Pride, shame and the civic imaginary: UK cultural festivals and the levelling up agenda

Civic imaginaries are the multiple ways in which individuals and collectives think, feel and dream about the futures of their places and communities. They reveal the potential qualitative avenues through which researchers might explore the everyday realities and understandings of local political cultures, and develop new questions to address the broader societal impacts of cultural festivals.

Incorporating innovative, creative methodologies, working with civic imaginaries lies at the intersection of arts, humanities, political and social science research. By analysing the civic imaginaries of my PhD participants, I argued that Hull2017 exploited local histories and feelings to engineer an emotional atmosphere of pride in the city - a strategy of emotional governance which contributed to the uncritical acceptance of Hull2017 as a 'triumph'.

In doing so, I showed that the correlation between civic pride and 'thriving' places is an assumed one, in need of further interrogation. I also found that: i) there are different types of civic pride, and not all necessarily evidence policy success; ii) civic pride is temporary and fragile - it is difficult to measure and it does not last very long.

Given the emerging Levelling Up context and its promotion of pride through local culture, this work has proved to be timely, with potentially significant impact across academia, policy and practice.

This fellowship will allow me to expand and disseminate my knowledge of the civic imaginary and civic pride and their relationship with cultural festivals and UK political culture. Building on the approach and findings of my PhD, it will support new research of additional case studies: Coventry UK City of Culture 2021 and Birmingham Festival 2022 - the Commonwealth Games cultural programme - as well as analyse existing data regarding cultural festivals in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) local authority.

The latter is chosen to consider the impact of smaller scale festivals on hyper-local imaginaries and political cultures and was a case study in my recent research associate post at the University of Southampton. Supplementing my PhD data, I will write this research into a monograph for the Routledge Critical Event Studies Series. I will also write an article to submit to the high impact, interdisciplinary journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space based on the conceptual framework of my PhD.

I will further present my work at the conferences of: the American Association of Geographers, the Political Studies Association, and the Regional Studies Association. I will also convene a panel at the Royal Geographical Society conference. These outputs will consolidate my publication record and allow me to present findings to a wide academic cohort.

Additionally, I will take this conversation about civic pride and 'Levelling Up' to a range of relevant industry stakeholders such as think tanks, cultural and local government bodies. As the UK government affirms its commitment to developing civic pride metrics in the technical annex to the Levelling Up white paper, this fellowship will contribute and critique that process, offering novel theoretical and methodological insights.

The fellowship will also support my methodological skills through training in quantitative and mixed-methods research. These will help me become a more rounded and flexible researcher, putting me in good stead for securing competitive research funding. They will also enable me to teach research methods courses, thus boosting my employability.

Finally, I will seek the advice of my mentors to lay the next steps in my academic career, such as reviewing job opportunities and application materials for fellowships and lectureships.