Knowing Your Neighbours - How Living Room Concert Festival ‘Gluren bij de Buren’ Affects the Sense of Community Throughout 23 Cities in the Netherlands

The aim of this project is to find out whether artistic project by and for neighbourhoods have an impact on the sense of community, using the case of Dutch music festival ‘Gluren bij de Buren’. In order to measure whether social impact happens and/ or lasts, a survey was conducted during two moments in time: directly after the festival and two months later. After analyses of both questionnaires it turned out that people felt closer to their neighbours: connectedness, social cohesion and social in- and exclusion all increased and thus the perceived sense of community increased. During this study, an unforeseen worldwide pandemic occurred. Because it was unforeseen, this huge factor is not taken into account in the setup of the research. Even though, the COVID-19 virus might has impacted the results of this study, the conclusion can be drawn that socially engaged art project do stimulate community sense and social cohesion among its participants