Marketing a sustainable rural utopia : the evolution of a community festival

As traditional rural economies decline, new consumption-basedeconomies are taking their place. Increasingly, these new economies arebeing constructed and places being re-imagined, reinvented and re-packagedto attract urban consumers. Spearheading this transition is a multitude of festivals that seek to position a given place positively within aburgeoning and highly competitive tourism marketplace. There is a proliferationof festivals spanning wine, cuisine, arts and heritage throughoutrural Australia; Gibson and Connell (2005) estimate that some 600 musicfestivals exist in New South Wales alone.