Purpose: This memo outlines our team’s research into the problem of how to maintain the cultural momentum of Riyadh Season.
Question: How can we create ongoing yet sustainable cultural experiences once Riyadh Season is over?
Sub-questions:
• What aspects of Riyadh Season are people enjoying?
• What kinds of things would they like to see continuing once the Season is finished?
• Of those things, what are sustainable and cost-effective?
Methods and justification: Riyadh Season has been very successful in terms of creating a sense of community, engaging the public, drawing tourists, and providing space where people can envision a bright future for their city, in line with Vision 2030.
The problem is that Riyadh Season is a temporary set of attractions. We would like to know whether people in Riyadh who have enjoyed the Season would like to see aspects of these experiences extend past the end of the Season, and if so, which ones they perceive as sustainable and cost-effective.
To discover the answers to these questions, we conducted a semi-structured, 15-minute interview with 5 people who had attended at least 3 Riyadh Season events. An interview was necessary to answer our questions, because we wanted to know about people’s subjective perspectives and we wanted them to generate ideas.
Findings: After analyzing our participants’ responses, we discovered that people most enjoyed concerts and restaurants.
For three out of the five participants, the reason they enjoyed these events (besides just the great food or great music) was because of how they helped create a sense of community and national pride, “making a space for us to be together,” as one participant said. They believe that it’s possible to extend the positive aspects of Riyadh Season by creating community events and activities that help reach those goals.
One participant said that he didn’t really believe it was possible to extend the kinds of activities past Riyadh Season, and one participant said she thought that simply having more concerts and building more restaurants was the only way to “keep the momentum going.”
Limitations: This was a very small sample (5 people) and may not be representative of the general population’s perspectives. This data was also limited by the specific experiences of the participants themselves. A broadly distributed survey could offer more insight into whether or not these perspectives are representative of the whole.
