CREATIVITY AS AN ADAPTIVE PROCESS IN THE MAKING OF A CIVIC PARADE EVENT IN MANCHESTER: AN ETHNOGRAPHY A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of PhD Social Anthropology in the Faculty of Humanities 2014 JESSICA SYMONS SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES School of Social Sciences Department of Social Anthropology CONTENTS Contents .................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Declaration .............................................................................................................................................................. 5 Copyright .................................................................................................................................................................. 5 Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................................ 6 Prelude: the story of my fieldwork ................................................................................................................ 7 Chapter 1: Setting the Scene ........................................................................................................................... 13 The constituent parts of Manchester Day Parade ............................................................................. 15 Parade makers ............................................................................................................................................. 16 Parade as an event ..................................................................................................................................... 19 Organising parade...................................................................................................................................... 21 Interpreting parade ................................................................................................................................... 23 Parade roles .................................................................................................................................................. 26 Instrumentalised creativity ........................................................................................................................ 30 Chapter 1 conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 37 Chapter breakdown .................................................................................................................................. 38 Chapter 2: Producing culture ......................................................................................................................... 40 Making Manchester through culture ...................................................................................................... 41 Making culture through creativity .......................................................................................................... 47 Making the public make culture ............................................................................................................... 57 Chapter 2 conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 61 Chapter 3: Conceptualising parade ............................................................................................................. 63 Parades as assemblies .................................................................................................................................. 65 Manchester Day Parade as a parade .................................................................................................. 72 Parade as an event ......................................................................................................................................... 79 Parade as organised entity ......................................................................................................................... 86 The artist-led account .............................................................................................................................. 89 The art car account .................................................................................................................................... 90 2 the street theatre account ...................................................................................................................... 91 The community project account .......................................................................................................... 92 The city records account ......................................................................................................................... 93 Chapter 3 conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 95 Chapter 4: Making parade ............................................................................................................................... 97 Imagining parade ............................................................................................................................................ 97 Parade as an ‘art object’ ............................................................................................................................ 106 Parade as an emergent entity ................................................................................................................. 110 Chapter 4 conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 124 Chapter 5: Whose narrative is it anyway? ............................................................................................. 127 Community groups on parade ................................................................................................................ 127 Looking for synergy .................................................................................................................................... 133 Making with synergy .................................................................................................................................. 137 Collaborative making with ‘the italians’ ............................................................................................ 150 People as emergent entities .................................................................................................................... 157 Chapter 5 conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 159 Chapter 6: Creativity is the engine, ideas are the fuel ...................................................................... 161 Parade artists as ‘creative guides’ ........................................................................................................ 169 Ideas and creativity .................................................................................................................................... 174 Control over ideas ....................................................................................................................................... 178 Chapter 6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 183 Conclusion: On creativity .............................................................................................................................. 186 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................................... 188 Final wordcount: 72148 3 ABSTRACT Creativity as an Adaptive Process in the Making of a Civic Parade Event in Manchester: An Ethnography This thesis uses insight drawn from fieldwork among people developing a civic parade in Manchester over 2011-12 to analyse what happens in the translation of ideas into entities for display. It argues for creativity as an adaptive process, a responsive, dynamic activity manifested by parade makers, as they sought to realise the imagined event. It traces the roles that underpinned parade production and how people made sense and use of allocated responsibilities, while working within and through organisational boundaries. It situates the parade as an ‘art object’ (Gell 1998), constituted of assemblages at different scales (De Landa 2006), each embedded in a web of relationships to show how: a civic attempt to bring a public into being provides insight on the constituting organisational structures; the operational style of the arts organisation commissioned to produce the parade, led to imagining it into existence; and how two community groups responded to the parade parameters according to their own social dynamics. The thesis builds on ethnographic analyses of collaborative activities to consider how organisational shapes combine and how their constitutions substantially affect evolving entities. Situating creativity as an adaptive process separates creative activities from