Blackpool Illuminations: revaluing local cultural production, situated creativity and working-class values

Abstract

This paper investigates how particular class-oriented, mediatised discourses about Blackpool Illuminations negatively stereotype the resort as ‘devoid of good taste’. Moreover, conventions of design-led regeneration reflect the dispositions of those members of the creative class who articulate abstract understandings about ‘good design’ and marginalise practices that do not conform to these aesthetics. With recent proposals to upgrade the Illuminations as part of broader regeneration strategies, the authors contend that these negative depictions ignore the situated expertise that undergirds the long-standing, overwhelmingly local production of the Illuminations and take no account of the cultural values regular visitors espouse in their positive evaluations. This paper argues that planners, designers and policy-makers need to take account of local, vernacular creativities and specific cultural practices in devising cultural policies in order to avoid homogeneous cultural provision and design.