ABSTRACT
This consecratory role is obvious for the many festivals that are organized according to a competition format, where juries award prizes to the most outstanding artists or works, these experts’ selections often counterposed to the ‘people’s choices’ of the larger festival audience. Such festivals have become the norm in most fields of art and culture, with formerly non-competitive festivals migrating steadily over to the competitive paradigm and established festival awards programmes continually expanding to include more and more prizes in more and more categories. Even festivals that call themselves noncompetitive have often found ways to effect a creative compromise with the competition format. Some, for example, have teamed up with a separate, established awards organization or professional association, incorporating some or all of that group’s annual prizes into a culminating awards gala on the final night of the festival. Such arrangements can be mutually advantageous, gaining for each institution an increase in consecratory leverage and making its selections more symbolically powerful.
