Difficult Fun: Fairground as heritage, heritage as fairground

This thesis examines the British travelling fairground as a unique tradition and ongoing practice of the past, present and future, to create a wider dialogue with our understanding of heritage practices. The fairground is approached as a complex assemblage of objects and affects that has a sinuous historical trail, making its relationship to heritage practices a valuable insight in the wider environment of embracing our past. A key aspect of my work looks at, listens to, and explores the fairground and develops a detailed ontology of objects that set off a network of affects, making a major contribution to how the fairground is understood. This is then set out in a diachronic arrangement as the essence of change is investigated, understood as overlapping cycles connected to the content of the fairground, the space of the fairground, the music of the fairground, and the close synergy between accelerated popular culture and the visual presentation of the fairground. Central to this is the audience demographic, and the issue of when we most appreciate the fairground, and when we no longer feel a part of the fairground. This provides an understanding of our heritage seeking behaviour and expectations. Heritage of the fairground is identified in five key contexts: the static museum collection, the steam rally movement, the specialist vintage travelling fair, the living museum (examples that incorporate a period fairground), and the specific re-creation of a seaside amusement park. These heritage efforts are investigated with site reports analysed using a wide toolbox: spatial practice, situational aesthetics, textual analysis, and audience granularity (including the protagonist who sets up and controls the collection). Drawing on and synthesising the fieldwork from the fairground heritage sectors, I present case studies around notions of authenticity, vernacular flows, space and building, and future planning considerations. The thesis concludes by illuminating points of dialogue to the wider heritage field, addressing the growing uncertainty around the convergence of the museum and the theme park

Flood impacts on emergency responders operating at a city-scale

Emergency responders often have to operate and respond to emergency situations during dynamic weather conditions, including floods. This paper demonstrates a novel method using existing tools and datasets to evaluate emergency responder accessibility during flood events within the City of Leicester, UK. Accessibility was quantified using the 8- and 10-minute legislative targets for emergency provision for the Ambulance and Fire & Rescue services respectively under ‘normal’, no flood conditions, as well as flood scenarios of various magnitudes (namely the 1 in 20 year-, 1 in 100-year and 1 in 1,000-year recurrence intervals), with both surface water and fluvial flood conditions considered. Flood restrictions were processed based on previous hydrodynamic inundation modelling undertaken and inputted into a Network Analysis framework as restrictions for surface water and fluvial flood events. Surface water flooding was shown to cause more disruption to emergency responders operating within the city due to its widespread and spatially distributed footprint when compared to fluvial flood events of comparable magnitude. Fire & Rescue 10-minute accessibility was shown to decrease from 100 %, 66.5 %, 39.8 % and 26.2 % under the no flood, 1 in 20-year, 1 in 100-year and 1 in 1,000- year surface water flood scenarios respectively. Furthermore, total inaccessibility was shown to increase with flood magnitude, increasing from 6.0 % to 31.0 % under the 1 in 20-year and 1 in 100-year surface water flooding scenarios respectively. Further, the evolution of emergency service accessibility through a surface water flood event is outlined, demonstrating the rapid onset of impacts on emergency service accessibility within the first 15-minutes of the surface water flood event, with a reduction in service coverage and overlap being witnessed for the Ambulance service under a 1 in 100-year flood event. The study provides evidence to guide strategic planning for decision makers prior to and during emergency response to flood events at the cityscale and provides a readily transferable method to explore the impacts of natural hazards or disruptions on additional cities or regions based on historic, scenario-based events or real-time forecasting if such data is available

Collision, Collusion and Coincidence: Pop Art’s Fairground Parallel

This article looks at parallel methods, motivations and modes of consumption between formative British pop art and British fairground art. I focus on two strands, the emergent critical work of the Independent Group and the school of artists based at the Royal College of Art under the nominal leadership of Peter Blake. I use iconographical and iconological methods to compare the content of the art, and then examine how pop art tried to create both a critical and playful distancing from established rules and practices of the artistic canon. I focus on non-institutional cultural groupings and diffuse production and consumption models

Contemporary Photographic Practices on the British Fairground

The fairground is a somewhat magical and uncharted realm of illusion, deception, thrill and adventure. It offers a glimpse of the improbable and impossible, and a taste or touch of the unattainable. This article looks at the crossover of photography and the British fairground following the gradual take-up of photography in the post-war period. It briefly covers early traditions concomitant with the specialised practice of photography, then it identifies photographic practices on the fairground through distinct communities of engagement including professional and amateur photographers attracted to the spectacle of the fair, ethnographic explorers, dedicated enthusiasts, showpeople and the general public of “punters”. In each case photographs from these communities are presented as well as a selection of photographs depicting these communities of photographers in action. The article concludes with the current situation of camera phone technology, social media and digitally manipulated photographic art as a new aesthetic of the fairground

Ian Trowell photograph, Rotherham Show Fair, 2006.

Albert Evans' Extreme Orbiter - OB27 - photographed 9 September 2006

Ian Trowell photograph, Rotherham Show Fair, 2006.

Albert Evans' Extreme Orbiter - OB27 - with Alien figure photographed 9 September 2006

Freak Show at Hull Fair

Richard Cadell's Doctor Fryte New Freak Show show photographed at Hull Fair 14 October 2006

Ian Trowell photograph, Seaburn Amusement Park, 2007.

Butlin's Street Fighter - AF37 - photographed 23 June 2007

Ian Trowell photograph, Ballina Fair, 2007.

Pat Fox's Waltzer - W262 - photographed 6 July 2007

Ian Trowell photograph, Sixmilebridge Fair, 2007.

Lawrence Hayes' Waltzer - W96 - photographed 7 July 2007