ABSTRACT
Local governments frequently host or support multicultural festivals and events, viewing them as a community development tool that facilitates the encountering of diversity in a safe environment, and demonstrates a welcoming and inclusive community. However, there are challenges in ascribing such community-building goals to these events. In this chapter, we focus on the Govanhill International Festival and Carnival held in Glasgow, Scotland. This multicultural community festival was established in 2016 in Glasgow’s most ethnically diverse neighbourhood . The rationale behind the festival’s inception was to generate awareness, understanding and tolerance of difference, and be an anti-racist community event that celebrates the contribution immigrants have made to the diversity, culture, community and the rich history of the area of Govanhill. Our aim with this chapter is to better illuminate the tensions inherent in organising a multicultural community festival that is charged with representing a diversity of languages and nationalities while standing slightly outside of the institutional structures of local government (sometimes deliberately to maintain its credibility). We shed light on the complexities and nuances of power relations and stakeholder influence, and on the politics of organising such events.
