Current economic development conditions have created conditions for cultural activities to develop, and people’s need to enjoy culture has been enhanced. Like culture, festivals have been and are being organized at many different levels. From traditional festivals that are carefully restored with new elements as well as many cultural and tourism festivals (VHDL) held in localities, management has posed many issues that need to be resolved. .
1. Activities of organizing VHDL festivals in the current period
VHDL Festival
In 2001, the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism (now the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism) issued Decision No. 39/2001/QD-BVHTT with regulations on festival organization. This regulation has introduced 4 types of festivals in our country that are subject to: that need to be adjusted are: folk festivals, revolutionary history festivals, religious festivals, and festivals imported from abroad into Vietnam. In this regulation, the VHDL festival is not mentioned. On January 18, 2006, the Government issued Decree No. 11/2006/ND-CP promulgating regulations on cultural activities and public cultural service business. In Chapter VI, Article 23 on organizing festivals stipulates that festivals include: folk festivals, revolutionary history festivals, VHDL festivals and festivals of foreign origin held in Vietnam. Thus, the VHDL festival has only been recognized for about 10 years and is a type of festival related to the celebration of a certain event such as: the 5th or 10th anniversary of the industry, locality or the government. periodically organized to meet the cultural needs of the people. VHDL festivals are often organized by a locality or an organization to promote culture with the purpose of attracting tourists. The characteristic of this type of festival is that the government and the festival host mobilize funds for all activities taking place from funding sources from other economic sectors in the form of socialization. The activities taking place at the festival are intended to serve the entertainment needs of people in the area as well as tourists from other places. The organizing unit, based on the approved script, mobilizes a large number of professional and amateur artists to practice and perform various types of art; inviting businesses to participate in exhibitions, trade fairs… Depending on the topic, scriptwriters and directors use a combination of contemporary cultural forms and traditional cultural forms. Because the festival is held for a purpose that depends on the subjectivity of some people, the content is always changed after each organization, leading to the fact that local people or tourists coming to the festival are often just subjects. Passively enjoy cultural values, rather than being active, self-conscious, and non-profit participants like people in previous traditional festivals. For this reason, some researchers still wonder whether this type should be called a VHDL festival? Or should we just call it a type of VHDL event. Although there are many different opinions, if considered from the perspective of the elements that constitute a festival, and at the same time consider the general development trend of festivals in countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia in recent years. Here, the element of ceremony is decreasing, the element of festival associated with fun and entertainment is increasing; People’s participation in cultural events reduces the direct part but increases the indirect part, through admiring the beauty and voluntarily mingling in the event space, being filmed, photographed, excited, cheering… expressing personal emotions, this VHDL event is considered a type of festival with its modern nature.
However, recent VHDL festivals in localities have taken place sequentially such as: live TV opening, starting with a speech from local leaders, followed by a reenactment of national history, local with illustrated singing and dancing programs and ending with the spirit of rising to build the homeland… The script is often built in a theatrical direction with assembled scenes, mixed with illustrated singing and dancing performances. , the content and quality of art in many festivals is not high, many places show superficial and monotonous performances. Performances that are far from reality and overuse of theatricality have made the festival boring, lacking creativity and appeal. The similarity in content, staging format as well as some performing arts activities makes the public not excited about the festival.
Currently, VHDL festivals focus too much on technical performance elements, without much interaction between the subject and attendees, mainly performance elements that impact the viewer’s senses. . There is a small percentage of VHDL festivals in many localities organized at high cost, increasingly expanding in scale, inviting many guests but with low efficiency. Although the community is the subject, it becomes the goer to the festival.
Some typical VHDL festivals
Carnaval Ha Long: since 2007 this event has been held annually in Quang Ninh province, becoming a colorful cultural party, with unique, elaborately choreographed art performances attracting tens of thousands of visitors. , local people. Carnaval Ha Long 2015 with the theme Converging the essence – Spreading smiles is the highlight in a series of unique cultural, sports and tourism activities of Ha Long – Quang Ninh Tourism Week 2015 , to introduce the land, culture and people. mine land. The art program in the festival combines singing – dancing – music – stage performance with the participation of more than 2,700 professional and non-professional actors in the province including 11 performance blocks, 10 floats, models, The mobile catwalk is impressively decorated according to the theme: Coming to Ha Long carnaval, Flower street, Returning to Ha Long, Beach town, Black pearls, Golden sunshine and blue sea, Ha Long smile … The festival also falls attracting the participation of foreign art troupes such as Thailand, Laos, China… According to statistics, Ha Long carnaval 2015 attracted more than 40,000 people and tourists to participate.
In addition to the positive aspects that enrich the cultural life of the people, the 2015 Ha Long carnaval still has many shortcomings such as: the spread in the number of actors and performances without paying attention to the investment in the elements. artistic quality (focusing on breadth without regard to depth); The situation of cutting off customers still exists, causing a lot of frustration for festival participants…
Dalat Flower Festival 2015: takes place from December 29, 2015 to January 2, 2016 in Da Lat city, Lam Dong province. Throughout the festival there are float parades, art performance groups on the streets, vegetable and flower fashion shows, impressive makeup or fairy tales… The highlight of the festival is the art program. art to celebrate the opening ceremony at Lam Vien square. The artistic activities take place for about 40 minutes and are modern, professional, innovating forms of expression with sound and light effects and combined with parades along the main streets of the city. The songs in the art program are mainly immortal love songs associated with Da Lat’s places and flowers. During the festival, other artistic activities such as calligraphy, painting, flower photography, and fire pen painting take place at Xuan Huong park. In addition, response activities attracted many tourists and people to participate such as: flower arranging contest, flower fashion contest, flower painting… The effect of the 2015 Da Lat flower festival was demonstrated by 500,000 visitors. Of which 250,000 were tourists. The festival’s art and display activities have many innovations, creating opportunities for audiences and visitors to participate and create art, creating a fun and exciting atmosphere during the festival. Besides, limitations can be seen such as: investment in flower spaces and new tourism products has not been given due attention; The quality of some programs is limited and there has been no investment in technology ideas; Buying and selling activities take place right in the offensive festival space (space for introducing agricultural products); Traffic jams still occur during rush hours…
2. Solutions to promote the value of VHDL festivals in the current context
Regardless of the form it takes, the VHDL festival must be a cultural activity organized by the people, for the people, aiming to enhance the material and spiritual life values of the community where the festival takes place. To improve the quality of artistic activities, organizers need to change the way they think about making festivals, building programs that suit the enjoyment needs of the public, especially requiring the active participation of people. Local people as the subject of the festival.
Resolution of the 9th Central Committee, Session XI on building and developing Vietnamese culture and people to meet the requirements of sustainable development of the country, our Party focuses on building Vietnamese culture and people for global development. face, towards truth – goodness – beauty, imbued with national spirit, humanity, democracy and science. Based on the views of the Resolution, in the coming time it is necessary to focus on implementing 6 tasks: taking care of building the comprehensive development of the Vietnamese people, focusing on fostering patriotism and national pride. ethnicity, ethics, lifestyle and personality; build a healthy cultural environment; building culture in politics and economics; improve the quality and efficiency of cultural activities; Developing cultural industry along with building and perfecting the cultural market; proactively integrate into international culture, absorb the quintessence of human culture…
The resolution also identified specific solutions for building and developing culture: continuing to innovate the Party’s leadership method in the cultural field. Party committees and organizations at all levels need to determine that building and developing Vietnamese culture and people is an important task during the period of industrialization and modernization of the country. Focus on innovating and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of state management of culture in the context of market economic development, international integration and the explosion of information and communication technology. Build a team of officials doing cultural work. Develop a strategy for developing a team of cultural officials. Pay attention to planning, training, fostering, and arranging leaders, cultural managers, scientific staff, leading experts, and grassroots staff. Increase resources for the cultural sector. The level of State investment in culture must correspond to the level of economic growth.
Applying the solutions proposed in the resolution to the management of VHDL festivals in the current situation, we need to pay attention to the following issues:
In the current context, VHDL festivals were born as an inevitable development in cultural life. This type not only promotes the cultural identity of each region, but also helps local economic development. Therefore, the management of VHDL festivals in general, and the management of artistic activities in festivals in particular, need to focus on the roles, responsibilities, and active participation of the community. Thereby, the positive values of national traditions are naturally transmitted from generation to generation in accordance with its inevitable development. In addition, through VHDL festivals, we also actively integrate into international culture, embracing humanistic values and the quintessence of human culture.
Preserving and promoting the nation’s cultural values in VHDL festivals needs attention in contemporary life, where conflicts between tradition and modernity, old and new, and conservation have been reflected. survive and promote. In VHDL festivals, there are many types of festivals with different properties and purposes. There are festivals that purely exploit local unique strengths to develop tourism such as Ha Long canaval and Da Lat flower festival… but there are also festivals that combine both modern elements and traditional culture such as Hue festival… therefore it would be rigid to build a general principle in managing the VHDL festival. From the perspective of heritage management, it is necessary to pay attention to the perspective of preserving and promoting the value of cultural and tourism festivals in the direction of dynamic conservation, which is reasonable in this case, because it does not imply a denial of the principles of cultural heritage. principle of preserving the status quo. The problem is choosing an appropriate conservation perspective that is acceptable to life. Therefore, the typical elements of VHDL festivals need to be preserved, considered as the soul and essence of this type of festival. In particular, it affirms the active role of the community as the nucleus of the festival organization process. They are the subject of the festival through the role of organizing, contributing, managing and conveying the message of the combination of tradition and modernity. This is consistent with the spirit of the resolution, which is to mobilize the strength of the entire society to preserve and promote traditional cultural values, encourage the creation of new cultural values… Through participation The festival also helps the community gain a deep understanding, pride, and honor of national history and culture.
The state needs to have a direction for activities in VHDL festivals in general and art activities in particular to exist in contemporary life. Technically, the state can act as an investor, sponsor, and propagandist, but it cannot act as a substitute, and should not turn a community cultural phenomenon into a state cultural event .
It is necessary to apply some principles of event organization in accordance with the spirit of the times. Marketing, fundraising, communication and promotion tools do not distort this type of festival by focusing too much on commercial factors and overlooking cultural factors.
Resolution of the 9th Central Committee, session XI on building and developing Vietnamese culture and people to meet the requirements of sustainable development of the country, passed at the end of 2014, is considered a guideline for related solutions. to culture, including the VHDL festival. Through analysis of some typical VHDL festivals, it shows that this type of festival in the market economy in Vietnam today is a typical cultural model for the harmony between traditional and modern elements, between The need to preserve unique cultural values as well as embrace the quintessence of human culture, combining the participation of local people with professional art troupes… therefore research on this type of art is necessary. This festival to come up with solutions for good exploitation and management is necessary work in the current context.
