ABSTRACT
Around the world, in the public spaces of cities that are gateways to immigration, festivals are created or re-created by people whose cultural practices seem ‘exotic’ to the majority population. Some street festivals attract large audiences. A few of them grow into major international events that raise the profile, not only of the neighbourhood where they take place, but also of the city as a culturally diverse and vibrant place to be. In areas known to outsiders as Chinatown, Little Italy, Punjabi Village and so on, processions and other rituals, performances of music and dance, together with more quotidian events such as street markets, delight urban ‘tourists’ who ‘discover’ inner-city and inner-suburban areas that they might otherwise avoid or even fear. Intentionally or not, the event appeals to the visitors’ taste for agreeable Otherness. The spectacle may also attract publicity and media attention that influences wider public perceptions of ethnic minorities, as well as the spaces and places where the events are staged. Street festivals may draw in visitors who are substantially more affluent than co-ethnic and
other local residents. Decoration of the public realm that enhances the festive ambience, and continues well beyond a particular event, may stimulate lucrative custom for the owners of cafés, take-away food outlets, market stallholders and other traders. Banners, illuminations and street decorations such as the neon chilli peppers for Diwali, ‘festival of light’, in a West London suburb (Figure 26.1) are displayed conspicuously to enhance the carnivalesque atmosphere: ‘festivalization’ of the street to keep the party going. More permanent features such as ornamental arches proclaim entry to a place that is promoted as an ‘ethnic cultural quarter’. Signage and façades for restaurants, bars and souvenir shops are designed to attract customers from the majority population and tourists from further afield; public art differentiates and designates particular spaces for leisure and tourism consumption. The following section examines the somewhat polarized interpretations of the social
and cultural dimensions of interaction between the spectacle and the spectators in ethnic minority neighbourhoods that are represented as ‘cosmopolitan’. The author argues that there has been a marked tendency, especially in the literature of leisure and tourism studies, to overgeneralize this relationship. The work of Arjun Appadurai (1997, 2001, 2003) on globalization and the production of ‘translocalities’ provides a more insightful conceptual framework that
addresses full square the apparent contradictions between cultural homogenization on the one hand and cultural heterogeneity on the other. The second section adapts and applies Appadurai’s thesis to the development of ‘eventscapes’ and their ramifications for culture and society in cosmopolitan cities. Examples are drawn from North America, Australasia, Asia, and Europe. Over the past twenty years or so, agencies of urban governance in the UK have intervened
supportively with the expectation that this will stimulate wealth creation and employment for ethnic minorities, and on improvements to the street environment for locals and visitors alike. Less tangible benefits for ‘togetherness’, ‘understanding’ and ‘creativity’ may also be anticipated for the community whose identity is being celebrated and for the city as a whole. In the case of Brick Lane in London’s East End, the ‘Banglatown’ place brand was used to promote two annual street festivals. The crowd-pulling success of the events programme encouraged the local
Figure 26.1 Diwali illuminations are good for business in Southall, West London
authority to propose the permanent transformation of Brick Lane into a festival mall, but the unexpected ferocity of opposition to the scheme highlights some important issues for events-led regeneration and its impact on culture and society.
