Universities and festivals: thinking critically about cultural production

Laura Ager

Universities, Cities and Transformation: Practices of Cultural Intermediation and Expectations of Knowledge

Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester, 2nd September 2014

Breakdown of what festival goers expect to pay for a UK festival

£423.01:

£103.66 on a ticket £80.02 on food and drink £71.61 on camping gear £60.70 on transport £49.67 on wet weather gear £57.35 on festival fashion and dress-up

source: http://www.gigwise.com/news/81652/young-people-unable-to-attend-festivals-due-to-average-spend-of-%C2%A3420

no single discipline, a field at the intersection of existing research fields:

universities and the knowledge-based economy

sociology / cultural studies

creative entrepreneurship / cultural political economy

cultural geography / urban studies

festival studies / event management / tourism

Festivals that have a UK university as a strategic partner

source: totally stolen from Flickr

universities relying more on fees and external resources

universities becoming more exclusive (student fees)

becoming more like other corporate bodies?

managerialism and governance mechanisms

over-regulated – contradictory policies

measurement indices and academic targets

disciplines under threat

people! - lots of them, disciplinary communities of practice

cultural assets & space for cultural programming

original creative work, research outputs

social networks, existing partnerships,

a history of extra-mural missions & engagement

universities are all different and are changing – dynamic field

disciplines under threat are fighting back?

positive aspects

WHY?

‘third’ missions - public engagement agenda

placemaking - urban competitiveness

policy-related reasons - KE, REF, impact agenda

…...a set of ‘enabling’ conditions?

HOW?

collaborations, informal networks and shared activities

entrepreneurial & social infrastructures

the intermediaries:

‘taste-maker’ / legislator

a legitimating authority

curation as a methodology

professional praxis

public cultural campus

social & cultural capital

cultural entrepreneur

a ‘boundary spanner’ or enabler

aesthetics, cultural production

creative response to consumption

serendipity, networks, access

… & also social and cultural capital

Does it make sense?

Depends on your view of a festival….

Village Feast. 19th century reproduction of 16th century woodcutsource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival

An ‘absence of footlights’ - no division between performer and spectator

a temporary social space, characterised by freedom, equality and abundance

a 'spectacle without a stage', a communal performance

free and familiar contact between 'the people'

the ‘traditions of the oppressed’

a challenge to officialdom and oppressiveness – a metaphor for resistance in Russia during the Stalin era

The theatre, which seems and claims to bring us together, in fact disperses and atomizes us.

spectatorship is by its very nature passive

the festival involves every spectator becoming an active participant

spectatorship is suspended, the difference is between sympathy and empathy

romantic folk festival and French revolutionary festivals

a ‘safety-valve’ for society

A book launch / talk delivered in a tent at Green Man festival 2013

"a psychedelic history of Britain“

places the origins of Glastonbury festival in 1960s counter culture

LSD was legal for a number of years in the UK

people trying to evade, experiment, and escape

image source:http://www.optimo.co.uk/books-2012/

Burning man festival 2014 – ‘Caravansary’

Does the university have any control over this?

interviewing festival producers / organisers:

what was the catalyst?

what are your objectives / influences?

the meaning of the texts & the discourses represented?

how are they selected, arranged, mediated?

what is the platform?

what is your role?

what are the advantages of participation?

The theory bit…..

from Bourriaud - relational aesthetics, the crossing of a threshold, dialogue, being ‘up for a more speculative game’

from Habermas, via McGuigan - public cultural sphere, communicative practices, democratic citizenship

from Ranciere - an egalitarian politics

from Lévi-Strauss – bricolage, do-it-yourself

from Deleuze - assemblage, power, deterritorialisation?

…theories of resistance, gaining purchase, (change?)

The other view…..

capital is finding new territory to break open

the university as an ‘academic recuperation machine’

reterritorialisation, new assemblages to accommodate

or more pragmatically….

Bourdieu’s (1991) concept of ‘working dissensus’

continuous struggle over symbolic power

@LIFFlaura l.c.ager@edu.Salford.ac.uk