Event as a brand, event as a brand’s vehicle. The process of brand construction on example of towns of Subcarpathian voivodeship

The paper analyses practices of local brand construction identifying it as a process within a broader context or field of territorial marketing. It focuses on strategies carried out by formal and informal actors acting in Podkarpackie voivodeship. Territorial authorities use symbolic or material resources to construct and promote meanings among the possibly broadest number of recipients: citizens, investors or tourists. The symbolic resources used in analysed practices are different components of local cultural heritage: historical and fictional personae, important or less important past events, relics, architecture etc. Since the number of recipients is limited these processes are in fact antagonistic and are about competing between different territorial actors: villages, towns, cities, regions and states. They are understood here anthropologically as an arena of territorial marketing. The paper focuses on social events and describe how local authorities strive to build – basing on possible elements of heritage – a well appraised festivity being either vehicles of brand or the brand itself. It describes strategies the actors use to root it into the local context, to sustain its importance and recognition and do how they evaluate the effectiveness of these practices