A Research on Planning and Development of Taichung Jazz Festival, From 2003 to 2008

[[abstract]]Festival events are the cultural activities people feel the most about. Council for Cultural Affairs started assisting every city to hold “National Arts Festival” and”International Minor Performances” since 1994. Each city holds international cultural arts festival according to “One Festival Every Month” project promoted by Tourism Bureau on 2001, which enhanced every city to market local industries by giving festival activities, and developed different styles of events focus on local features. Taichung City, which sees “culture, economy and internationalism” as the goal of its city plan, choose “Jazz” to be the theme of the arts agenda, in hope to connect and interact with the whole world through Jazz Festival, which combines arts education with performance to wake up local jazz musicians and the prospective audience. However, jazz is not originated from Taichung, therefore it’s indeed a challenge to stimulate local tourism business by holding Taichung Jazz Festival at the same time infuse with international savor. The object of this research is to understand a festival event based on an unoriginal culture, and to achieve its final goal by holding the cultural events, which combine with local industries and develop local cultural features, in a long run, connect with the entire world. This research help understand the organizing process and current situation of Taichung Jazz Festival through the cross-integration of the in-depth interviews and secondary data analysis of qualitative studies. Also, the suggestions of future activities are further discussed. The research shows that Taichung Jazz Festival expands its scale year by year and gradually develops its own pattern. However, the arena seems to be unable to load current event-goers and massive traffic flow, and the linking with local industries is not strong enough. Besides, there is the deficiency of localization, as well as the expense resource and media promotion. One of the biggest problems of future Taichung Jazz Festival is the lack of sustainable development mechanism. Accordingly, the suggestions for the future development of Taichung Jazz Festival are: 1. to make a perfect arena operation plan, 2. to add more traits of the events to advertise the festival, 3. to expand characters of local cultural agenda, 4. to build sustainable development mechanism.