In August 2004, while driving through Beiarn’s dramatic natural landscapes, Rune was struck by the idea of creating a jazz and rhythm festival that would embrace the valley’s beauty. Upon arriving at work, he shared his vision with the chief municipal executive, who immediately saw its potential to combat depopulation and invigorate local youth engagement. Rune’s creativity and his recent appointment to lead cultural development positioned him as the ideal catalyst for this initiative. Rune’s first task in Beiarn involved rehabilitating the primary school’s stage with a NOK1.5 million grant. Leveraging his cultural production expertise and network, he transformed it into a high-tech performance venue. He also introduced mobile equipment for outdoor shows, trained villagers to use the systems, and led a successful opening performance in January 2005 attended by roughly 200 residents. This project demonstrated Rune’s ability to translate vision into action and showed that Beiarn could host professional-grade cultural events. With the stage complete, Rune began crafting the broader concept for TGV. He knew resource mobilization would be key—but faced hurdles like attracting jazz musicians without an artistic reputation and engaging locals unfamiliar with jazz. To bridge this, he planned to integrate nature-based activities and build on Beiarn’s existing youth base camp model. This approach aimed to connect international artists with villagers through immersive experiences, making rhythm and environment central to the festival’s identity. 

Rune strategically began resource mobilization by first engaging professional jazz artists from outside the community. He targeted musicians drawn to nature-based experiences, like fishing and caving, and secured a prominent international artist from Bodø to serve as TGV’s music manager. This endorsement elevated the festival’s credibility, making it easier to attract other high-caliber performers. With the artistic foundation in place, Rune applied for funding—starting with the Northern Norway Jazz Centre, whose positive response bolstered his subsequent applications to the Norwegian Jazz Forum and Arts Council Norway. To ensure technical excellence, Rune enlisted a sound and lighting expert, also from Bodø, who had previously trained local residents and had strong credentials in high-end concert production.

After securing artists and external funding, Rune turned his focus to activating local resources—volunteers, businesses, and municipal support. To resonate with the community, he wove local culture into the festival’s design, creating unique concepts like the salmon concert and campfire-coffee concert. He personally invited key individuals, including a former municipal employee who became a sounding board for local feasibility. Rune’s storytelling—even referencing a folkloric “hulder” as part of his inspiration—sparked curiosity and added a whimsical local touch. Rune hosted a community meeting in February 2005 to formally introduce the TGV idea. Although jazz had limited popularity in Beiarn, Rune emphasized the external recognition the project had received and its potential to revitalize the area. Villagers contributed ideas for complementary activities, including farm visits and open fishing nights. Some attendees signed on as volunteers, though skepticism lingered around the ambitious nature of the festival. Rune also began collaborating with municipal staff, targeting support from his manager in the culture department who became instrumental in unlocking administrative and financial backing. The municipal culture manager helped Rune navigate formal processes, engage local organizations, and solicit business sponsorships—something new for the municipality. Municipal employees assisted with outreach to landowners and nature activity providers, adding depth to the festival’s offerings. Key partnerships, such as with the local guesthouse for accommodation and meals, strengthened the logistics. Concerts were hosted both there and on the upgraded primary school stage. In its inaugural year, TGV came to life through a blend of external credibility and local collaboration. Still, the jazz focus posed challenges for wider community engagement, raising a strategic question for Rune: how to broaden appeal while staying true to his artistic vision?

In its second year, the Groove Valley Jazzcamp (TGV) evolved into a deeper conversation between artistic ambition and community involvement. The municipality, eager to justify public funding and promote rural development, sought greater local participation from businesses, organizations, and residents. Despite organizing a community meeting, Rune had already set most plans in motion, which left villagers uncertain about their role—prompting some to feel more informed than invited. Nevertheless, Rune pressed ahead with his vision, securing renowned jazz artist Mike Stern and facilitating a performance with local youth, which significantly boosted community interest and pride. To further strengthen local connections, Rune collaborated with a local painter for promotional materials and hosted a concert in the painter’s gallery. He also explored partnerships with firms in surrounding areas to expand nature-based festival activities. While innovative, these efforts raised concerns for the municipality, which preferred leveraging established resources within Beiarn due to cost and complexity. Although local engagement increased in 2006, it wasn’t yet at the desired level. A political evaluation of TGV recommended formalizing community involvement through a governance board, both to facilitate shared ownership and to manage future development. Initially resistant to the idea, Rune eventually agreed to the board’s formation in 2007 as TGV continued under a three-year structure. To broaden public appeal, the board advised booking more mainstream artists alongside jazz performers—an approach that proved successful in drawing wider attention. However, Rune feared that growing community influence could dilute the festival’s artistic integrity, especially given the professional standards of international jazz collaborators. The case reveals an ongoing tension: how to preserve artistic excellence while cultivating meaningful local engagement in a rural context.

TGV’s first five years marked a cultural triumph for Beiarn, as villagers embraced the festival and formed strong bonds with visiting jazz artists. Activities became streamlined, and enthusiasm ran high. Yet Rune remained unsatisfied—driven by broader ambitions and artistic innovation. The increased involvement of villagers and the establishment of a governing board began to restrict Rune’s creative freedom. When Nordland county withdrew its financial support, the municipality shifted ownership of TGV to the Beiarn Volunteer Centre. Rune, unable to be employed directly, founded his own company and continued managing the festival. Though the new arrangement facilitated local volunteer engagement, it hindered Rune’s ability to mobilize external resources. He and the new music manager maintained control over the artistic direction, aiming to uphold international standards while introducing new elements like dance and a music exchange with Russia. However, the board resisted these additions, especially Rune’s improvised dance concept, “Menneskejerven.”  Despite internal friction, TGV’s 2010 edition succeeded again and further elevated Beiarn’s reputation—media coverage contributed to a growing sense of optimism within the rural community, and population numbers even rose during the festival years. Still, financial pressures mounted as the municipality considered withdrawing its economic support. Rune envisioned expanding TGV through EU funding to position it as a global creative hub. But the mounting constraints and resource mobilization challenges wore him down. Constant effort, limited freedom, and a lack of clear support left Rune at a pivotal juncture—torn between his passion to continue developing TGV and the personal toll of its demands.

 The case shows how a creative entrepreneur mobilized resources to develop a jazz festival by gaining legitimacy and embedding the initiative among local and external stakeholders. It highlights both the challenges and collective nature of resource mobilization in community enterprises, and proposes using relevant theoretical approaches to better understand the process.

Literature to Understand the Resource Mobilization Process
Community entrepreneurs, like other entrepreneurs, require access to various resources—physical, financial, human, and social—to advance their initiatives. Insights from entrepreneurship literature (Clough et al., 2019; Villanueva et al., 2012) can be used to understand how they mobilize these resources, including identifying key resource types, mobilization phases, and the associated drivers and barriers.

Literature to Understand the Mechanisms That Influenced the Resource Mobilization Process
To analyze the mechanisms shaping resource mobilization in community ventures, the legitimacy approach (Fisher et al., 2017; Lounsbury & Glynn, 2001; Tornikoski & Newbert, 2007; Zimmerman & Zeitz, 2002) and the social embeddedness approach (Jack & Anderson, 2002) offer valuable frameworks. These perspectives help explain how legitimacy and social ties influence access to resources, and assist in identifying drivers and barriers within the mobilization process.
Legitimacy approach: The legitimacy approach explains that TGV needs to be viewed as appropriate according to the existing norms, rules, and culture that guide the activities of the different resource stakeholders (Fisher et al., 2017; Lounsbury & Glynn, 2001; Tornikoski & Newbert, 2007; Zimmerman & Zeitz, 2002). The literature on legitimacy explains different legitimating strategies. Thus, building on a legitimacy approach can help you identify strategies for developing legitimacy to mobilize resources for TGV. You can also get more understanding of the different norms, rules, and culture of resource stakeholders that are likely to influence the resource mobilization process.
Social embeddedness approach: The social embeddedness approach is about how networks and relations between individuals and organizations are formed and influence the activities of resource stakeholders. Building on the social embeddedness approachcan help you to understand how entrepreneurs develop networks, trust, and a common understanding among diverse resource stakeholders to mobilize resources (Jack & Anderson, 2002). This approach helps you to understand how increased embeddedness in local structures enhances TGV’s opportunities to meet local needs and develop social wealth (Akemu et al., 2016).

Literature to understand the context
The case explores how an entrepreneur mobilizes resources at both broader and rural community levels to build a non-profit community enterprise, highlighting the role of spatial context in this process (Peredo & Chrisman, 2017; Pierre et al., 2014; Vestrum & Rasmussen, 2013). It also contrasts resource mobilization in community entrepreneurship—where volunteers play a central role—with mainstream, for-profit entrepreneurship, and offers insights into the public sector as an organizational setting and the cultural sector as an industrial context. Thus, to understand how a specific context (organizational, spatial, or industrial) can influence resource mobilization processes, you can combine the theoretical approaches above with some of the phenomenon-based literature below. You can choose one or more of the contexts to focus on the following:
Community entrepreneurship (Peredo & Chrisman, 2017; Pierre et al., 2014; Vestrum & Rasmussen,
2013)
Public entrepreneurship/innovation (Crosby et al., 2017)
Social entrepreneurship/innovation (Janssen et al., 2018; McDermott et al., 2018; McNamara et al., 2018)
Collaborative innovation (Sørensen & Torfing, 2012; Torfing, 2019)
Cultural entrepreneurship (Toghraee & Monjezi, 2017)
Rural entrepreneurship (Gaddefors & Anderson, 2019; Müller & Korsgaard, 2018).