Digital Workers, Well-Being and Networking: The Case of Transformational Festivals and the Importance of Co-Creation

Introduction

The personal and professional benefits that one can access through engagement with arts activities are well documented (e.g., McCarthy, Ondaatje, Zakaras, & Brooks, 2001), including transformational festivals (TFs). Our research indicates that digitization has impacted TFs in relation to production and consumption in three key ways. First, digitization enables participants to begin the co-creation of their festival experiences in advance of the formal start of the event (through the use of online communication platforms to plan and self-organize). Second, digitization provides an array of technologies that TF participants incorporate into to art they co-create for TFs they attend. Third, digitization provides TF attendees with the tools they need to stay connected and collaborate on future projects. At TFs like Burning Man (BM), participants produce the arts experiences on offer whilst also consuming them in a process called prosumption (Chen, 2012). In this chapter, we examine digitization in TFs in regard to digital workers who use digital skills in their work as professionals, and the interplay of those skills with their engagement at BM. BM is a multi-day event popular with digital workers which has been classified as a transformational festival (Hall, 2019, p. 197). Academics have become increasingly focussed on the event to explore how and why the culture is so inspirational and productive for so many of its participants (Radziwill & Benton, 2013, p. 8).

Research indicates that digital innovation can be aided by “an investment of another kind, taking place upstream and independently of the production of a given project” (Salvador, Simon Benghozi, 2019, p. 33), yet the spillovers from arts activities to digitality are underdeveloped compared with numerous studies on ICT impact on artistic creation. Accordingly, this paper is focussed on those who stand behind the development of new technologies - digital workers - with the objective of our research being to examine how engagement with arts activities at TFs can transform the way digital workers operate, and how their digital expertise is incorporated into

Digital workers, well-being & networking 225 their TF experiences. TFs are relevant to this study due to the nature of the experience that participants engage in during the week-long anti-event that is called Burning Man.

The rest of this chapter is structured as follows. First, we undertake a literature review, examining digital workers, subjective well-being and networking. Next, we outline briefly the approach taken in this study. Then we present the findings on digital workers at TFs, i.e. BM, before the discussion and conclusion of the chapter.

Literature review

The research streams examined in the literature review entail digital workers, TFs, subjective well-being and networking. They are important to the case analysis because of the interlocking nature of digital workers engaging at a TF that may enhance their subjective well-being as they engage through networking. They are related to the core focus of this study, digital workers, as digital workers attended the event, BM, at which they found subjective well-being and networking to be core elements as part of the transformational experiences they underwent.

Defining digital worker

There is no universally accepted definition of digital work, and today it is hard to find a worker avoiding digital tools in everyday activities (Webster 8c Randle, 2016). Scholars have tried to capture the new nature of the work significantly altered by the emergence of information and communication technologies (ICT) using various terms since the 1970s. Whilst there is consensus in the literature about digital work being a diverse phenomenon, there is no consensus about definition.

In this study use the term digital worker rather than other terms, such as virtual worker or digital labourer (see, e.g., Fuchs, 2014; Webster 8c Randle, 2016; Huws, 2017), as ours is a management study. As Fumagalli, Lu-carelli, Musolino and Rocchi (2018) notice digital labour is often provided in the studies emphasizing the violation of the workers’ rights by means of ICT that is out of our focus. Also, digital labour is used within studies with an industrial (Fuchs 8c Sandoval, 2014) or corporate (Bukht 8c Heeks, 2017) focus, while we focus on occupational and individual data. The term virtual is put aside as it is still considerably associated with physically dis-embedded processes (Bukht 8c Heeks, 2017; Holts, 2018) and we do not consider characteristics of dislocation crucial in the focus of our research. In our study, we follow definitions of Huws (2017) and Durward, Blohm and Leimeister (2016) highlighting the role of product - digital content -and digital tools, used for production. Although activities within digital work can be paid or unpaid, in this study, we examine professionals who are remunerated for their work.

Digital technologies are permanently influencing artistic activities. They became a source of inspiration and main media for a growing number of creators shaping new curatorial directions in museums and art centres (Marchese, 2011). Digital technologies transformed the culture circle consisted of creation, production, dissemination, exhibition/reception/transmis-sion, consumption/participation into culture network that merges different functions within online platforms (UNESCO, 2009) (see the notice about prosumption in the Introduction of this book chapter). Digital workers are the key figures for developing digital tools and services, enabling the growth of innovations (Brunow, Birkeneder & Rodriguez-Pose, 2018) and the success of digital economies worldwide (Dahlman, Mealy & Wermelinger, 2016). Digital workers are also active in cultural consumption (Campbell, O’Brien & Taylor, 2019). Despite the growing role of digital workers in artistic development, cultural consumption and the global economy, the benefits they search for and obtain from cultural consumption are still unclear.

BM has been selected as the case study because of its popularity with digital workers (Turner, 2009; Radziwill & Benton 2013) and the profound influence it has had on high-tech business communities (Turner, 2009; Radziwill & Benton, 2013; Bowles, 2014; Buhr, 2014; Trevena, 2017). Digitization is important to the experience at BM, from the use of credit cards for ticket purchase (while apologizing for its commerciality as an anti-event) (Kozinets, 2002), to the nature of the hi-tech activities in which participants engage, such as the creation of artworks and other experiences that incorporate digital technologies, such as computer-driven projections, interactive LED lighting and robotics.

Transformational festivals

Whilst BM has been classified within the academic literature as a transformational festival BM’s organizers explain on their website that BM is not a festival, but rather something resembling a cultural movement (Hall, 2019, p. 197). BM was conceived by its organizers as an experimental event that temporarily created an experience that is meant to transform participants (there are no spectators) whose economic and technological dynamic attrits and intrudes upon the integrity of the cultural process (Harvey, 1997; Kozinets 2002). Hence, digitization has become central to BM experiences, as participants use digital technologies to communicate with others in advance of BM to organize their participation in the event (such as organizing transport, food, shelter and other co-created initiatives they may be involved with), mount arts installations onsite that incorporate digital technologies and keep in touch with the BM community following their participation with the event.

Subjective well-being

Subjective well-being has been deemed beneficial for individual arts festival participants, with studies finding that the event experience positively

Digital workers, well-being & networking 227 influences self-identity, a sense of belonging, emotions and psychological fulfilment (Kitchen & Filep, 2019). The relationship between festivals and attendees’ well-being is poorly documented (Kitchen & Filep, 2019) despite practitioners examining festivals as a growing aspect of well-being in tourism (Hjalager & Flagestad, 2012, p. 737).

Findings in the literature show a range of factors within festivals that contribute to the better well-being outcomes. The study by Packer and Bal-lantyne (2011) demonstrated how music festivals provide young people with a common ground to facilitate networking, feel a joint action, disconnect from everyday routine and experience personal growth and self-discovery (p. 178). Better well-being was associated with a balanced frequency of attendance (p. 177) and variety of experiences (Ballantyne, Ballantyne & Packer, 2013) with social facets being the best predictor of the well-being effects. Among the Australian population, participation in music events with active engagement demonstrated significantly higher well-being scores compared to passive music events (Weinberg & Joseph, 2017). However, none of these studies examined well-being for festival participants who are digital workers.

The contribution of an art event to subjective well-being depends on personality and can be diverse for different groups. Attendees of the film festival in Turkey from the local community perceived the event as a provider of social benefits contributing to their well-being (Yolal, Gursoy, Uysal, Kim, & Karacaoglu, 2016). On the contrary, Liburd and Derkzen (2009) showed how international festivals in Denmark produced positive effects for participating artists from the local area but left most visitors from the local community feeling alienated and without sensing improvements in spiritual well-being. Lee, Hwang and Shim (2019) identified five attributes of the festival space that contribute to festivalgoers’ experience: Escape, Playfulness, Togetherness, Sacredness and Placeness. They concluded that festival managers could enhance experiences in different ways for different audiences.

The findings within tourism management concur with studies about the relationship between cultural participation and well-being. Social interaction (Brown, MacDonald & Mitchell, 2015; Ferilli, Grossi, Sacco, & Tavano Blessi, 2017), moderate physical activities (Brown et al., 2015; Weinberg & Joseph 2017), environment (Grossi, Tavano Blessi & Sacco, 2019), diversity (Fujiwara, Lawton & Mourato, 2015) and quality (Wheat-ley & Bickerton, 2017) of engagements are critical factors within cultural activities contributing to the subjective well-being rather than artistic characteristics of the cultural participation.

Networking

There is a consensus that networking is essential for workers in the information age (Tymon & Stumpf, 2003). Digital workers are highly concerned with social networking, visibility and self-promotion, which they associatewith career and income opportunities. Networking plays a significant role in obtaining employment in the digital sector as it is precarious (Gandini 2016).

In the theory of networking, festivals are placed among the vital mechanisms that facilitate social interaction (Gilchrist, 2000). Nevertheless, the literature on the links between festivals and networking from the perspective of attendees is scarce. There is a strong demand for networking from festival attendees who are interested in an environment that fosters social interaction (Luonila 8c Kinnunen, 2019), as they are interested in co-creating the experience (Gyimothy 8c Larson, 2015).

Social interaction within spectator-oriented festivals can be enhanced by design elements (Nordvall, Pettersson, Svensson, 8c Brown, 2014). Events produced around active participation rely on pre-existing personal, physical and situational factors (Andersson, Armbrecht 8c Lundberg, 2019), such as festival location and its non-commercial character (Larsen 8c Bterenholdt, 2019).