Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the main characteristics of the so called «cultural knowledge festivals» a recently much spread out specific Italian typology of festivals, dealing with different cultural disciplines (i.e. philosophy festivals, literary festivals, mathematics festivals and others). After a definition of the main features of this new typology of festivals, the author describes, for 2008, management models, communication models, financial sources, costs, audience etc., of 31 of these festival, comparing the outcome of this survey with the one of a first survey carried out for 2007. Whereas no evidence was found of significant negative impacts of the economic crisis on these festivals in 2008, there are signs that they have to cope, in 2009, with a strong budget reduction, which will affect primarily their communication investments and exhibition costs, and even lead to cancel some of them (this was recently the case, for instance, for the Philosophy Festival in Rome).