The objective of this project is to provide public relations practioners with an understanding of marketing concepts and communication theories as they apply to the production of a local community event. This project is also intended to be a resource for other public relations practioners involved in the process of communicating with a variety of audiences and to fulfill the void of scholarly research on the subject of event planning. The end result is expected to be a resource for event planners, providing tips and insights into the development of the community festival, Orange Blossom Holiday Village.

Sustainably managed music festivals have significant value and can provide a multitude of benefits to a healthy, sustainable and desirable society if their negative impacts are mitigated and positive impacts cultivated. To reach this great potential, sustainable event management of music festivals must become widely adopted and expanded as common practice. To drive this improvement of sustainable event management, there is a need to first understand the barriers and success factors event organizers face moving their music festivals toward sustainability. This study uses a research design of mixed quantitative-qualitative methods: a survey of thirty diverse music festival organizers across the United States and interviews with five selected survey participants. Research draws on pertinent literature from sustainability theory and practice, previous research on sustainable event management, existing strategies of sustainable events, and lessons from organizational change studies. Findings revealed seven key barriers and four success factors associated with sustainable event management of music festivals as well as three specific needs of event organizers to improve sustainable event management. With these findings, seven strategies are presented to help event organizers adopt and improve sustainable event management of music festivals. This study is significant because it fills an important gap in the academic literature on events and sustainability. Additionally, this study is immediately applicable to Untied States music festivals. The findings were drawn directly from the perspectives and experiences of event organizers, and the strategies are designed to be specifically applied to their sustainable event management work.