Natalia Nowińska-Antoniewicz is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. She is currently working on her thesis titled: Serbian comic book and popular music in the social and political transformation period connected with disintegration of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and its consequences. She is also a photographer specialising in visual anthropology and is a web comics author.

Festivalization of values

“These illustrations were created as a part of fieldwork within the research project Festivalization of values: Axionormative dimensions of contemporary music festivals in Poland carried out by Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland. For this project researchers examine not only how different axionormative orders are constructed and reproduced, but also to what extent they are internalised by participants of music festivals.

The project includes fieldwork at 6 different kinds of music festivals: festivals that promote national and conservative values; festivals that promote multiculturalism; festivals that promote the subculture values; festivals that promote Catholic values; festivals that promote the values of tradition and heritage.

Our first fieldwork took place at The Unbreakable and Independent Song Festival in Krakow in November 2019 – a conservative festival focused on patriotic music performed by singers of all age categories. The festival is also a competition and the best contestants were awarded with opportunity to perform during Final Concert as well as with in-kind and money prizes.

Illustrations present my observations and reflections on participants’ choices of repertoire and the way they performed it in front of the jury.

The forthcoming fieldwork has had to be postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic.”