Making Space: Investigating the diversity conundrum for British music festivals

Jo Haynes*, Magda Mogilnicka

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)
406 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Culture always speaks to the history and meaning of place. Music festivals in particular carry considerable significance as they are produced through spatial and temporal processes that extends their symbolic and material meaning beyond their local settings. The onset of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in Bristol intensified debates about festival diversity. Drawing on interviews with Bristol-based festival producers, this article examines popular music festivals and the places, communities and identities they represent. Rather than repeating the common banal criticism of festivals for being too white, we contribute to the debates by unravelling complex processes embedded within festival production. Using Lefebvre’s concept of conceived space, we argue that (racial) diversity is a spatial conundrum for music festivals. We demonstrate this through the way festival space is conceived: culturally – as it is framed within established music festival discourses; economically – through entrepreneurial networks of independent producers within local music cultures; socially – their ideals (including diversity), tastes and lifestyles inadvertently organise and represent particular symbolic and material formations of (racialised) identities and communities.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)338-357
Number of pages20
JournalSocial and Cultural Geography
Volume25
Issue number2
Early online date1 Dec 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2024

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors gratefully acknowledge funding support for the project ‘European Music Festivals, Public Spaces, and Cultural Diversity’ (2019–2022) from the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) Joint Research Programme ‘Public Spaces: Culture and Integration in Europe’. We also wish to thank the Editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments on an earlier draft. Most importantly, we thank our festival producers for their valuable contribution during a very difficult period.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

  • Bristol
  • lefebvre
  • music festival
  • racial diversity
  • racialised spatiality

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