Zelmarie Cantillon | Western Sydney University (original) (raw)
Journal Articles by Zelmarie Cantillon
Heritage & Society, 2022
Sport mega-events have the capacity to transform host cities both materially and symbolically. Th... more Sport mega-events have the capacity to transform host cities both
materially and symbolically. This article explores the urban
reimaging potentials of mega-event legacies through a case
study of the 2018 Commonwealth Games held on the Gold Coast,
Australia. For the Gold Coast, one of the desired outcomes of the
Commonwealth Games and its legacies was to aid in reorienting
the city’s identity from a beachside resort to a mature,
sophisticated, world-class city. Drawing on observational
fieldwork and literature research, the article considers a particular
legacy project – the Commonwealth Walkway, a self-guided
heritage walk – to analyze how heritage initiatives factor into
strategies for urban reimaging. The article finds that although the
Commonwealth Walkway may enhance a sense of continuity in a
city usually marked by impermanence, its sanitized, celebratory
approach to the city’s colonial past and present undermines both
claims of sophistication and intended legacies for social justice.
Archival Science, 2022
Zines are self-published, do-it-yourself booklets that have a long history as tools for activism ... more Zines are self-published, do-it-yourself booklets that have a long history as tools for activism in social movements. While archival studies has already explored the collection and preservation of zines as cultural artefacts, this article explores the capacity for zines to act as a form of community archive. The article examines See You at the Paradise, a zine co-created with Norfolk Island community members for a research project focused on Kingston and Arthur's Vale Historic Area. Drawing on Michelle Caswell's six principles of community archive discourse-participation, shared stewardship, multiplicity, activism, reflexivity, valuing affect-we analyse the extent to which zines and zine-making, as product and process, can be understood as community archive. In doing so, we propose collaborative reminiscence as a seventh principle. The article finds that zines, as community archive, work to strengthen the presence of marginalised voices in dominant historical narratives while also offering an important resource for community-building and political resistance.
Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2022
Do-it-yourself (DIY) and community-based efforts to preserve popular music heritage often take pl... more Do-it-yourself (DIY) and community-based efforts to preserve popular music heritage often take place in tangible sites open to the public. These places contrast with authorised sites of heritage in their form, but not their function, and are often judged equally by visitors in terms of cultural value. This article analyses Tripadvisor user reviews of 11 DIY institutions of popular music heritage to highlight the tension between the production of cultural value by such places and the expectations of visitors. As unintentional sites of tourism, DIY institutions of popular music heritage find themselves caught between providing access to unique collections and experiences prized by niche audiences, and producing an entertainment value attainable only through the higher level budgets and skill sets found in authorised heritage institutions. This article contributes to an understanding of how the producers and consumers of DIY institutions understand value, while focusing on the neglected experience of end-users in the broader space of heritage engagement. In doing so, it draws attention to the co-creation of heritage experiences in online and physical spaces.
Journal of Sociology, 2020
Blended learning and flipped classroom models are increasingly encouraged in higher education, wh... more Blended learning and flipped classroom models are increasingly encouraged in higher education, where notions of flexibility and technological development inform institutional systems and strategies. This article presents results from an Australian study on redesigning and delivering an introductory sociology course using a combination of such models. Four central elements of the redesign are highlighted: overall course format; use of mini-lectures; face-to-face activities; and our assessment model. We present analysis of students' and instructors' understandings and experiences of the redesign over three course iterations, to offer insight into the unfolding and responsive dynamics involved in implementing blended and flipped models. We aim to contribute to the ongoing implementation of similar models in the context of changing institutional environments and expectations, as well as to broader projects for pedagogical enrichment in sociology.
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2020
Deindustrialisation contributes to significant transformations for local communities, including r... more Deindustrialisation contributes to significant transformations for local communities, including rising unemployment, poverty and urban decay. Following the ‘creative city’ phenomenon in cultural policy, deindustrialising cities across the globe have increasingly turned to arts, culture and heritage as strategies for economic diversification and urban renewal. This article considers the potential role that popular music heritage might play in revitalising cities grappling with industrial decline. Specifically, we outline how a ‘cultural justice approach’ can be used within critical heritage studies to assess the benefits and drawbacks of such heritage initiatives. Reflecting on examples from three deindustrialising cities – Wollongong, Australia; Detroit, USA; and Birmingham, UK – we analyse how popular music heritage can produce cultural justice outcomes in three key ways: practices of collection, preservation and archiving; curation, storytelling and heritage interpretation; and mobilising communities for collective action.
Journal of Sociology, 2020
In recent decades, the heritage sector has become increasingly precarious amid the rise of auster... more In recent decades, the heritage sector has become increasingly precarious amid the rise of austerity neoliberalism, impacting both the efficacy of heritage institutions and the labour experiences of those who run them. While scholarly literature has regularly examined these impacts for mainstream heritage institutions, little work considers volunteer-run, do-it-yourself (DIY) community heritage organisations. This article takes a serious leisure perspective to explore what constitutes ‘good work’ for volunteers in a DIY heritage institution, the Australian Jazz Museum (AJM). Drawing on interviews with 26 AJM volunteers, we discuss some of the ‘rewards’ and ‘costs’ of career volunteering in this institution. Our research suggests that the conditions for good work are contingent on the efforts of volunteers in management roles, while the conditions for bad work are heightened by austerity policies affecting funding opportunities. The case study also highlights the need to consider the value of work beyond remuneration.
Australian Historical Studies, 2020
In Australia, the community heritage sector – galleries, libraries, archives, museums and histori... more In Australia, the community heritage sector – galleries, libraries, archives, museums and historical societies managed by volunteers – plays a significant role in recording and preserving the diversity of Australia’s cultural heritage. However, these community heritage organisations face uncertain futures. This article offers four examples of heritage organisations located in New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia which have struggled with organisational sustainability arising from various financial, human, physical, skills, and expertise challenges. We assess some of the common problems threatening the longevity of community heritage organisations and what action is needed to safeguard this sector into the future.
Leisure Studies, 2020
This article takes a serious leisure perspective to examine the costs associated with career volu... more This article takes a serious leisure perspective to examine the costs associated with career volunteering in DIY heritage institutions focused on the collection, preservation and curation of popular music’s past. While the rewards of serious leisure have been analysed extensively in the literature, costs are addressed less frequently. Moreover, Stebbins’ framing of costs has been critiqued as ambiguous and underdeveloped. In this article, we draw on Stebbins’ tripartite model of tensions, dislikes and disappointments to analyse costs that emerged from ethnographic interviews undertaken with volunteers in 13 DIY popular music heritage institutions. Types of costs included tensions that were interpersonal, relational, financial, temporal (work, family, leisure), and related to well-being (emotional, physical); dislikes centred on shortages of dependable volunteers, volunteers who demonstrate a ‘lack of care’, and ineffective leadership; and disappointments focused on being let down by others, unsuccessful funding applications, and organisational change. Although rewards outweigh costs, we find that recognising the costs involved for career volunteers in DIY heritage institutions is crucial for contextualising rewards and perseverance, as well as for understanding how different types of costs overlap and exacerbate one another.
Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2020
This article examines the emergence of urban heritage walks on the Gold Coast, Australia. As a po... more This article examines the emergence of urban heritage walks on the Gold Coast, Australia. As a popular beachside mass tourism destination, the Gold Coast has a longstanding reputation for rapid development and for lacking historical and cultural depth. In this context, heritage walks present an opportunity to reorient the city’s identity and to stage a sense of heritage in the urban environment. Focusing on a case study of the Gold Coast’s Southport Heritage Walk (SHW), this article aims to analyse the discursive, material and political dimensions of urban heritage walks, and how practices of heritage unfold in places marked by rapidly changing urban landscapes and resident populations. Drawing on observational fieldwork, as well as interviews with key individuals involved in designing the walks, the article discusses the dominant narratives of history and urban identity enshrined in the SHW, and how these discourses are encountered and interpreted within the context of the contemporary materialities of lived space. Although the SHW aims to highlight the city as a place with a rich history and heritage, the walk’s missing interpretive markers and scarce remnants of built heritage instead emphasise the city’s ongoing tensions between development and preservation.
Leisure Sciences, 2018
Community-based, do-it-yourself (DIY) archives and museums of popular music are cultural institut... more Community-based, do-it-yourself (DIY) archives and museums of popular music are cultural institutions that can serve important social and affective functions. In this article, we examine how DIY heritage institutions create a sense of community and promote wellbeing for their volunteers, operating as informal gathering spaces, or “third places.” Using the Australian Jazz Museum — a DIY popular music heritage institution run exclusively by volunteers, most of whom are older adults and retirees — as a case study, we explore how third place can manifest in such sites of serious leisure. Drawing on interview data, we discuss volunteers’ experiences of the AJM in relation to its sociality and affective atmosphere and the role this institution plays in their lives. In doing so, we analyse the characteristics which contribute to DIY heritage institutions as spaces for caring, community, and wellbeing.
Australian Feminist Studies, 2017
Archiving has become an increasingly important practice in the preservation of feminist and queer... more Archiving has become an increasingly important practice in the preservation of feminist and queer histories. In this article, we pay specific attention to the emerging body of literature on feminist archives of popular music, many of which are community-based, DIY initiatives. These community-led archives aim to comprehensively collect the ephemeral, intangible heritage of feminist music cultures that have traditionally been excluded in popular music canons and marginalised by mainstream heritage institutions. The literature revealed that feminist music archives function as much more than spaces for preservation – they are affective as much as they are intellectual, and they are key sites for activism and community-building. These two themes – activism and affectivity – thread together the body of literature, providing both the driving force behind these DIY archives and their potentiality in the communities of interest they cater to. The community archivists accounted for in the literature have all engaged in practices of queering the community music archive; taking the mainstream heritage institution as a model and rebuilding it from the ground up, renegotiating its boundaries and notions of linear history, and reconfiguring its practices to account for lives lived in the margins of the mainstream.
Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 2015
Australia’s Gold Coast typically positions itself as a luxurious, upmarket resort city or a famil... more Australia’s Gold Coast typically positions itself as a luxurious, upmarket resort city or a family-friendly, ‘fun in the sun’ holiday destination. At the same time, the Gold Coast lifestyle is often associated with hedonism, sexuality and excess. Yet the city is also home to over half a million residents whose daily lives – work, education and leisure – routinely take place within and against these powerful and familiar representations. Thus, the city’s identity can be seen as constituted by a series of conflicting ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ narratives. The ‘official’ narrative is produced by how the city markets itself to tourists, and comes to include popular imaginaries of place that these representations construct and perpetuate. Beyond this, however, residents produce varied and multiple ‘unofficial’ narratives through their engagements with the actualities of their locality as well as with its metanarratives. Surfers Paradise, as the main tourist hub and entertainment precinct of the Gold Coast, is a site of convergence for these competing narratives. Drawing on Lefebvre’s (2004) rhythmanalysis, this article explores how conflicting narratives and disjunctions in identities of place manifest themselves in spatial practice in Surfers Paradise.
Book Chapters by Zelmarie Cantillon
Music and Heritage: New Perspectives on Place-making and Sonic Identity, 2021
Wollongong is a regional deindustrialising Australian city located south of Sydney, New South Wal... more Wollongong is a regional deindustrialising Australian city located south of Sydney, New South Wales. Although Wollongong’s economy was long dominated by metal manufacturing, this industry downsized considerably throughout the 1980s and 1990s and was put under further pressure with the 2008/2009 Global Financial Crisis. The city’s strong working class roots and the urban transformations brought on by the decline of the steelworks significantly shaped Wollongong’s live music scene and characteristic ‘Wollongong sound’, predominantly focused on rock, grunge, metal and hip hop. Now branding itself as the ‘City of Innovation’, Wollongong has diversified its economy through the growth of its health and education sectors and a renewed emphasis in local policy on developing the creative industries. At the same time that the local council is increasingly supporting live music production and consumption, a number of popular music heritage initiatives commemorating the city’s popular music traditions have emerged. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews conducted with key stakeholders and heritage practitioners, this chapter discusses the suite of activities connected to the Steel City Sound heritage project. We highlight how precarious and fragile popular music heritage initiatives can be, despite their vital cultural justice outcomes for the local community.
Music Cities Evaluating a Global Cultural Policy Concept, 2020
Collection edited by: Ballico, Christina, Watson, Allan (Eds.) In this chapter, we interrogate h... more Collection edited by: Ballico, Christina, Watson, Allan (Eds.)
In this chapter, we interrogate how a turn to popular music heritage can represent an important strategy for reinstating a sense of well-being for disenfranchised communities in post-industrial music cities. Our specific interest is in the potential of popular music heritage initiatives to enhance community members’ participation within the socio-cultural (online and offline) spaces of Birmingham, the UK’s largest city outside London and one in the process of being branded a ‘music city’. With its rich musical heritage, our case study of Birmingham highlights how heritage initiatives can have a positive impact on individuals within a community impacted by industrial decline. The turn to popular music heritage, we argue, can enhance civic pride (Power and Smyth 2016) through the creation of spaces that foster a greater sense of well-being and attachment to place among the community of interest involved in such heritage activity. As this chapter demonstrates, the heritage sector, and in particular the community heritage sector, can make significant contributions to the making of the music city in ways that support the flourishing of local communities.
Remembering Popular Music’s Past: Memory-Heritage-History, 2019
Remembering Popular Music’s Past: Memory-Heritage-History, 2019
Co-authored with Bob Buttigieg and Sarah Baker.
Remembering Popular Music’s Past: Memory-Heritage-History, 2019
Making Media: Production, Practices and Professions, 2019
The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage, 2018
Youth Cultures and Subcultures: Australian Perspectives, Feb 2015
Heritage & Society, 2022
Sport mega-events have the capacity to transform host cities both materially and symbolically. Th... more Sport mega-events have the capacity to transform host cities both
materially and symbolically. This article explores the urban
reimaging potentials of mega-event legacies through a case
study of the 2018 Commonwealth Games held on the Gold Coast,
Australia. For the Gold Coast, one of the desired outcomes of the
Commonwealth Games and its legacies was to aid in reorienting
the city’s identity from a beachside resort to a mature,
sophisticated, world-class city. Drawing on observational
fieldwork and literature research, the article considers a particular
legacy project – the Commonwealth Walkway, a self-guided
heritage walk – to analyze how heritage initiatives factor into
strategies for urban reimaging. The article finds that although the
Commonwealth Walkway may enhance a sense of continuity in a
city usually marked by impermanence, its sanitized, celebratory
approach to the city’s colonial past and present undermines both
claims of sophistication and intended legacies for social justice.
Archival Science, 2022
Zines are self-published, do-it-yourself booklets that have a long history as tools for activism ... more Zines are self-published, do-it-yourself booklets that have a long history as tools for activism in social movements. While archival studies has already explored the collection and preservation of zines as cultural artefacts, this article explores the capacity for zines to act as a form of community archive. The article examines See You at the Paradise, a zine co-created with Norfolk Island community members for a research project focused on Kingston and Arthur's Vale Historic Area. Drawing on Michelle Caswell's six principles of community archive discourse-participation, shared stewardship, multiplicity, activism, reflexivity, valuing affect-we analyse the extent to which zines and zine-making, as product and process, can be understood as community archive. In doing so, we propose collaborative reminiscence as a seventh principle. The article finds that zines, as community archive, work to strengthen the presence of marginalised voices in dominant historical narratives while also offering an important resource for community-building and political resistance.
Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2022
Do-it-yourself (DIY) and community-based efforts to preserve popular music heritage often take pl... more Do-it-yourself (DIY) and community-based efforts to preserve popular music heritage often take place in tangible sites open to the public. These places contrast with authorised sites of heritage in their form, but not their function, and are often judged equally by visitors in terms of cultural value. This article analyses Tripadvisor user reviews of 11 DIY institutions of popular music heritage to highlight the tension between the production of cultural value by such places and the expectations of visitors. As unintentional sites of tourism, DIY institutions of popular music heritage find themselves caught between providing access to unique collections and experiences prized by niche audiences, and producing an entertainment value attainable only through the higher level budgets and skill sets found in authorised heritage institutions. This article contributes to an understanding of how the producers and consumers of DIY institutions understand value, while focusing on the neglected experience of end-users in the broader space of heritage engagement. In doing so, it draws attention to the co-creation of heritage experiences in online and physical spaces.
Journal of Sociology, 2020
Blended learning and flipped classroom models are increasingly encouraged in higher education, wh... more Blended learning and flipped classroom models are increasingly encouraged in higher education, where notions of flexibility and technological development inform institutional systems and strategies. This article presents results from an Australian study on redesigning and delivering an introductory sociology course using a combination of such models. Four central elements of the redesign are highlighted: overall course format; use of mini-lectures; face-to-face activities; and our assessment model. We present analysis of students' and instructors' understandings and experiences of the redesign over three course iterations, to offer insight into the unfolding and responsive dynamics involved in implementing blended and flipped models. We aim to contribute to the ongoing implementation of similar models in the context of changing institutional environments and expectations, as well as to broader projects for pedagogical enrichment in sociology.
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2020
Deindustrialisation contributes to significant transformations for local communities, including r... more Deindustrialisation contributes to significant transformations for local communities, including rising unemployment, poverty and urban decay. Following the ‘creative city’ phenomenon in cultural policy, deindustrialising cities across the globe have increasingly turned to arts, culture and heritage as strategies for economic diversification and urban renewal. This article considers the potential role that popular music heritage might play in revitalising cities grappling with industrial decline. Specifically, we outline how a ‘cultural justice approach’ can be used within critical heritage studies to assess the benefits and drawbacks of such heritage initiatives. Reflecting on examples from three deindustrialising cities – Wollongong, Australia; Detroit, USA; and Birmingham, UK – we analyse how popular music heritage can produce cultural justice outcomes in three key ways: practices of collection, preservation and archiving; curation, storytelling and heritage interpretation; and mobilising communities for collective action.
Journal of Sociology, 2020
In recent decades, the heritage sector has become increasingly precarious amid the rise of auster... more In recent decades, the heritage sector has become increasingly precarious amid the rise of austerity neoliberalism, impacting both the efficacy of heritage institutions and the labour experiences of those who run them. While scholarly literature has regularly examined these impacts for mainstream heritage institutions, little work considers volunteer-run, do-it-yourself (DIY) community heritage organisations. This article takes a serious leisure perspective to explore what constitutes ‘good work’ for volunteers in a DIY heritage institution, the Australian Jazz Museum (AJM). Drawing on interviews with 26 AJM volunteers, we discuss some of the ‘rewards’ and ‘costs’ of career volunteering in this institution. Our research suggests that the conditions for good work are contingent on the efforts of volunteers in management roles, while the conditions for bad work are heightened by austerity policies affecting funding opportunities. The case study also highlights the need to consider the value of work beyond remuneration.
Australian Historical Studies, 2020
In Australia, the community heritage sector – galleries, libraries, archives, museums and histori... more In Australia, the community heritage sector – galleries, libraries, archives, museums and historical societies managed by volunteers – plays a significant role in recording and preserving the diversity of Australia’s cultural heritage. However, these community heritage organisations face uncertain futures. This article offers four examples of heritage organisations located in New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia which have struggled with organisational sustainability arising from various financial, human, physical, skills, and expertise challenges. We assess some of the common problems threatening the longevity of community heritage organisations and what action is needed to safeguard this sector into the future.
Leisure Studies, 2020
This article takes a serious leisure perspective to examine the costs associated with career volu... more This article takes a serious leisure perspective to examine the costs associated with career volunteering in DIY heritage institutions focused on the collection, preservation and curation of popular music’s past. While the rewards of serious leisure have been analysed extensively in the literature, costs are addressed less frequently. Moreover, Stebbins’ framing of costs has been critiqued as ambiguous and underdeveloped. In this article, we draw on Stebbins’ tripartite model of tensions, dislikes and disappointments to analyse costs that emerged from ethnographic interviews undertaken with volunteers in 13 DIY popular music heritage institutions. Types of costs included tensions that were interpersonal, relational, financial, temporal (work, family, leisure), and related to well-being (emotional, physical); dislikes centred on shortages of dependable volunteers, volunteers who demonstrate a ‘lack of care’, and ineffective leadership; and disappointments focused on being let down by others, unsuccessful funding applications, and organisational change. Although rewards outweigh costs, we find that recognising the costs involved for career volunteers in DIY heritage institutions is crucial for contextualising rewards and perseverance, as well as for understanding how different types of costs overlap and exacerbate one another.
Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2020
This article examines the emergence of urban heritage walks on the Gold Coast, Australia. As a po... more This article examines the emergence of urban heritage walks on the Gold Coast, Australia. As a popular beachside mass tourism destination, the Gold Coast has a longstanding reputation for rapid development and for lacking historical and cultural depth. In this context, heritage walks present an opportunity to reorient the city’s identity and to stage a sense of heritage in the urban environment. Focusing on a case study of the Gold Coast’s Southport Heritage Walk (SHW), this article aims to analyse the discursive, material and political dimensions of urban heritage walks, and how practices of heritage unfold in places marked by rapidly changing urban landscapes and resident populations. Drawing on observational fieldwork, as well as interviews with key individuals involved in designing the walks, the article discusses the dominant narratives of history and urban identity enshrined in the SHW, and how these discourses are encountered and interpreted within the context of the contemporary materialities of lived space. Although the SHW aims to highlight the city as a place with a rich history and heritage, the walk’s missing interpretive markers and scarce remnants of built heritage instead emphasise the city’s ongoing tensions between development and preservation.
Leisure Sciences, 2018
Community-based, do-it-yourself (DIY) archives and museums of popular music are cultural institut... more Community-based, do-it-yourself (DIY) archives and museums of popular music are cultural institutions that can serve important social and affective functions. In this article, we examine how DIY heritage institutions create a sense of community and promote wellbeing for their volunteers, operating as informal gathering spaces, or “third places.” Using the Australian Jazz Museum — a DIY popular music heritage institution run exclusively by volunteers, most of whom are older adults and retirees — as a case study, we explore how third place can manifest in such sites of serious leisure. Drawing on interview data, we discuss volunteers’ experiences of the AJM in relation to its sociality and affective atmosphere and the role this institution plays in their lives. In doing so, we analyse the characteristics which contribute to DIY heritage institutions as spaces for caring, community, and wellbeing.
Australian Feminist Studies, 2017
Archiving has become an increasingly important practice in the preservation of feminist and queer... more Archiving has become an increasingly important practice in the preservation of feminist and queer histories. In this article, we pay specific attention to the emerging body of literature on feminist archives of popular music, many of which are community-based, DIY initiatives. These community-led archives aim to comprehensively collect the ephemeral, intangible heritage of feminist music cultures that have traditionally been excluded in popular music canons and marginalised by mainstream heritage institutions. The literature revealed that feminist music archives function as much more than spaces for preservation – they are affective as much as they are intellectual, and they are key sites for activism and community-building. These two themes – activism and affectivity – thread together the body of literature, providing both the driving force behind these DIY archives and their potentiality in the communities of interest they cater to. The community archivists accounted for in the literature have all engaged in practices of queering the community music archive; taking the mainstream heritage institution as a model and rebuilding it from the ground up, renegotiating its boundaries and notions of linear history, and reconfiguring its practices to account for lives lived in the margins of the mainstream.
Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 2015
Australia’s Gold Coast typically positions itself as a luxurious, upmarket resort city or a famil... more Australia’s Gold Coast typically positions itself as a luxurious, upmarket resort city or a family-friendly, ‘fun in the sun’ holiday destination. At the same time, the Gold Coast lifestyle is often associated with hedonism, sexuality and excess. Yet the city is also home to over half a million residents whose daily lives – work, education and leisure – routinely take place within and against these powerful and familiar representations. Thus, the city’s identity can be seen as constituted by a series of conflicting ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ narratives. The ‘official’ narrative is produced by how the city markets itself to tourists, and comes to include popular imaginaries of place that these representations construct and perpetuate. Beyond this, however, residents produce varied and multiple ‘unofficial’ narratives through their engagements with the actualities of their locality as well as with its metanarratives. Surfers Paradise, as the main tourist hub and entertainment precinct of the Gold Coast, is a site of convergence for these competing narratives. Drawing on Lefebvre’s (2004) rhythmanalysis, this article explores how conflicting narratives and disjunctions in identities of place manifest themselves in spatial practice in Surfers Paradise.
Music and Heritage: New Perspectives on Place-making and Sonic Identity, 2021
Wollongong is a regional deindustrialising Australian city located south of Sydney, New South Wal... more Wollongong is a regional deindustrialising Australian city located south of Sydney, New South Wales. Although Wollongong’s economy was long dominated by metal manufacturing, this industry downsized considerably throughout the 1980s and 1990s and was put under further pressure with the 2008/2009 Global Financial Crisis. The city’s strong working class roots and the urban transformations brought on by the decline of the steelworks significantly shaped Wollongong’s live music scene and characteristic ‘Wollongong sound’, predominantly focused on rock, grunge, metal and hip hop. Now branding itself as the ‘City of Innovation’, Wollongong has diversified its economy through the growth of its health and education sectors and a renewed emphasis in local policy on developing the creative industries. At the same time that the local council is increasingly supporting live music production and consumption, a number of popular music heritage initiatives commemorating the city’s popular music traditions have emerged. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews conducted with key stakeholders and heritage practitioners, this chapter discusses the suite of activities connected to the Steel City Sound heritage project. We highlight how precarious and fragile popular music heritage initiatives can be, despite their vital cultural justice outcomes for the local community.
Music Cities Evaluating a Global Cultural Policy Concept, 2020
Collection edited by: Ballico, Christina, Watson, Allan (Eds.) In this chapter, we interrogate h... more Collection edited by: Ballico, Christina, Watson, Allan (Eds.)
In this chapter, we interrogate how a turn to popular music heritage can represent an important strategy for reinstating a sense of well-being for disenfranchised communities in post-industrial music cities. Our specific interest is in the potential of popular music heritage initiatives to enhance community members’ participation within the socio-cultural (online and offline) spaces of Birmingham, the UK’s largest city outside London and one in the process of being branded a ‘music city’. With its rich musical heritage, our case study of Birmingham highlights how heritage initiatives can have a positive impact on individuals within a community impacted by industrial decline. The turn to popular music heritage, we argue, can enhance civic pride (Power and Smyth 2016) through the creation of spaces that foster a greater sense of well-being and attachment to place among the community of interest involved in such heritage activity. As this chapter demonstrates, the heritage sector, and in particular the community heritage sector, can make significant contributions to the making of the music city in ways that support the flourishing of local communities.
Remembering Popular Music’s Past: Memory-Heritage-History, 2019
Remembering Popular Music’s Past: Memory-Heritage-History, 2019
Co-authored with Bob Buttigieg and Sarah Baker.
Remembering Popular Music’s Past: Memory-Heritage-History, 2019
Making Media: Production, Practices and Professions, 2019
The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage, 2018
Youth Cultures and Subcultures: Australian Perspectives, Feb 2015
This book theorises resorts as distinct kinds of urban milieux, capturing the complexity of desti... more This book theorises resorts as distinct kinds of urban milieux, capturing the complexity of destinations famous for 'sun, sand and sex' mass tourism. Drawing on qualitative field research (participant observation, interviews and photography), the book discusses examples from six international resort destinations spread across four continents: the Gold Coast, Australia; Phuket and Koh Phangan, Thailand; Cancún, Mexico; Miami, USA; and Ibiza, Spain.
The book reviews the material and symbolic production of lived spaces in these resorts, considering the mutually constitutive, mutually transformative relations between their spatial formations, built environments, popular imaginaries, representations, narratives of identity, rhythms, and the experiences and practices of both tourists and locals. In doing so, it argues for more nuanced ways of conceptualising tourism, globalisation and spatiality, reimagining how these phenomena unfold in lived spaces.
Taking a cultural studies approach to urban analysis, the book demonstrates the value in embracing complexity, fluidity, partiality and uncertainty. It will be of interest to students and researchers of tourism, geography, cultural studies, development studies, anthropology and sociology.
Anthem Press, 2019
Remembering Popular Music’s Past focuses on the transformation of popular music into heritage, an... more Remembering Popular Music’s Past focuses on the transformation of popular music into heritage, and the role of history and memory in this process. The book interrogates diverse examples of the way popular music’s past is remembered, with particular emphasis on precarity in the construction, curation, display, negotiation, and perception of popular music’s past. Wide-ranging in scope, the book is an excellent introduction for students and scholars working in musicology, ethnomusicology, popular music studies, critical heritage studies, cultural studies, memory studies and other related fields.
The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage examines the social, cultural, poli... more The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage examines the social, cultural, political and economic value of popular music as history and heritage. Taking a cross-disciplinary approach, the volume explores the relationship between popular music and the past, and how interpretations of the changing nature of the past in post-industrial societies play out in the field of popular music.
In-depth chapters cover key themes around historiography, heritage, memory and institutions, alongside case studies from around the world, including the UK, Australia, South Africa and India, exploring popular music’s connection to culture both past and present.
Wide-ranging in scope, the book is an excellent introduction for students and scholars working in musicology, ethnomusicology, popular music studies, critical heritage studies, cultural studies, memory studies and other related fields.
With their emphasis on ‘sun, sand and sex’, resort cities have traditionally attracted tourists s... more With their emphasis on ‘sun, sand and sex’, resort cities have traditionally attracted tourists seeking leisure, hedonistic indulgence and sensuous pleasures. Dominated by mass consumption and relentless development, these sites are commonly imagined as impermanent and depthless, positioned as escapist, de-historicised ‘elsewheres’. Visitors to resort cities have expressed little interest in cultural tourism or, indeed, in experiencing local cultures. However, recently there has been a trend among resort cities to diversify their markets by promoting alternatives such as cultural tourism (and thus countering some of the negative associations and impacts of mass tourism). This paper explores examples of cultural tourism initiatives in four international resort cities: Cancun, Mexico; Ibiza, Spain; Miami, USA; and the Gold Coast, Australia. Given the frequent characterisation of these spaces as ‘hyperreal’, I pay particular attention to how the ‘real’ is staged for touristic consumption, exploring notions of authenticity and inauthenticity.
Through a focus on resort cities, this paper challenges widespread assumptions about the supposed... more Through a focus on resort cities, this paper challenges widespread assumptions about the supposedly homogenising impacts of globalisation and mass tourism on local communities. In particular, the global leisure industries have been positioned as threatening to the ‘authentic’, heterogeneous nature of local cultures. This creates a local/global binary, ignoring how global flows manifest differently in different localities. My paper explores how international trends in resort architecture and mass tourism are reappropriated and reassembled in idiosyncratic ways depending on a place’s local specificity. That is, despite stereotypes of resort cities being generic, Westernised or Americanised, the lived experience of these places highlights that they are just as diverse and complex as other urban formations. This will be explored through observational fieldwork undertaken in Phuket, Thailand; Cancun, Mexico; Miami, United States of America; Ibiza, Spain; and the Gold Coast, Australia.
The Gold Coast typically positions itself as a luxurious, upmarket resort city or a family-friend... more The Gold Coast typically positions itself as a luxurious, upmarket resort city or a family-friendly, ‘fun in the sun’ holiday destination. At the same time, the Gold Coast lifestyle is often associated with hedonism, sexuality and excess. Thus, the city’s identity can be seen as constituted by a series of conflicting ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ narratives. The ‘official’ narrative entails how the city markets itself to tourists, and the popular imaginaries of place these representations construct and perpetuate. Beyond this, there exists the varied and multiple ‘unofficial’ narratives of residents, produced through their engagements with their locality and its metanarrative. Surfers Paradise, as the main tourist hub and entertainment precinct of the Gold Coast, can be seen as a site of convergence for these competing discourses. This paper explores disjunctions in identities of place and how these manifest in embodied spatial practice. Drawing on Lefebvre’s (2004 [1992]) rhythmanalysis, I pay particular attention to the transitions from dayscapes to nightscapes through observational fieldwork undertaken in Surfers Paradise.
While there is an increasing body of scholarship regarding youth subcultures and nightclubs, insu... more While there is an increasing body of scholarship regarding youth subcultures and nightclubs, insufficient attention has been paid to the sites and practices involved in contemporary 'mainstream' club culture. As a key aspect of young people's cultural experience – to the extent of being an everyday mode of sociality – mainstream clubbing provides insights into issues of sociality, identity and belonging for youth in contemporary Australian society. Drawing on personal experience and observational fieldwork undertaken on the Gold Coast, which can be seen as a major node for mainstream clubbing in Australia, this paper argues that mainstream clubs have been appropriated by their patrons as sites for self-designed rites of passage. Through supporting an array of disorderly, transgressive practices in a regulated setting, this milieu paradoxically works to reproduce traditional social structures and gender relations. This is particularly evident in relation to how young people negotiate and perform hegemonic ideals of gender and enact traditional gender dynamics through presentations of self, modes of sociality and mating rituals. Mainstream clubs recognise and facilitate these uses of their sites through their spatiality, aesthetics and marketing, while at the same time, young people frame their clubbing practices in terms of what the clubs make available to them. This becomes what can be described as a mutually transformative relationship between spaces and bodies.
For youth on the Gold Coast, mainstream clubbing is an everyday mode of sociality. Local nightclu... more For youth on the Gold Coast, mainstream clubbing is an everyday mode of sociality. Local nightclubs capture the codes of the city’s tourism narratives and popular imaginaries, aiming to reproduce the kind of excessive, escapist, temporary, hedonistic experiences visitors come to expect from the Gold Coast. A key aspect of this is facilitating voyeurism, for both tourists and locals, through the clubs’ ambience, which limits expressions of self to visual presentations, and architecture. This puts bodies – particularly women’s bodies – on display. Although patronage is equally male and female, nightclubs are male-dominated spaces as they reinforce patriarchal discourses by catering to the male gaze. This paper explores young men’s performances of hegemonic masculinity in mainstream Gold Coast nightclubs, arguing that the sites and practices of this milieu serve to reproduce traditional gender dynamics. Drawing on observational fieldwork and personal experiences, this will be examined using examples of presentations of self, mating rituals and homosocial bonding activities.
A variety of online communities of interest are forged in online spaces with many coming together... more A variety of online communities of interest are forged in online spaces with many coming together in order to create, curate and celebrate a broad spectrum of cultural activities. These communities and their purposes are enabled by the ‘technologies of memory’ (Smelik 2009; Van House and Churchill 2008) that incorporate bespoke websites, content management systems such as Blogger or WordPress and, most fertile of all, social media platforms such as Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and the ‘micro’ blogging site Twitter.
Digital platforms enable practices devoted to the past that suggest extensions of the empowering practices of community archiving, collective memory and public history. Taking advantage of these spaces are an expansive range of sites that extend collective interests in popular music heritage and the creation of community archives to the online world (for a summary see: Collins and Long 2014; Baker, 2015, Collins 2015).
In the titles and rationale of online activities there is a promiscuous deployment of terms such as history, heritage, memory, community, curation, archive and indeed nostalgia. However, the degree to which as consciousness is expressed about such terms, or regarding a sense of the historical or indeed of and recognizably archival intention is something that merits assessment. In equal measure, such sites can be closed and restrictive in their policing of community as much as those that are open and inviting to all. Thus, the generation of social and cultural capital amongst participants in the co-creation of sites of memory prompts reflection on the implicit cultural politics of such activities and of public history as popular practice.
In this chapter we explore the meanings of such sites and the motivations of individuals and communities in the creation and sustaining of online records – perhaps archives (Baker and Collins 2015) - of popular music history and heritage. We ask: what do these sites have to tell us about the nature and character of community and the archive? What are the particularity of practices focussed on popular music’s past and the affordances of the digital? What’s at stake in the formulation of community around the products of the cultural industries, formed in the indeterminate space of the digital in relation to the specificities of time, geographical space and place of collective memory?
Keywords
Online, music, archives, history, heritage, communities
Remembering Popular Music’s Past, 2019
Remembering Popular Music’s Past, 2019
The growing interest, globally, in the preservation of popular music’s material past is beginning... more The growing interest, globally, in the preservation of popular music’s material past is beginning to yield a substantial range of scholarly explorations into how popular music, as heritage, is produced and legitimized (Brandellero et al. 2014) in ways that confer ‘critical acclaim, historical importance and cultural value’ (Bennett 2009, 478). The chapters in this collection all have as their starting point Les Roberts’s (2014, 276–77) assertion that we must ‘break[] down music heritage discourses into the spaces, practices and “acts of transfer” that play performative host to the cultures of popular music pasts’ in order to ‘gain a better understanding of how these pasts […] are lived in the present’. Hence, the focus here is on the transformation of popular music into heritage, and the role of history and memory in this process. The collection is particularly interested in the ways in which popular music’s past becomes enacted in the present, and explores the condition of this heritage. Despite the overwhelming permeation of popular music into everyday life, the ephemeral nature of both tangible and intangible aspects of popular music’s past foreshadows the reality that the items for preservation – and preservation practices themselves – are in danger of partial or complete loss. What were once considered the disposable by- products of popular music and culture – ticket stubs, posters, photographs, limited issue records, personal stories – have now become the target of enthusiast and expert efforts to preserve the artefacts, music and oral histories of our recent past. Such items are often located in ambiguous places – hidden under the bed, boxed in the garage, forgotten in the attic. Some of these objects eventually make their way into the collections of museums, archives and halls of fame, but many, once discovered lurking in those out- of- sight, out- of- mind places, become designated as ‘rubbish’ and end up as landfill (Baker and Huber 2015)
Media Narratives in Popular Music, 2022
Archival Science, 2022
Zines are self-published, do-it-yourself booklets that have a long history as tools for activism ... more Zines are self-published, do-it-yourself booklets that have a long history as tools for activism in social movements. While archival studies has already explored the collection and preservation of zines as cultural artefacts, this article explores the capacity for zines to act as a form of community archive. The article examines See You at the Paradise, a zine co-created with Norfolk Island community members for a research project focused on Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area. Drawing on Michelle Caswell’s six principles of community archive discourse—participation, shared stewardship, multiplicity, activism, reflexivity, valuing affect—we analyse the extent to which zines and zine-making, as product and process, can be understood as community archive. In doing so, we propose collaborative reminiscence as a seventh principle. The article finds that zines, as community archive, work to strengthen the presence of marginalised voices in dominant historical narratives while also o...
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Policy, 2022
Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2021
ABSTRACT Do-it-yourself (DIY) and community-based efforts to preserve popular music heritage ofte... more ABSTRACT Do-it-yourself (DIY) and community-based efforts to preserve popular music heritage often take place in tangible sites open to the public. These places contrast with authorised sites of heritage in their form, but not their function, and are often judged equally by visitors in terms of cultural value. This article analyses Tripadvisor user reviews of 11 DIY institutions of popular music heritage to highlight the tension between the production of cultural value by such places and the expectations of visitors. As unintentional sites of tourism, DIY institutions of popular music heritage find themselves caught between providing access to unique collections and experiences prized by niche audiences, and producing an entertainment value attainable only through the higher level budgets and skill sets found in authorised heritage institutions. This article contributes to an understanding of how the producers and consumers of DIY institutions understand value, while focusing on the neglected experience of end-users in the broader space of heritage engagement. In doing so, it draws attention to the co-creation of heritage experiences in online and physical spaces.
Making Media, 2019
Creative labour is highly individualized, notoriously precarious, and characterized by flexibilit... more Creative labour is highly individualized, notoriously precarious, and characterized by flexibility, insecurity, and irregularity, along with long hours and low pay. These circumstances increase the likelihood of exploitation. At the same time, creative labour has affective qualities – pleasures as well as pressures. This chapter explores how the working conditions within the creative industries are affectively experienced through three case studies
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2020
Deindustrialisation contributes to significant transformations for local communities, including r... more Deindustrialisation contributes to significant transformations for local communities, including rising unemployment, poverty and urban decay. Following the 'creative city' phenomenon in cultural policy, deindustrialising cities across the globe have increasingly turned to arts, culture and heritage as strategies for economic diversification and urban renewal. This article considers the potential role that popular music heritage might play in revitalising cities grappling with industrial decline. Specifically, we outline how a 'cultural justice approach' can be used within critical heritage studies to assess the benefits and drawbacks of such heritage initiatives. Reflecting on examples from three deindustrialising cities-Wollongong, Australia; Detroit, USA; and Birmingham, UKwe analyse how popular music heritage can produce cultural justice outcomes in three key ways: practices of collection, preservation and archiving; curation, storytelling and heritage interpretation; and mobilising communities for collective action.
Community Archives, Community Spaces: Heritage, Memory and Identity, 2018
This chapter explores the expanding range of community archiving activity concerned with the pres... more This chapter explores the expanding range of community archiving activity concerned with the preservation of cultures, experiences and memories associated with popular music. Engendered by forms as disparate as jazz, rock, soul or country music, such is the variety of this field that a similarly expanding scholarly literature has emerged as a means of mapping and understanding its meanings and significance. While much of this activity takes a familiar physical form (Baker, 2017), here we explore the ways in which the digital enables the extension of such activity. In further democratising the nature of historical work and the archive, online practice is also suggestive of how popular pleasures are subject to a form of cultural justice, a concept which frames this chapter
Leisure Studies, 2019
This article takes a serious leisure perspective to examine the costs associated with career volu... more This article takes a serious leisure perspective to examine the costs associated with career volunteering in DIY heritage institutions focused on the collection, preservation and curation of popular music's past. While the rewards of serious leisure have been analysed extensively in the literature, costs are addressed less frequently. Moreover, Stebbins' framing of costs has been critiqued as ambiguous and underdeveloped. In this article, we draw on Stebbins' tripartite model of tensions, dislikes and disappointments to analyse costs that emerged from ethnographic interviews undertaken with volunteers in 13 DIY popular music heritage institutions. Types of costs included tensions that were interpersonal, relational, financial, temporal (work, family, leisure), and related to well-being (emotional, physical); dislikes centred on shortages of dependable volunteers, volunteers who demonstrate a 'lack of care', and ineffective leadership; and disappointments focused on being let down by others, unsuccessful funding applications, and organisational change. Although rewards outweigh costs, we find that recognising the costs involved for career volunteers in DIY heritage institutions is crucial for contextualising rewards and perseverance, as well as for understanding how different types of costs overlap and exacerbate one another.
Journal of Sociology, 2020
Blended learning and flipped classroom models are increasingly encouraged in higher education, wh... more Blended learning and flipped classroom models are increasingly encouraged in higher education, where notions of flexibility and technological development inform institutional systems and strategies. This article presents results from an Australian study on redesigning and delivering an introductory sociology course using a combination of such models. Four central elements of the redesign are highlighted: overall course format; use of mini-lectures; face-to-face activities; and our assessment model. We present analysis of students’ and instructors’ understandings and experiences of the redesign over three course iterations to offer insight into the unfolding and responsive dynamics involved in implementing blended and flipped models. We aim to contribute to the ongoing implementation of similar models in the context of changing institutional environments and expectations, as well as to broader projects for pedagogical enrichment in sociology.
Journal of Sociology, 2020
In recent decades, the heritage sector has become increasingly precarious amid the rise of auster... more In recent decades, the heritage sector has become increasingly precarious amid the rise of austerity neoliberalism, impacting both the efficacy of heritage institutions and the labour experiences of those who run them. While scholarly literature has regularly examined these impacts for mainstream heritage institutions, little work considers volunteer-run, do-it-yourself (DIY) community heritage organisations. This article takes a serious leisure perspective to explore what constitutes ‘good work’ for volunteers in a DIY heritage institution, the Australian Jazz Museum (AJM). Drawing on interviews with 26 AJM volunteers, we discuss some of the ‘rewards’ and ‘costs’ of career volunteering in this institution. Our research suggests that the conditions for good work are contingent on the efforts of volunteers in management roles, while the conditions for bad work are heightened by austerity policies affecting funding opportunities. The case study also highlights the need to consider the...
Australian Historical Studies, 2020
In Australia, the community heritage sector – galleries, libraries, archives, museums and histori... more In Australia, the community heritage sector – galleries, libraries, archives, museums and historical societies managed by volunteers – plays a significant role in recording and preserving the diversity of Australia’s cultural heritage. However, these community heritage organisations face uncertain futures. This article offers four examples of heritage organisations located in New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia which have struggled with organisational sustainability arising from various financial, human, physical, skills, and expertise challenges. We assess some of the common problems threatening the longevity of community heritage organisations and what action is needed to safeguard this sector into the future.
Australian Feminist Studies, 2017
Archiving has become an increasingly important practice in the preservation of feminist and queer... more Archiving has become an increasingly important practice in the preservation of feminist and queer histories. In this article, we pay specific attention to the emerging body of literature on feminist archives of popular music, many of which are community-based, DIY initiatives. These community-led archives aim to comprehensively collect the ephemeral, intangible heritage of feminist music cultures that have traditionally been excluded in popular music canons and marginalised by mainstream heritage institutions. The literature revealed that feminist music archives function as much more than spaces for preservation-they are affective as much as they are intellectual, and they are key sites for activism and community-building. These two themes-activism and affectivity-thread together the body of literature, providing both the driving force behind these DIY archives and their potentiality in the communities of interest they cater to. The community archivists accounted for in the literature have all engaged in practices of queering the community music archive; taking the mainstream heritage institution as a model and rebuilding it from the ground up, renegotiating its boundaries and notions of linear history, and reconfiguring its practices to account for lives lived in the margins of the mainstream.