Well, looking for research, I guess. I have this idea that I want to try and develop, I’m just not sure where to start.
My husband and I were talking about Neopagan festivals, and he pointed out that the first few “festivals” were in fact much more like sci-fi or comic cons held in hotels than the outdoor camping community type festivals of today. One of the first, he says, was put together by the publisher Llewellyn, to sell books. Of course, today there are plenty of vendors at most festivals, but he seemed a little aghast at the idea that a festival itself had the main and stated intent of commerce.
But he also mused for a bit on how stunning and mindblowing it must have been (and still is, for first timers) to go to a festival and discover that other people were interested in similar things, to compare different knowledge and traditions, and to generally exchange ideas as well as actual goods and services.
I said something rather offhand about how temporary bazaars, market days and festivals were always like that - people came to sell stuff, and while they were hanging out, exchanged ideas from one culture or subculture to another. The neopagan festivals, I WAGged, were just another example of this historic phenomenon.
Can anyone confirm or refute this? Has anyone done any actual research into the information-transmission-at-central-places-of-sale phenomenon (especially interesting to me if those centers are temporary in nature), or is it one of those things I learned from reading historical fiction that’s just plain wrong?