Abstract
Sacred processions are among the most visible ways living cultural traditions persist today, yet many are threatened by declining community participation, standardized attendance, and a widening gap between ritual meaning and touristic spectacle. This study examines the Phra Lab procession, a merit-making ritual centered on a bronze Buddha image held annually during the Songkran Festival in Khon Kaen Province, Thailand. Using a qualitative case-study design combining in-depth interviews with 35 purposively sampled community leaders, officials, and cultural-tourism specialists, and a structured questionnaire administered on-site to 339 spectators and participants recruited through convenience sampling, the study finds that the procession’s own order of march encodes its participation problem: professional performers are placed at the front, drawing public attention, while community members and spectators remain at the rear, uncounted and without a distinct role, reflecting the tokenism level of participation independently identified through a stakeholder analysis using Arnstein’s ladder. This asymmetry is reflected in attitudes toward the event: community representatives rated management, atmosphere, and community/tourism benefits significantly lower than spectators and participants (all p < 0.05), suggesting those closest to organizing the event experience it differently from those who simply attend. Drawing on theories of invented tradition, cultural capital, and ritual communities, the study proposes a framework for co-creating the procession’s design with its own community: preserving authenticity and sacredness, embedding meaningful participation into the parade itself, communicating value through memorable experience, integrating community economic production through a circular, locally sourced supply chain for ceremonial materials, and treating design as iterative and measurable. This is operationalized through a five-stage participation process and a circular-economy system with a jointly administered benefit fund. The study contributes a transferable co-creation cultural ownership model for designing festival processions, with practical guidance for community-centered parade design in Southeast Asian heritage contexts.