Buzz and the Creative City: Traversing Atmospheres of the Urban Creative & Cultural Industries in Leeds

1 Buzz and the Creative City: Traversing Atmospheres of the Urban Creative & Cultural Industries in Leeds Samuel Stockley Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. School of Performance and Cultural Industries, The University of Leeds. February 2019 2 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2019 The University of Leeds and Samuel Stockley The right of Samuel Stockley to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. 3 Acknowledgements Though this PhD dissertation is an individual work, its completion would not have been possible without the support of many. I’d like to thank the late Dr Anna Upchurch who supervised my MA research project which was in many ways a pilot study of this PhD. Her provocations and reading recommendations are scattered throughout this work. This thesis has benefitted greatly from the experienced supervision and wealth of knowledge offered by the late Professor Calvin Taylor. Calvin’s work to support my PhD directly and my career more broadly have been enormously valuable. Dr Philip Kiszely has been central to my PhD from start to finish; at turbulent times, and there have been many, Phil has been my constant. For much of this process, Phil has been my sole supervisor; his dedication has far exceeded that which he signed up for, and I am very grateful for that. My friends Lee Prior and Nathan Gaskin, of App Brilliance Ltd, donated significant time and resource to this project by building the mobile application I needed to capture my data. I thank them for contributing their expertise. More personally, many thanks are also owed to my family, who’s support during this process reflects a general commitment to my education since childhood. And finally, to my fiancée, Dr Davina Patel; there is no way I would have completed this process without you. There is no one that I’ve leaned on more, and nobody that could have offered the support and strength that you have done with quite the same humour and compassion. Thank you. 4 Abstract ‘Buzz’ isn’t an unknown term in Creative and Cultural Industries scholarship, though it has received little by way of targeted investigation. This thesis, which uses ethnographic and autoethnographic approaches, explores the atmospheric terrain of Buzz as related to the Creative and Cultural Industries in the city of Leeds, UK. It is underpinned by original empirical research, namely both the audio and GPS data of ‘walking interviews’, with sixteen Leeds-based Creative and Cultural sector workers. Developed through the transdisciplinary lens of Geohumanities, a constellation of disciplines and methods that approach the human meanings of place, a new conceptualisation of Buzz is advanced that demonstrates the efficacy of the perceptual, experiential, and sensate space of the city on the Creative and Cultural Industries. Multiple new concepts are developed; Firstly, ‘The Layered City’ conceptualises different strata of urban space based upon various issues of access and openness, up to and including an atmospheric realm. Secondly, ‘The Buzz Cycle’ conceptualises the myriad cyclical dynamics and reciprocities of people and place within a given Creative and Cultural Industries milieu, and thirdly, ‘The Buzz Ecology’ conceptualises the wider city which is its context. In demonstrating the crucial micro-geographies and subjectivities of the individual, this thesis configures the milieu of the Creative City, and the experience of its Buzz, as an individualised and subjective, as well as collectivised and objective, terrain. In so doing, it meaningfully expands upon existing scholarship by advancing current knowledge into the role that place plays for the sectors, to newly include the intangible experiencing of the atmospheric terrain of Buzz in tandem with the more readily understood and scrutinised terra firma of the city. 5 Contents Acknowledgements 3 Abstract 4 Contents 5 Structure 8 Personal Motivation 10 Introduction 14 Research Questions 20 Chapter One: Laying the Theoretical Groundwork 21 1.0 Introduction 21 2.0 Space, Place, and The Layered City 21 2.1 Looking to the Earth in a Post-Internet Era 21 2.2 In Search of Place 25 2.3 The Layered City 38 3.0 Philosophies of Atmosphere and Experience 41 3.1 Beginning a Dialog in Atmosphere 41 3.2 Sensing the Scene; Atmosphere, Staging, and Place-Making 49 4.0 A History of Walking; Mobilities of Mind and Body 60 4.1 Philosophies of Walking 60 4.2 A History of City Walking 68 5.0 Conclusions 84 Chapter Two: Exploring the History of Leeds 86 1.0 Introduction 86 2.0 Woodhouse Moor; Open Spaces, Cultural Happenings, and Aesthetic Incongruity. 88 3.0 Park Square; Industrial Leeds, Wealth Inequality, and ‘Dark’ History 94 4.0 Briggate Street and the Victorian Arcades; Placelessness, Peripheral Space, and Deindustrialisation. 98 5.0 Kirkgate Market; Everyday Culture, Crossing Thresholds, and Mixed Communities 103 6.0 The Leeds Canal; Urban Entrepreneurialism, and Terrain Vague. 108 7.0 Conclusions 112 Chapter Three: The Creative and Cultural Industries 114 6 1.0 Introduction 114 2.0 Background 114 3.0 Space, Place, and Milieu. 117 4.0 The Post-Industrial CreatiVe Economy 127 5.0 Measuring the CreatiVe and Cultural Industries in Leeds (and The North) 130 6.0 The CreatiVe and Cultural Industries in Leeds 135 7.0 Conclusions 146 Chapter Four: Buzz 148 1.0 Reflections from Watershed, Bristol 148 2.0 Introducing Buzz 152 3.0 Critiquing Buzz 154 4.0 DeVeloping Buzz 165 5.0 Conclusions 168 Chapter Five: Methodology 170 1.0 The Willis Tower 170 2.0 Introduction 172 3.0 In search of Quality; Exposing Depth, IndiViduality, and Experience 173 4.0 Capturing Buzz; Methods for Mapping Atmosphere 181 5.0 Walking InterViews 187 6.0 From Walking to Data; A Mobile Application and How to Use It. 198 7.0 Conducting the fieldwork; Participants and Process 202 8.0 Ethics and Positionality 208 9.0 Terms 209 Chapter Six: Findings 211 1.0 Mark’s Cottage 211 2.0 Introduction 214 3.0 Buzz, Accessibility, and Openness 216 4.0 Buzz, Moments, and Remembering 233 5.0 Buzz, Objects, and Aesthetics 249 6.0 Buzz, CreatiVity, and Work 263 7.0 Buzz; Non-Places, Dark Sites, and Liminal Spaces 271 Chapter Seven: Conclusions 288 1.0 Chapter Summaries 288 2.0 Responding to the Research Questions 290 3.0 UnresolVed Questions and GeneratiVe Conclusions 294 7 4.0 Limitations and Recommendations 299 Bibliography 301 Appendices 329 1. Co-Explorer Details 329 2. ‘Geo-Record’ App Screen Shots 330 3. Ethical Approval Form 331 4. Example Consent Form 332 8 Structure This research project has seven main chapters. Chapter one focuses on the thesis’ key theoretical contexts, and explores a history of scholarship about Space and Place (the field of study), a history of literature about Atmosphere (the concept of study), and finally a history of Walking (both concept and approach of study). Chapter two explores the modern history of Leeds (the context of study), locating this thesis and some of its broader concerns or motifs as part of the narrative of Leeds. Chapter three introduces the Creative and Cultural Industries (the subject of study), considering the sectors as academic and policy concerns, with focus applied to the importance of place in general, and the case of Leeds more specifically. The concept of Buzz will then be introduced in the following part, chapter four, through a consideration of existing engagements with the notion, and a development of them into original concepts. In chapter five, walking interviews will be explored (the method of study), as well as crucial aspects of my own research approach documented and explained. The fieldwork outcomes are detailed in chapter six, wherein interview transcripts and location data are brought together and analysed firstly thematically and then spatially. And finally, chapter seven will conclude the thesis, responding specifically to the research questions. I have made the stylistic decision to enrich the delivery and presentation of numerous parts of this thesis through extended passages of thick description, deploying an autoethnographic approach at various times throughout. The thesis therefore represents somewhat of a departure from a traditional dissertation in the sense that it is, from start to finish, underpinned by the approaches of autoethnography. This decision, made for reasons relating both to style and also to the kinds of knowledge I seek to expose, has resulted paradoxically in a methodology being employed prior to my formal methodology chapter. To address this paradox of structure, I open this thesis with a ‘Personal Motivation’ statement that begins the work of positioning myself as researcher. 9 In the case of chapter two, my history of Leeds is organised around a series of autoethnographic reflections. More than a chronological account of moments key to the development of the city, it instead spatialises and narrativises those moments through place. Chapters four, five, and six are all prefaced by short autoethnographic pieces which function as contextualising vignettes or framing devices, introducing some of the key concepts and foreshadowing some of the important themes and ideas found in their respective chapters. Specifically; Chapter four introduces Buzz through an autoethnographic reflection written in a café in Bristol, chapter five introduces walking as a research approach through an autoethnographic reflection from a skyscraper in Chicago, and chapter six introduces my research findings by considering the relationships between place and experience through an autoethnographic account of a stay at a remote Scottish mountain bothy.

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