of attendees (Getz, 1997; Raj, 2003; Güneş, 2022). Wellbeing festivals on the other hand promote components that specifically influence attendee wellbeing and have the potential to catalyse an inclusive wellbeing journey leading to wider society change. Wellbeing is considered a multidimensional concept that varies depending on the individual and associated culture (Waterman, 1993; Lomas and VanderWeele, 2023). However, according to the Department of Health (2014a; 2014b), the need to increase wellbeing in the UK is apparent. To date, there is no literature surrounding wellbeing festivals or, specifically, how UK wellbeing festivals are currently positioning wellbeing in the context of the equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) agenda.

In general, there is a lack of qualitatively framed content analysis research in festival and event literature (Jepson and Clarke, 2016; Nowell et al., 2017), as well as a limited number of festival or event studies on flow and social capital theory in relation to intrapersonal and interpersonal wellbeing and EDI potential. Therefore, presented will be a qualitatively framed content analysis that establishes how wellbeing is currently positioned in UK wellbeing festivals in an EDI context, with a particular focus on inclusion. Both textual and visual content from 13 UK wellbeing festivals’ websites and Facebook Events pages are analysed, with nine themes identified, providing a multi-layered multidimensional perspective that can potentially reveal more insight into the way in which festivalgoers perceive wellbeing in relation to EDI and their motivations to attend.