Revista de Pesquisa em Turismo e Hospitalidade

Festive Leisure: Significant Changes in Perception and Organization of Celebrations

Cristina Ortega Nuere and Aurora Madariaga Ort?zar

Festive Leisure: Significant Changes in Perception and Organization of Celebrations

This article aims to highlight the current relevance of leisure, emphasizing its transformations in contemporary society, and tackling a specific aspect of the leisure phenomenon, its festive dimension. The first section is related to the analysis of the festive leisure experience and the change in perception of festivities during three stages: preparation, celebration and memory. The second section focuses on celebrations as spaces for citizen participation where human diversity is considered as a feature of modern societies; the difficulties that inclusion and access pose for people with disabilities, and finally on the work developed from the City Council of Bilbao to offer festivals for all. The chapter closes with some final thoughts which bring together new ways of understanding festivals and some of the challenges involved in
organizing them.