One-day Interdisciplinary Symposium
University of Central Lancashire – 16 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2017
Blackpool is one of the most famous seaside resorts in Europe and a large entertainment centre. It came to prominence in the nineteenth century. Although a ‘late developer’, it caught up very rapidly in the later nineteenth century, successfully capitalising on the growth of the railway network that dovetailed with increased working-class spending power in the industrial North of England. Blackpool also benefited from both world wars. However, since the 1970s, the town has experienced a period of decline due to a range of structural and cultural factors. Changing patterns of leisure and consumption in the UK, characterised most pointedly by the arrival and growth of cheap package holidays to southern European resorts catering specifically for British holidaymakers together with emergent notions of post-Fordist leisure, have left Blackpool struggling to sustain its traditional role as a working class family resort whilst simultaneously reinventing itself as the location of niche leisure markets. In areas such as presenting itself as a LGBT friendly resort, a weekend destination for hen and stag parties, as well as appealing to the grey pound at the quieter ends of the season, the town has met with a sizable degree of success. Similarly, the annual punk music and street art festivals are now regular features on the Blackpool calendar and have been successful in bringing non-traditional consumers to the town, as well as raising its profile within alternative cultures. In other areas, notably on ‘big ticket’ projects, Blackpool has experienced sustained blows to its aspirations; in the mid-1960s Blackpool narrowly lost out to Lancaster as the site for a new university in the North-West of England; in the 1970s Blackpool was a serious candidate for EuroDisney before Paris was chosen; whilst the ambitious Millennial plans to transform Blackpool into a Las Vegas type resort, modelled on the regeneration of Atlantic City in the USA, were stymied by a 2006 Government Report favouring Manchester ahead of the favourites Blackpool for location of any ‘supercasino’. The contemporary image of Blackpool is one of kitsch and decline, a perception that is not helped by the volume of socio-economic indicators that cast the town in an unenviable light. In recent years a number of league tables which, amongst other indicators, identified Blackpool as having the lowest male life expectancy in England, the largest per capita number of prescriptions issued for anti-depressants, and the lowest full-time average wage in the UK, positioned Blackpool as a ‘left behind’ town in terminal decline. The large vote in favour of leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum did nothing to challenge such perceptions.
This one-day cross-disciplinary conference is meant to discuss the past, the present and the future of Blackpool as a tourist destination and cultural centre, and its representation in different media. Possible topics of papers include:
- Blackpool on film, television, photography, literature, graphic art and postcards
- Blackpool and the history of the music hall
- Blackpool and the tourist gaze
- Blackpool and the problem of regeneration
- Blackpool and the North
- Blackpool and the working class’ consumption and heritage
- Music scenes in contemporary Blackpool
- Live entertainment in Blackpool
- The history and meaning of Blackpool Illuminations
- ‘Gay Blackpool’
- The growth and decline of sport in Blackpool
- Blackpool and national, regional and local politics
Conference organisers
Ewa Mazierska, Peter Atkinson, Les Gillon, Alan Hughes
Please send 200 word proposals for papers with short biogs to EHMazierska@uclan.ac.uk by 30 September 2017