Place-making at American Renaissance Festivals

Abstract

Where can you take a picture with a knight, eat a turkey leg, and shop for a fairy costume? All this and more are found at American Renaissance Festivals. In 1963, California hosted the first recorded festival, which was developed as a fundraising event. Today, there are around 230 Renaissance Festivals spread across the United States. Following geographers and other scholars who have researched different festivals, this study focuses on two American Renaissance Festivals: one near Kansas City, Kansas, and the other near Houston, Texas. Drawing on qualitative methods such as participant observation and just over 100 interviews helped to gain insight into the attraction and function of these festivals. These Renaissance Festivals are excellent examples of place-making because the environment, mind, and community come together to create a unique atmosphere promoting a sense of escape for the attendee and encouraging imagination, while bringing life back to historical periods of the past or to fantasy places that have never existed except in the imagination. Costumes, also called garb, of the attendees and workers play an important role inside the festival encouraging social interactions with each other and with the simulated past. The research reveals that the Renaissance Festivals use the environment, mind and community to create a place of escape, acceptance, and imagination causing people to engage in place-making.