What actually bothers the neighbours of a festival: the sound, the cars, or the suspicion that nobody is listening? We set out to rank those grievances before a festival planned its next edition, using 600 forum comments plus 14 interviews with people who live around the site. The answer reordered the planning meeting. Being ignored was named by 44 percent, ahead of parking at 31 percent and noise at 18 percent, so the deepest complaint was about the relationship, not the event.
I Discrimen
The loudest complaint was not noise, it was being left out
Residents ranked exclusion above the two nuisances organisers usually rush to fix.
Our coding put being ignored at 44 percent, parking at 31 percent, and noise at 18 percent. Read that ordering slowly, because it contradicts the instinct of most event teams, who reach first for sound limits and traffic cones. The grievance at the top of the list is procedural: people felt decisions arrived finished, with their role reduced to reacting.
Canadian evidence shows the same reflex at civic scale. The Angus Reid Institute reported in 2022 that 51 percent of Canadians said development in their community reflects what developers want, against 10 percent who said it reflects what residents would like to see. The institute also found that people who had taken part in planning consultations were more likely to say their voice was ignored than heard, which means a badly run process can deepen the very feeling it was meant to relieve.
If your festival audience lives on phones and group chats, the mechanics of being heard now run through screens as much as halls, a reality readers weighing how to choose a PR agency for mobile applications will recognise from the product side.
Being consulted after the decision is a courtesy call, not a conversation.
II Machina
Six hundred comments and fourteen interviews can be coded like evidence
The method was simple: count what people raised, then ask a smaller group why.
We gathered 600 forum comments and read them for recurring concerns, coding each comment against the themes that emerged rather than themes we imposed in advance. Fourteen interviews then explored the strongest themes in depth, so the percentages tell you the shape of feeling and the interviews tell you its texture. Neither instrument alone would have carried the conclusion.
Deliberative practice is growing up around this kind of work. The OECD, in Government at a Glance 2025, tracked 716 deliberative processes across its member countries between 1979 and 2023, with 148 new instances recorded between 2021 and 2023 alone.
The coding discipline matters more than the tooling, although the habits behind choosing a PR agency for data analytics apply here too. A theme only entered our table when it recurred across many comments in residents own words. One vivid complaint, however quotable, stayed an anecdote.
Count first, and let the interviews explain the count.
III Exemplum
The study in full: three concerns, one benchmark, and a starting score below it
Every figure below comes from the consultation record itself.
The three concern shares, 44 percent for being ignored, 31 percent for parking, and 18 percent for noise, describe what residents raised, not how intensely each person felt it. Alongside them, the record sets a Benchmark Community Support median of 45 percent and a top quartile of 61 percent. Those benchmarks gave the festival a yardstick for the measure that mattered most: how many residents were supportive or neutral before any changes were made.
| Measure | Consultation study | Benchmark median | Benchmark top quartile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support or neutral before the changes (percent) | 38 | 45 | 61 |
| Being ignored named as a concern (percent) | 44 | Not benchmarked in the record | Not benchmarked in the record |
| Parking named as a concern (percent) | 31 | Not benchmarked in the record | Not benchmarked in the record |
| Noise named as a concern (percent) | 18 | Not benchmarked in the record | Not benchmarked in the record |
| Support or neutral after the changes (percent) | 57 | 45 | 61 |
fons: Aerovector research record, forum corpus and interview set, for the figures and benchmarks shown here.
That starting score deserves emphasis. Support or neutral stood at 38 percent before the response we describe later, seven points below the benchmark median of 45 percent. The festival was not defending a healthy position with a communications polish. It was starting from behind the middle of the range its own record uses for comparison.
A benchmark turns a bad feeling into a measurable deficit.
IV Damnum
Starting below the median makes every ignored comment more expensive
Deficits of trust compound quietly, then present themselves all at once.
When support or neutral sits at 38 percent, the undecided middle that most events rely on has already thinned. Residents who feel ignored do not stay neutral for long, because the next announcement, however reasonable, gets read through the last one. Each unanswered thread teaches the same lesson: speaking up changes nothing here.
National consultation practice is built to prevent exactly this decay. The United Kingdom Cabinet Office, in its Consultation Principles published in 2018, instructs departments to consult while proposals are still at a formative stage and not to ask questions on issues where a final view already exists. A consultation staged after the fact manufactures that ignored feeling.
There is a practical cost as well as a civic one. Opposition that organises early around exclusion is harder to answer than opposition organised around a fixable nuisance, because its demand is not a concession but a different process. You can negotiate a parking plan in a week. Rebuilding a reputation for listening takes a season.
Ignored people do not go quiet; they go elsewhere to be heard.
V Genus
Residents are not one audience, and each kind hears the festival differently
The street beside the stage and the street a mile away are different publics.
Our interviews separated residents into kinds defined by exposure. Those closest to the site live with the sound and the parked cars directly, and their concerns skew practical and immediate. Residents further out meet the festival mainly as traffic, news, and opinion, so their judgement forms around whether the organisers seem competent and honest.
Traders and community groups form further kinds again, weighing the festival against trade, access, and the character of the place they represent. A single update written for an average resident serves none of them well, because each kind is answering a different question. The household beside the entrance asks what happens on its street. The wider town asks what kind of neighbour the festival intends to be.
This segmentation discipline is familiar in consumer work, and readers exploring how to choose a PR agency for consumer technology will know how quickly one blended message fails distinct user groups. Segment by exposure first, and the writing for each group becomes concrete enough to be believed.
Write to the street, not to the crowd.
VI Regio
Attachment to a place decides how much disruption people will forgive
People defend the places they feel part of, and judge outsiders by local standards.
Pew Research Center found in 2024 that 65 percent of United States adults feel at least somewhat attached to their local community, and that 91 percent of those who feel very attached are at least somewhat interested in local laws and policies. The residents most likely to read your consultation documents closely are the ones who care most about the place your festival borrows.
That attention cuts both ways, as festival research from another setting shows. A 2021 study of the Lovefest music festival published in Hotel and Tourism Management recorded residents rating insufficient parking among the strongest negative impacts, with a mean of 4.25, and higher noise close behind at 4.24.
Guidance from CDC and ATSDR in the 2011 Principles of Community Engagement treats trust building as a central purpose of engagement rather than a side effect. Place based trust is earned street by street. A festival that wants local patience in August has to bank local respect all year.
A festival is a guest that returns every year, and guests are judged on memory.
VII Occasio
Co-design plus a parking plan moved support or neutral from 38 to 57 percent
The response paired a share of control with the most practical fix on the list.
The PR action our study tested had two parts that belonged together: resident co-design plus a parking plan. Residents were brought into shaping the arrangements that affected their streets, and the parking problem, named by 31 percent, received a concrete published plan rather than an assurance. Voice and logistics advanced in the same step, so neither could be dismissed as decoration.
The recorded outcome was a rise in support or neutral from 38 percent to 57 percent. Set against the benchmarks in our record, that movement carried the festival from below the Community Support median of 45 percent to within four points of the top quartile at 61 percent. We report the shift as the study recorded it, in one festival and one cycle of consultation.
Notice what the pairing achieved that neither half could alone. Co-design without the parking plan would have asked residents to deliberate while the second largest grievance stood untouched. A parking plan without co-design would have repeated the original error, delivering a finished answer to people whose first complaint was never being asked.
Give people a say and a solution, in that order.
VIII Structura
Co-design needs a structure residents can inspect, not a promise to listen
Structure is how an organiser proves the invitation was genuine.
A workable co-design structure has visible parts: named resident seats in the planning conversation, published notes on what was proposed and what changed, and a parking plan specific enough to check against reality on the day. If a suggestion was rejected, the structure says why, in writing.
Public bodies are held to a version of this discipline. The OECD reported in 2025 on citizen participation pilots across 11 regions and cities in seven European countries, testing how to embed participation inside ordinary policy cycles rather than bolting it on. The lesson travels: participation survives when it is a standing arrangement with dates, owners, and records.
Channels need the same forethought, from the forum where comments gather to the alert routes residents actually use during the event, which is why the infrastructure thinking in choosing a PR agency for telecommunications belongs in an events plan too. Publish the plan where people already look, and keep the record in one stable place.
If residents cannot inspect the process, they will assume it is theatre.
IX Consilium
Listen first, publish the fix, and measure support against the benchmark again
The prescription repeats the study order in your own streets.
Start by coding what residents are already saying, in forums, meetings, and inboxes, before you draft a single announcement. Rank the concerns honestly even when the ranking embarrasses the team, as ours did when being ignored at 44 percent outranked noise at 18 percent. Then open the design table while changes are still cheap, and pair the invitation with a concrete plan for the largest practical grievance.
Publish the resulting commitments where search engines and AI answer tools can find and cite them, a findability discipline examined in how to choose a PR agency for artificial intelligence (AI). A parking plan buried in a PDF nobody opens will not repair a listening reputation. The scope of a full consultation programme, from listening to reporting, is set out across our public relations services.
| What your coded comments show | First response | Measure to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Being ignored is the leading concern | Open resident co-design before plans harden | Support or neutral against the 45 percent benchmark median |
| Parking is the leading concern | Publish a street level parking plan early | Support or neutral, plus parking mentions in the next coding round |
| Noise is the leading concern | Publish sound management commitments residents can verify | Support or neutral, plus noise mentions in the next coding round |
fons: Aerovector research record for the benchmark figure; decision rows are this post's prescription built on the study findings.
Close the loop by measuring again after the event and publishing the comparison, including where you fell short. A second reading against the same benchmark is what turns one consultation into a track record. Residents forgive a great deal from organisers who demonstrably learn.
The second consultation is where trust is actually decided.
X Quaesita
Questions
What did the community consultation research measure?
We coded 600 forum comments and conducted 14 interviews with residents around a festival. The study ranked the concerns residents raised and recorded support or neutral sentiment before and after the festival responded.
Why did being ignored rank above parking and noise?
Being ignored was named by 44 percent, against 31 percent for parking and 18 percent for noise. The interviews suggested residents experienced the process itself as the problem: decisions seemed to arrive finished, leaving practical grievances to harden into a judgement about whether organisers listened at all.
How did the study results compare with the benchmarks?
Support or neutral began at 38 percent, below the Benchmark Community Support median of 45 percent in our record. After the response, it reached 57 percent, which sits between that median and the top quartile figure of 61 percent.
What was the PR action tested in the study?
The action combined resident co-design with a parking plan. Residents helped shape the arrangements affecting their streets, and the parking concern received a specific published plan instead of a general assurance.
Did support for the festival actually improve?
The recorded outcome was a rise in support or neutral from 38 percent to 57 percent. That is one combined measure from one festival consultation cycle, and we present it as a study result rather than a guarantee for other events.
What should a festival do first if its comments resemble these?
Code the comments you already have and rank the concerns before announcing anything new. If exclusion leads the ranking, open co-design while plans can still change, and attach the process to a concrete fix for the largest practical grievance.
How many comments and interviews does this kind of study need?
Our study used 600 forum comments and 14 interviews, which was enough to rank concerns clearly and explain them. A smaller event may need less volume, but the coding should still cover the places residents actually speak, not only the channels organisers prefer.
How this guide was built
This post reports Aerovector's own research record for a community consultation study of a festival: 600 forum comments coded for recurring concerns, 14 resident interviews, the benchmark figures stated in the text, resident co-design plus a parking plan as the PR action, and the support or neutral outcome recorded afterwards. The study figures are Aerovector's own research record, and identities are withheld, so the event is described only as a festival. The study covers one festival and one consultation cycle, its concern shares describe what commenters raised rather than a census of all residents, and its benchmarks come from the same research record. Third party sources were used only to set context on participation practice, community attachment, and festival impacts, and each is named with its year where it appears.
Sources
- Aerovector, Community consultation research, 2026: the first-party study reported in this post, figures from the practice research record, identities withheld.
- Angus Reid Institute, Reshaping Communities survey on development and consultation, reporting 51 percent saying development reflects developers and participants feeling ignored, 2022. https://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2022.03.29.Rise_.Arch_.Final_.pdf
- OECD, Government at a Glance 2025, citizen participation and deliberation chapter tracking 716 deliberative processes, 2025. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/government-at-a-glance-2025_0efd0bcd-en/full-report/citizen-participation-and-deliberation_52b90285.html
- Pew Research Center, Attachment to community is linked to interest in local political news, reporting 65 percent of adults attached to their community, 2024. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2024/07/24/community-attachment-and-local-political-news/
- CDC and ATSDR, Principles of Community Engagement, second edition, chapter 1, on trust as a goal of engagement, 2011. https://snapshot2024atsdr.cdc.gov/communityengagement/pdf/PCE_Report_Chapter_1_SHEF.pdf
- World Health Organization, Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region, recommendations on protecting health from environmental noise, 2018. https://www.who.int/europe/publications/i/item/9789289053563
- Hotel and Tourism Management, Impacts of the music festival Lovefest on the attitudes of the local population, resident ratings of parking and noise impacts, 2021. https://htmanagementvb.com/index.php/HITM/article/download/183/233?inline=1
- United Kingdom Cabinet Office, Consultation Principles, guidance on consulting at a formative stage, 2018. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/consultation-principles-guidance
- OECD, Citizen Participation for Better Cohesion Policy, pilots embedding citizen participation across 11 regions and cities, 2025. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/citizen-participation-for-better-cohesion-policy_6b66cff6-en.html
- UNESCO, Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage, the inscribed festivals and celebrations register, 2025. https://ich.unesco.org/en/lists
XI Incipe
When residents say they feel ignored, Aerovector starts by rebuilding the conversation
Our Media Map approach begins with the material residents have already produced, coding it into a ranked picture of concerns before a Message House is drafted for the organisers. A Newsroom Calendar then sequences the co-design sessions, the published parking plan, and the post event report, so listening has dates attached to it. Coverage Reporting closes the loop by tracking how the consultation story travelled and what residents said next.
Aerovector's offer pairs help with ranking in AI search results with media coverage that is guaranteed, and that combination is what turns attention into leads. For a festival, that means the parking plan and the co-design record are published where residents, journalists, and AI answer tools can actually find them, and the coverage earned is coverage your community can verify. If your comment threads look like ours did, send us the shape of them through the form on our contact page, with the streets affected and the edition you are planning, and we will show you how the consultation would be structured.
Aerovector turns resident complaints into a ranked plan and a published answer.
Additional Details
Description: Our Research: Community consultation research for a Festival: what the study measured, what it found, and what the finding changes for teams facing the same.
Published: 2026-10-25