Abstract
ABSTRACTThis article sets out key findings of an interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project that uses Long Live Southbank’s (LLSB) successful campaign to retain London’s Southbank Undercroft for subcultural use – skateboarding, BMXing, graffiti art, etc. – as a case study to generate discussions about young people’s experiences and engagements with (sub)cultural heritage and political activism. At the heart of this inquiry is the perceived contradiction between the communicative practices of subcultures and social protest movements: the former typically understood to be internally oriented and marked by strong boundary maintenance, and the latter, to be successful, to be externally oriented to a diverse range of publics. In explaining the skaters/campaigner’s negotiation of this contradiction, we look to the inclusive and everyday concepts of ‘inhabitant knowledge’ [Ingold, T., 2000. The perception of the environment: essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge], ‘vernacular creativity’ [Burgess, J., 2009. Remediating vernacular creativity: photography and cultural citizenship in the Flickr photosharing network. In: T. Edensor, D. Leslie, S. Millington, and N. Rantisi, eds. Spaces of vernacular creativity: rethinking the cultural economy. London: Routledge, 116–126] and ‘affective intelligence’ [Van Zoonen, L., 2004. Imagining the fan democracy. European journal of communication, 19 (1), 39–52]. In eschewing the exclusionary and contestatory language of (post)subcultural and spatial theories, this article proposes new frameworks for thinking about the political nature of young people’s bodily knowledge and experiences, and the implications of this for the communication of (sub)cultural value.
Highlights
Undercroft for subcultural use – skateboarding, BMXing, graffiti art etc – as a case study to generate discussions about young people’s experiences and engagements withcultural heritage and political activism
For the International Journal of Heritage Studies, we suggested that the Undercroft calls for an extension of even these frameworks in recognising not just the experiences and the expertise of ‘citizen experts’ such as the skateboarders involved in the Long Live Southbank (LLSB) campaign
We examine the communicative dynamics which prevented decision makers at the Southbank Centre from ‘hearing’ the heritage claims articulated by the Long Live
Summary
Within sociological and cultural studies of skateboarding, street-skating has been framed through two dominant theoretical frameworks: a focus on skater’s transgressive uses of space often via De Certeau and Lefebvre (Borden 1998; 2003; Chiu 2009); and a focus on the communal and contested relationships between skaters and mainstream culture via subculture and post-subculture literature (Brake 1985; Beal 1996; Du Pont 2014). Which I've got in touch, I've got a feeling from being here, when we had such a big you know community here of people coming together (Participant four) This sensual and tactile language of ‘feeling’ a familiar and familial connection to the Undercroft speaks of a more bodily rather than cognitive understanding of the space. The above account of breeding localness – the ‘Southbank style’ – through retreading and revising familiar ‘lines’ fits Ingold’s distinction between the ‘countryman’ and ‘stranger’, and points to more spatially and temporally complex processes Throughout their interviews the younger generation of skaters we spoke to were at pains to highlight both the diversity/inclusivity of the Undercroft as a both a material space and a sub-cultural community. We will explore the role of mediation in the constitution of the Undercroft, and the resultant (re)use of media within the LLSB campaign as a method of communicating the skaters’ bodily understandings and inhabitant knowledge in mobilising the public and decision makers
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