A Study on the Impact of Festival Event by Government on Local Cultural Industries - An Example from 2006 Pottery and Bamboo Festival in Nantou

• Main Authors: Ching-En Chu, 朱慶恩
• Other Authors: 張淑君
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/38165227953238466354

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 農村規劃研究所 === 96 === Recently, either public sponsored or civilian supported festival activities mushroomed on the landscape. These activities can be witnessed as far as northeastern corner of Taiwan, with sailing boat season, or as south at Kenting, sponsoring the season of wind chime, in addition to Su-ao Green Exposition, and off-shore Penghu’s wind sail Green Turtle festival. These are all attracting the attentions from everywhere. The reasons are primarily resulted from the fact that, the festival activities themselves unite the characteristics of local culture, humanistic scenery and leisure activity. Therefore it not only is the trendsetter, but also let tourists flocking into agricultural village communities, and encourages the locals with new expectations. And this further strengthens the local inhabitants to resonate with local culture, in addition to coagulate the commonwealth consciousness among the community populace. However, in the advent of time changes and economical structural transformations, traditional industries are gradually taking a downturn. Thus, government initiates the reestablishment of passions and tightly-knitted emotions towards local cultural industry through sponsoring festivity celebrations. Nevertheless, what are the benefits and impacts towards the local cultural industry through the mere act of sponsoring itself? This is the main theme that this thesis is to explore. This research adopted project study case is the 2006 Nantou pottery and bamboo cultural festivities. The reason behind selecting Nantou as case study was primarily that, since Nantou is the county and city with the most spread-out acreage with bamboo forest in Taiwan. And it possesses abundant bamboo timber resources, and the bamboo arts and crafts are thriving in this area. As for the pottery in Nantou, it started in the first year of Jia Cing in Manchurian dynasty. During early days, the bamboo industry was only the means for making ends meet for locals, and the products were restricted to daily utensils in food and housing. Nonetheless times changed and the pottery utensils had become the products of abundance and variety, and the change itself propelled the realization of Nantou into its renowned traditional arts and crafts status. From the background of pottery and bamboo arts and crafts in Nantou, we can attribute these as the showcase for local cultural industries. Thus, this research selected several artists in the fields of pottery and bamboo arts and crafts during activity period, to further explore the impacts unto local cultural industry by sponsoring festival activities. The research method adopts qualitative study and literature analysis approaches. It collects the primary materials through in-depth interviews and surveys, in addition to observations. Finally all the interviews are further analyzed and compared to generate research findings, and appropriate comparisons are made to produce relevant suggestions. This research’s discoveries were to start from the relationship between festivity and cultural industry. Since the festival activity type and variety can not be devoid of cultural elements, therefore, creating a festival activity without the content is simply cannot be sustained. Given the fact that festival activity is closely-knitted with cultural industry, thus, the creation of an activity cannot be performed in total devoid state. And it really relies upon the local cultural uniqueness and traditional industry mingling with scenery views. Furthermore, this research recognizes that the sponsoring of festival activity can only realistically contribute with limited and tangible effects toward the local arts and crafts industry. However the derivative from this intangible benefits can be wide and far-reaching. Therefore the researchers of this study conclude that, it is better off to sponsor large size festival activities, otherwise, the efforts will not be justified. Furthermore, if the arts and crafts product is pricing itself out of the market, it would also discourage the purchases from tourists. And this could result with total loss of purpose in having sponsoring this activity. As far as Nantou is concerned, the future and development of its arts and crafts products can best be described as taking the middle-of-the-road approach. The upside of this is rarity, and the arts and crafts can then be passed down to generations to come. The existing arts and crafts shops are riding high. The downside of this is that these artists and craftsmen are getting old and retiring, and this old fashioned or traditional arts and craftsmanship could be gone forever.