winter wonderlands: public outdoor ice rinks, entrepreneurial display and festive socialities in uk...
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Winter wonderlands: public outdoorice rinks, entrepreneurial display andfestive socialities in UK citiesDavid Bell aa School of Geography , University of Leeds , Leeds, UKPublished online: 21 Jan 2009.
To cite this article: David Bell (2009) Winter wonderlands: public outdoor ice rinks,entrepreneurial display and festive socialities in UK cities, Leisure Studies, 28:1, 3-18, DOI:10.1080/02614360802260952
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Leisure StudiesVol. 28, No. 1, January 2009, 3–18
ISSN 0261-4367 print/ISSN 1466-4496 online© 2009 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/02614360802260952http://www.informaworld.com
Winter wonderlands: public outdoor ice rinks, entrepreneurial display and festive socialities in UK cities
David Bell*
School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, UKTaylor and Francis LtdRLST_A_326262.sgm(Received November 2007; final version received June 2008)10.1080/02614360802260952Leisure Studies0261-4367 (print)/1466-4496 (online)Original Article2008Taylor & Francis0000000002008Dr [email protected]
This paper provides a critical discussion of the uses and meanings of temporaryoutdoor ice rinks, which have become increasingly popular in UK cities over thelast decade. The installation of ice rinks in cities in winter time is framed in anumber of contexts, including entrepreneurial governance and civic boosterism,the uses of culture by the local state, invented winter and Christmas traditions, theeffects of cold winter weather on sociality and other forms of embodied playargued to be reshaping urban socialities. Conceiving ice rinks as a form of‘entrepreneurial display’, the paper also draws on theories of ‘expressiveembodiment’ to explore how rinks also encourage particular ways of performingand interacting that contest current critiques of the effects of entrepreneurial urbangovernance.
Keywords: ice skating; play; urban governance; cultural policy; embodiment
Introduction: cities on ice
Too-tight boots, break-neck speed and the inevitable sprawling slide across the ice in wetjeans. It’s the open-air ice-skating season: the time of year when councils across thecountry try their best to transform gritty inner cities into a rosy-cheeked winter wonder-land. (Ewing, 2007)
In this paper, I examine temporary outdoor ice rinks, which have become increasinglypopular in UK cities over the last decade. I situate the installation of ice rinks in citiesin winter time in a number of contexts, including discussions of entrepreneurialgovernance and civic boosterism, related issues of the uses of culture by the localstate, ideas about invented winter tradition and some previous research on the effectsof cold winter weather on sociality and on play’s role in reshaping urban social rela-tions. I explore not only how ice rinks might be seen as a form of ‘entrepreneurialdisplay’ – the use of spectacles in the service of promotional urban governance – butalso how they can be seen to encourage particular ways of acting and interacting,which I will refer to as ‘festive socialities’. These, I argue, contest the assumptionsbehind critical commentaries of contemporary urban governance. The paper draws ondiscussions of ‘expressive embodiment’ in dance and in play to develop this argument(Radley, 1995; Sheehan, 2006; Stevens, 2007; Thrift, 1997). My analysis thus offersa critique of the literature on culture-led regeneration by focusing on how people
*Email: [email protected]
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make use of the spaces created in the entrepreneurial city, through a discussion of onesuch space, the temporary outdoor ice rink. I proceed to assess the urban outdoor icerink as illustrative of what Latham (2003) refers to as the ‘contemporary enthusiasmfor the city’ (p. 1699) – an enthusiasm that exceeds or eludes the authorised practicesof entrepreneurial governance. To achieve these aims, I draw on observations of icerinks in selected UK cities in the 2005–06, 2006–07 and 2007–08 winter seasons, aswell as selected media coverage of the phenomenon.1 While cities in different parts ofthe world host ice skating in various forms (Ewing, 2007), my paper is limited ingeographical scope to the UK, since growth in rink provision has been particularlypronounced there (Mourby, 2005).
The paper begins by outlining some of the main issues surrounding entrepreneurialgovernance, culture-led regeneration and civic boosterism. It then considers the wintertime, and in particular the ‘Christmas season’, pointing to some of the ways in whichfestive activities and attractions have been packaged under the conditions of entrepre-neurial governance. I then discuss the current popularity of ice rinks in UK towns andcities, identifying some of the ways in which these are framed by those who pay for,manage or support their use as part of culture-led regeneration. I connect ice rinks toother forms of ‘entrepreneurial display’ and highlight the distinctive features of thisform of event. This is achieved in part by drawing on work on how people interact inpublic spaces in winter time, discussion of the festivities of Christmas and New Yearand research that explores how play is productive of particular ways of acting andinteracting. I centre the discussion around debates on the uses and meanings of publicspace in the context of entrepreneurial urban governance, and here I will focus onLeeds, a large, formerly industrial city in Yorkshire, in the north of England. Myoverall aim is to use temporary public ice rinks as a way to think through some largerquestions and debates, about cities and their management, about public space, aboutways of performing, relating and interacting in those cities and spaces. The paperdraws on ‘opportunistic’ observational data, which are presented as a series of snap-shots or vignettes illustrative of the broader argument being put forward.
The entrepreneurial city and cultural policy
There has been sustained academic discussion about the changing ways in which citiesin countries such as the UK have been run and managed, and these changes are oftenshort-handed by talking of ‘entrepreneurial urban governance’ or ‘new urban manage-rialism’ (Hall & Hubbard, 1998). In the light of global (and national) economicrestructuring and changing political priorities since the 1970s, the articulation ofcentral government to the local state is argued to have changed, as cities (and, ofcourse, suburban and rural places too) have been turned from a ‘welfarist’ relationshiptowards an ‘entrepreneurial’ relationship with central government. The exact contoursof this are beyond the remit of this paper, and are well covered in the literature (see,for example, Harvey, 1989; Hughes, 1999; Ward, 2003). The main issue that needs tobe borne in mind here is that the shift towards entrepreneurial governance asks thelocal state to act in a business-like manner, to be enterprising and to no longer be in astraightforwardly dependent relationship with central government, especially in termsof funding. Cities are now in competition with each other for sources of revenue. Thisturn is parallel with, and intimately related to, the decline of the industrial base, andthe move towards a post-industrial economy. Cities now have to find new tradableassets to raise money, to attract ‘footloose’ post-industrial capital, to maintain or
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improve their position on the urban hierarchy and to regenerate after the loss of indus-try. This had meant, among other things, a shift from cities as sites of industrialproduction to places of post-industrial consumption (Jayne, 2005), and a greateremphasis on inter-urban (and even intra-urban) competitiveness, manifest in thingslike city branding and place promotion.
This ‘marketisation’ or ‘competitivisation’ of urban governance has been opera-tionalised through a growing portfolio of strategies to create the new tradable assetsand forms of capital. These have included, among other things, the use of ‘culturalassets’ as attractors of capital, jobs and people (workers, residents, tourists) and asmarkers of enterprise, local distinctiveness (and attractiveness), upward mobility andso on (Evans & Foord, 2003). Commentators have highlighted the ‘rise and rise’ ofthis culture-led regeneration, and have provided detailed studies of its many manifes-tations (Miles & Paddison, 2005). These include using cultural assets to attract newbusinesses and workers, particularly those associated with growth sectors such as thecreative class (Florida, 2002); the conversion of disused industrial infrastructure intoheritage attractions (Dicks, 2003); packaging the city as cosmopolitan or multiculturalthrough theming or events programming which emphasises ‘diversity’ (Smith, 2003);the promotion of city-centre living, the 24-hour city, the night-time economy and thecity as a site of pleasure and leisure (Bassett, Smith, Banks, & O’Connor, 2005;Hughes, 1999); and the use of sports events and activities as tools for place promotion,tourism and civic renewal (Gratton & Henry, 2001; Silk & Amis, 2005). Importantly,as Hughes (1999) notes, the reorientation of the local state meant admitting ‘the inclu-sion of pleasure as a formal objective of public sector intervention’ (p. 123). Oftenthese various activities are densely intertwined, as urban managers seek to ‘add value’,for example by combining a major sporting event with arts programming, in the hopeof attracting a broader range of visitors, greater media attention and larger pots ofmoney (Garcia, 2004).
Culture, viewed here in a very broad (and often poorly defined) sense, has beenincreasingly enrolled in the work of entrepreneurial governance. In fact, current UKcultural policy places heavy emphasis on the many uses of culture to help achieve broadgovernment objectives, such as economic regeneration, social inclusion, communitycohesion, health improvement and so on (Stevenson, 2004). The transformation of theurban policy landscape has meant a shift from ‘welfarist’ leisure policy towards themore ‘entrepreneurial’ thrust of cultural policy, manifest in the UK by the formulationof all-encompassing local cultural strategies, which aimed both to ‘make the case’ forculture’s role in urban change and to make connections between the arts, leisure,tourism and heritage, creative industries and all other tradable cultural assets (Gilmore,2004). This reshaping of the policy landscape has ushered in new exclusions, it hasbeen argued, as culture becomes more of a tool in economic development than a sharedsocial resource. While this instrumental view of culture’s uses or usefulness has beenchallenged, the prevailing trend in culture-led (social and economic) regeneration isstronger than ever. In part, this reflects the success of the UK cultural sector in makinga case for its usefulness and its contributions to these agendas (Selwood, 2001); it alsoreflects the broader ‘entrepreneurialisation’ of culture which is itself a result of restruc-turing of funding and management in the cultural sector and the commercialisation ofleisure (Hill, 2002).
There are recognisable fads and fashions in entrepreneurial governance, as citymanagers seek to replicate (perceived) successes elsewhere, until the ‘unique sellingpoint’ (USP) is past its sell-by date, and then a new fad comes into being. For a while,
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seemingly all UK cities (and some towns and rural places) were enthusiastically‘incubating’ their creatives (Oakley, 2004) or ‘quartering’ their cities to package andtheme different neighbourhoods, such as gay villages or Chinatowns (Bell & Jayne,2004). Certain key motifs of urban regeneration and city branding have beenendlessly reproduced, such as gentrified waterfronts, industrial heritage museums,cultural festivals of one sort or another and so on. Iconic architecture, hallmarkevents, spectacles and attractions have all been heralded as ‘magic solutions’ to theeconomic and social troubles of cities. Some of these solutions have become institu-tionalised, enshrined in competitions such as European Capital of Culture, and thereis now a heightened sense of national and international competitiveness as cities bidto win such high-profile cultural attractions (Richards, 2000). Setting aside the trou-blesome issue of assessing whether these strategies genuinely yield positive outcomesand lasting impacts (Evans, 2005), there is still a clamour to find or invent the next bigthing in terms of culture. It seems that in the UK, that next big thing is ice rinks.Before considering ice rinks and skating in detail, I want first to contextualise theirpopularity in terms of the ‘festivalisation’ of the winter holiday, Christmas and NewYear festivities.
Festive festivals
The winter holiday season, which in the UK centres on Christmas and New Year, haslong been the focus of celebrations of both religious and secular form. Indeed, Christ-mas itself is regarded as a hybrid of pagan, secular and Christian elements (Miller,1993). New Year has also been long celebrated as a time of change and renewal, andassorted rituals are now sewn together to mark the coming of a new calendar year insymbolic ways (Hughes, 1999). Particularly since the turn of the new millennium,New Year has been marked by large-scale outdoor public assembly, fireworksdisplays and heightened media coverage. One of the most frequently commentedaspects of contemporary Christmas (and to a lesser extent New Year) festivities istheir commercialisation: Christmas is argued to have become a festival of shopping,eating and drinking (Nissenbaum, 1997).
While there are numerous strands of criticism concerning the commercialisation ofChristmas, we can also trace how the winter holiday season has been enrolled intoentrepreneurial governance, through strategies which seek to trade on the multiplemeanings of Christmas and New Year. Winchester and Rofe (2005) have writtenabout a particularly intense form of this, in the village of Lobethal, South Australia,which hosts an annual Festival of Lights at Christmastime. Christmas lights in citycentres have, indeed, become an increasingly important component of the overall‘festivalisation’ of the winter holiday period, marking its ‘official’ commencementthrough the ceremony of the switching on of the lights, which often involves the pres-ence of a ‘celebrity’. Such celebrities are also evident throughout the UK at this time,taking starring roles in pantomimes, another festival element of the Christmas season.
The case of Lobethal shows how the Festival of Lights has been at once a sourceof local pride and identity, an important tool in the regeneration of this previous millvillage, but also a site of increased tension over corporate involvement (through spon-sorship) and commercialisation. Winchester and Rofe (2005) neatly draw out the tropesof Christmas that the Festival draws on and out, both intentionally and unintentionally– tropes of family and community, of gift giving and celebration and also of Christmasas a Carnivalesque time, when normal social codes and conventions are loosened. The
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Festival of Light is, in short, an ‘invented tradition’ that has increasingly been enrolledin the regeneration of Lobethal, in the context of entrepreneurial governance (see alsoHughes, 1999). There are clear parallels, as we shall see, with the ‘festivals of ice’currently hosted by UK cities.
There are a number of additional elements of the winter holiday period that needpointing up at this point, as I will argue that one of the functions of the ice rink is toglue together a succession of different formal and informal events, in a sense consol-idating (and also sometimes extending) these festivities. A second growing trend inUK cities in winter is the Christmas market. In the weeks running up to Christmas,various types of market are used to attract shoppers and enhance the festiveatmosphere – craft markets offer unusual gifts, ‘continental’ markets bring goods andpeople from mainland Europe. German markets are particularly common at present,just as the Lobethal Festival of Light connects the village’s German Lutherian heritagewith a certain version of ‘Christmasness’. A longer-standing tradition for attractingshoppers and inculcating Christmasness in the UK is the visit to Santa’s grotto, usuallyinstalled in a department store or shopping mall and featuring elaborate tableauxcomplete with gnomes, reindeer and other recognisable icons of Christmas. And thepublic displays of Christmas lights in city streets are matched by a centrepiece in theform of a large decorated Christmas tree.
If the switching on of the Christmas lights signals the beginning of this period,then its end might be marked by the January sales, although these have been edgedforward in the calendar, some shops beginning them even before Christmas. Asconcerns over falling consumer spending ring alarm bells across the retail sector, sothe price reductions and special deals of the sale period become ever more enticing.The invented tradition of overnight queuing to snap up the best bargains, a regularfeature of post-Christmas news reports, ambivalently underscores the commercialisa-tion of Christmas itself, with many Christmas commodities (cards, tree decorations,foodstuffs) reduced in price once their cultural moment has passed.
The post-Christmas period has also become the site of many more recent inventedtraditions. For example, Hughes (1999) reports on Edinburgh’s Hogmanay Festival,promoted by the city council as a safe, family-oriented alternative to drink-soakedNew Year celebrations. To address the potential exclusions of observing the Gregoriancalendar celebrations, meanwhile, some cities have added Chinese New Year to thisfestive time, just as some local authorities have sought to render Christmas secular andmulticultural by rebranding it as ‘winter time’. Nevertheless, it is important to note thatthese festive celebrations remain potentially exclusionary, culturally as well aseconomically.
Another post-Christmas invented tradition, the making of ‘New Year’s Resolu-tions’, has recently been colonised by the health and fitness industries. Anti-smokingand ‘responsible drinking’ campaigns emphasise New Year as the ideal time to ‘quit’,while the market for fitness DVDs and diet and detox guides picks up markedly asconsumers seek to remedy the over-indulgences of the festivities, or resolve to improvetheir health. Mental health issues also surface at this time, with January being seen asthe worst month for ‘winter blues’, with the debts and fallout of the festive periodlooming, and nothing to look forward to until summer. These various components havebeen packaged or bundled together to produce a sequence of rituals and events unitedby the themes of Christmasness and festivity, tied together by what Hughes (1999)calls ‘festive-time strategies’, by which he means the demarcation of a ‘special’ timeset apart from ‘normal life’ and characterised by festive feeling and activity. As I want
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to now move on to show, the popularity of temporary outdoor ice rinks in UK citiesconsolidates this, fitting in with the various pre-existing practices and meanings of thewinter holiday season, as well as bringing its own invented traditions.
Entrepreneurial ice
Skating on ice is the ultimate Winter past time [sic], in days gone by frozen lakes becamea focal point of City life and part of a winter culture. Come and celebrate on Ice with thisancient traditional [sic] recreated for the 21st Century. (Polar Productions website forGateshead Quays rink)
As the Polar Productions website says, outdoor temporary ice rinks connect back topast times, to skating on frozen lakes and rivers, perhaps most vividly to the ‘frost fairs’on the frozen Thames in London that began in the seventeenth century and ended in1814 (Reed, 2002), as well as to skating traditions in public parks in climatic zonesthat cause winter freezing (Jones & Wills, 2005). The ‘winter culture’ around iceskating has been constructed as productive of particular forms of sociality, whichtoday’s urban ice rinks tap into. I want to begin this section by providing a sketch ofurban ice rinks in the UK, based largely on media reports and promotional materialsfrom the 2005–06, 2006–07 and 2007–08 seasons. A typical report, in the national dailynewspaper The Independent (Mourby, 2005), noted that there were at least 25 rinks inUK cities in the winter of 2005–06, and gave a partial account of their origins. Accord-ing to Mourby, the rinks were part of the entrepreneurial diversification strategy of aBritish company that rented out ‘chiller facilities’. These were well used in the summer,but the company needed to improve its cash flow in winter, when no one needs thingschilling. As Mourby (2005) puts it, ‘Taking its inspiration from the Rockefeller Centerin New York, the company went round the UK offering outdoor ice rinks to variousBritish cities. In 1996, Manchester took the bait with one of the UK’s first open-airrinks in Albert Square’ (p. 11). This entrepreneurial risk on the part of Manchester wasone of the city’s responses to the devastation of the IRA bombing of June 1996, anevent that sparked a still on-going period of intensive regeneration in the city centre(Peck & Ward, 2002). Other cities soon followed suit, and the ice rink swiftly becamea centrepiece of what Quinn (2005) calls ‘entrepreneurial display’, defined as thedeployment of various forms of staged spectacle in the service of promotional urbanmanagerialism. Mourby (2005) wrote that the combined revenue generated by theserinks across the UK in 2005–06 was about £6 million, though this figure does notinclude the indirect revenue benefits that visitor attractions are hoped to generate, suchas increased spending on transport and in surrounding shops, cafes and so on. This‘added value’ of the rinks is repeatedly referred to in media accounts, as it is in countlessother forms of entrepreneurial display, even though the accuracy of any calculus usedto determine such multiplier effects is contestable (Evans, 2005).
As Mourby (2005) also notes, ‘the visual spectacle is getting more and moreimpressive as cities compete for the skating pound’ (p. 11). Costs, rink size and esti-mated visitor figures and visitor spending are all part of this competition, as thenumber of ice rinks rises. So rinks are endlessly diversifying, adding extra features,creating their USP. In recent seasons, for example, Birmingham in partnership withmobile phone company T-Mobile hosted a youth-oriented, ‘street’ rink, open untilmidnight and imagined as ‘a trendy, cool, alternative hangout in the evening’, conjoin-ing the rink with T-Mobile’s other ‘viral marketing’ events, such as its ‘street movies’
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and ‘street gigs’. Meanwhile, Rochdale themed its rink around an Alpine ski resort(though one complete with disco lights and thumping pop music), Belfast had ‘Santa’sUnderwater Kingdom’ and a Narnia spectacular linked to a new movie released thatChristmas, Glasgow’s rink had a ‘chocolate fountain’, while Oakham played saferwith a continental market alongside its rink. Diversifying from the familiar round orsquare rink, Warwick Castle had in the 2007–08 season the UK’s first ‘ice trail’ thatcarried skaters around other special attractions for the winter, and both Bristol andChester zoo had rinks among their animals. The moat of the Tower of London wasalso ‘frozen over’ in the same season, seeking to differentiate itself from the growingnumber of rinks in the capital.
There is competition between those cities favouring real ice and those preferring asynthetic surface (and of course both stress the benefits and ‘uniqueness’ of theirchoice). Bexley went further, with artificial snowfalls at its synthetic rink. Wrexham’s‘state of the art plastic surface’ hosted fancy dress events and karaoke nights, and wasone of many rinks to have a webcam trained on it, giving potentially a global virtualaudience. Enfield argued that its synthetic rink is preferable, since visitors could useit ‘without the risk of getting wet or cold’! As noted, USPs are always much indemand in skating London, where there are now more than a dozen outdoor rinks,many emphasising location as the added attractor: overlooking the Natural HistoryMuseum, in the midst of the post-modern spectacle of Canary Wharf, or in thegrounds of eighteenth-century Somerset House to recreate the frost fair ambience.
Clearly, the popularity and diversification of outdoor ice rinks fit squarely with theideas of entrepreneurial governance and entrepreneurial display. Rinks are talkedabout and talked up entrepreneurially, by city managers and promoters and byjournalists, who support their use through a variety of justifications. The rink in thevicinity of the Natural History Museum mentioned above hints at one obvious waythat ice skating is being used by facilities managers: to attract visitors during tradition-ally lean periods. A similar motive helps explain the rink in Cornwall’s Eden Project,whose biomes contain tropical plants (its low visitor numbers were nicely euphemisedon a website by saying the attraction is ‘crowd free’ in winter), and those at Bristoland Chester zoos. More generally, of course, an ice rink is seen as an added attractionto the city centre, a way of enticing people in, who will pay to skate, and also (hope-fully) spend money in the city while they are there. So there are some widely sharedeconomic ambitions for ice rinks, in terms of their function as visitor (for which read:consumer) attractions. Time and again this economic benefit is foregrounded by urbanmanagers, in a discourse familiar from the commodification of leisure and culture,more broadly: culture makes money.
But the contemporary policy landscape does not stop at economic uses of culture,as already noted. Culture is being made to do all kinds of work in cities, and ice rinks,as cultural assets, are no exception. Civic pride and sense of belonging are also part ofculture’s policy remit: city marketing is not just about reaching new audiences, it isalso about ‘building the brand’ for inhabitants. Staging cultural events or commission-ing landmark cultural infrastructure such as museums, stadiums, public artworks isargued to help rebuild civic culture and pride, to emblematise confidence and forwardthinking (Evans, 2005). In a sense, then, the ice rink is also an emblem of this, and isa gift to the people of the city, an act of civic generosity. The problematic politics ofthe gift, as revealed for example in deconstructionist readings, highlight the obligationsand tensions in giving and receiving gifts, especially civic gifts (see, for example, Chan,2005). Nevertheless, installing an ice rink in public space is talked about as such an
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act of generosity, even if that generosity does not extend to free entry, and is under-pinned by economic rationale. (Ipswich Borough Council’s web page promoting its icerink in 2005–06 ended by noting that, thanks to sponsorship, ‘the deal which bringsthe ice rink to Ipswich won’t cost the Council a penny’.)
The construction of ice rinks in public spaces, often squares or parks, raisesanother key issue. Public space is argued to have become increasingly regulated andprivatised in countries such as the UK, and to be under increased threat of corporatecolonisation (Low & Smith, 2005). By building an ice rink that skaters have to pay touse, the rink arguably contributes to such privatisation. Other uses and users of thespace are marginalised, either literally pushed aside or regulated away. In some cases,this is quite clearly part of strategic planning, to use the rink to reorder public space.In Stoke-on-Trent, for example, a temporary outdoor ice rink was built in 2003 in thecity centre, on a marginal public site that had become a day time resting place for‘undesirables’ (principally rough sleeping drink and drug users). This space wasdescribed as having been ‘reclaimed’ for the public by the rink.2 More plainly, activeparticipation as a skater is exclusionary due to pricing (and arguably due to compe-tence), but I want to hold off from dismissing ice rinks as wholly in service of theprivatisation of public space, especially in terms of the actual practices of skating andspectating. But before I address these, I want to highlight some more of the uses towhich public outdoor ice rinks are currently being put.
The exclusions resulting from the entrance fee are offset by expressions of socialinclusion reported at some ice rinks: many host sessions for schools, and some alsooffer community groups and disabled groups special slots and rates. Health benefitsare also highlighted, with the website for Cardiff’s rink claiming that one hour’s skat-ing burns nearly 500 calories, tapping nicely into post-Christmas health and fitnessresolutions. Similarly, Leeds Ice Cube noted on its website in 2005–06 that skatingduring its later opening season, from mid-January to early March, was a good way to‘shake off those mid-winter blues’. More broadly, the rinks are seen as contributing tofestive feelings and forms of sociability: Bradford’s rink promised ‘to get everyone inthe Christmas spirit’. Mostly this is centred on family and friends, though some rinks,such as Manchester’s Great Northern Ice Rink, were promoted as ‘the perfect stop-over en route to the office party’, while Birmingham’s T-Mobile-sponsored rinkaimed to tap a youthful identification, making the rink a sort of sub- or club-cultural‘cool place’ (Skelton & Valentine, 1998). I now want to turn to the various forms of‘skating sociality’ enabled on rinks.
Festivities and socialities
Ever since the first skaters used animal bones to cross the frozen wastes of Scandinaviamore than 1,000 years ago, ice skating has become a regular winter activity and, despiterecent fears of global warming and warmer winters, the number of new skaters continuesto increase each year. (Kelbie, 2006, p. 8)
In discussing skating sociality – the particular ways of interacting and performing thatpublic communal ice skating produces – I want to draw on a number of useful discus-sions of the broader forms of social relations in public spaces during cold weather andof playfulness in cities. Insights from these discussions will frame my own observa-tions at Leeds Ice Cube, which I will also contextualise via research into the entrepre-neurial governance of the city of Leeds.
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Nash (1981) reports on an observational study of ‘winter public order’ in the TwinCities of Minneapolis and St Paul, Minnesota, USA. His rich and insightful accountof the many effects of severe cold weather on interpersonal interactions in public outdoorspaces, which features some observations at ice rinks, includes a discussion of ‘attitudesof festivity and celebration’ enacted by the people he and his co-researchers observed(Nash, 1981, p. 232). Nash notes at the outset the ‘decreased numbers of participantsin public life’ as a result of wintry weather, so we can understand ice rinks as an attemptto produce what Montgomery (1995) names urban vitality in periods doubly depopu-lated by inclement weather and the domestic focus of Christmas and winter more gener-ally. Drawing people out of their cosy homes depends on offering attractions appealingenough to offset the thermal discomforts of the season; ice skating, in fact, trades onand repurposes these. As Nash (1981) puts it, ‘either during or after a heavy snow orextreme cold, persons in public often display a festive attitude. It is as if the weatheritself is cause for celebration’ (p. 234). Harley (2003) has also discussed the positiveeffects of severe winter weather in the UK, in research on ‘weatherphile’ internet news-groups. The idealisation of the ‘white Christmas’ in particular connects nostalgically,Harley suggests, with a broader fondness for ‘real winters’ (p. 109). The increasingrarity of snowfall in lowland Britain is compensated for by remembrances of past coldwinters; outdoor ice rinks tap into this, too, nostalgically connecting to past times whenlakes and rivers froze, as well as to the tradition of frost fairs in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries.
Nash’s research identified outdoor activities in wintry conditions as having a‘release function’ and as being carnivalesque in the Bakhtinian sense. An activity likewalking down the middle of a snow-blocked road, not to mention sledging and snow-ball fights, illustrates this snowy conviviality, and also a ‘reclaiming’ of public space.The ‘normal’ rules of public conduct are held in snowbound suspension, Nashsuggests – a liminal suspension based on the assumption that the bad weather will beshort-lived, and that normal order will resume upon thaw. Nash (1981) ends prophet-ically by suggesting that ‘city planners and advisors to government officials shouldrecognize that adaptations and uses [of public space] already exist’ and that theyshould therefore develop ‘space usages and policy directed at winter time utilization’(p. 241). The temporary outdoor public ice rink, it would appear, fulfils exactly thisremit, as my discussion of Leeds Ice Cube will now demonstrate.
Skating, embodiment and affect
There’s a very full rink, it being the school holidays. An interesting mix of very goodskaters, showing their proficiency (skating backwards, doing twirls), groups of kids doinga slow circling of the rink busy with their gossiping, and those ‘newbies’ who cling tothe edge of the rink, and who often fall. The marshals swoop in to help those who can’tget back on their skates, and bystanders ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ as skaters fall. At the same time,marshals also display their skating skill, and are often doing little tricks as they chat tothe skaters and onlookers. There’s a marked unselfconsciousness in all the skaters, espe-cially given the sizeable crowd of spectators. Lone skaters are lost, either concentratingon their skating, or showing a proficient nonchalance and pleasure in their own skill.
As well as analysing press coverage and promotional materials, this paper is informedby numerous observations at UK ice rinks in the 2005–06, 2006–07 and 2007–08seasons. Although the observational research was largely opportunistic rather thansystematic (see Reimer, 1977), repeat visits were made by myself and by a ‘Research
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Placement’ student to Leeds Cube ice rink. Observational vignettes from thesesessions are utilised in this paper to illustrate the arguments that I develop in theselatter sections, about the experiences of skating (and of observing the skating).3
Opportunistic approaches foreground drawing on the researcher’s own experiences indeveloping new areas of research, and show that ‘personal experiences of spaces,people and events provide unique, subjective insights into social phenomena’ (Lugosi& Lugosi, 2008, p. 1). The use of observational vignettes enriches the account of thephenomenon under study, capturing experiences that inform subsequent theoreticalelaboration.
It’s the first day of the rink being open this season, and the anticipation is palpable as Iget near to Millennium Square. Groups of children and young people, families, all sortsare making their way to the Square, talking excitedly about the skating ahead. And thenwe’re there – the now familiar sight of the Leeds Cube, and its queues. Local radio DJsblare out chart hits, and the big screen TV behind silently shows a news show. Themarshals are on the ice already, making final preparations. It’s skating season, again.
Leeds Ice Cube – claimed as the largest temporary outdoor ice rink in the UK inthe 2005–06 season – typifies many of the general themes of this paper, and indeedLeeds exemplifies the issues around entrepreneurial governance. The city hasresponded to de-industrialisation through a vigorous regeneration strategy with manydimensions. Encouraging city-centre living, attracting new service and managerialjobs, building public–private partnerships, engaging in place promotion (usingslogans such as ‘Leeds; the UK’s Favourite City’ and ‘Leeds: Live It, Love It’),encouraging a ‘24-hour city’ and fostering a ‘Europeanised’ culture. The wholepalette of new urban managerialism has been deployed in Leeds, in an urban policycontext labelled by Bramham (2001) ‘Right-Post-Fordist’ (see also Hughes, 1999).The Local Strategic Partnership, called the Leeds Initiative, is the main policy bodydriving this agenda forwards (Dutton, 2003; Ward, 2003). In sports policy, too, thecity was acting entrepreneurially, seeing in its sporting assets the potential for citypromotion and urban regeneration, as well as conceiving sports as carrying ‘a plethoraof externalities in dealing with youth and urban problems’ (Bramham, 2001, p. 289).The Ice Cube undoubtedly delivers on all these counts.
One of the Leeds Initiative’s hallmark ‘gifts’ to the city was the £12 million projectto create a new public space to mark the millennium. As Chatterton and Unsworth(2004) describe it, however, Millennium Square has become an ambivalent emblemof the Leeds Initiative’s view of public life in the city:
Originally dubbed the ‘people’s square’, the City Council sought to ensure that nobodyshould be excluded [from events there] on the basis of price. However, many events areticketed, and bylaws have been drawn up to restrict certain activities. Some now call itthe Council’s ‘posh patio’. (p. 364)
Nevertheless, even these critics concede that populist programming is part of theSquare’s remit, though they would no doubt see the Ice Cube’s entry fee as prohibitiveof the kind of inclusive cultural offer they argue Leeds needs. Yet my analysis,supported by observational data, suggests that it might be preferable to see the IceCube as part of a response to the potential exclusions of the Square, a way of encour-aging different groups into the city centre. As Mordue (2007) comments in researchon the nearby city of York, urban leaders are seeking to address urban decline andsocial exclusion ‘through initiatives like the reintroduction of cafes, fairs and bazaars
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in public spaces, ending urban dereliction, planning more multifunction urban spacesand generally stimulating … intermingling and social interaction’ (p. 460). Read cyni-cally, these initiatives could be seen to be about little more than getting money out ofconsumers’ pockets. But observations at the ice rink suggested that this kind of usepermits, even encourages, the ‘open/spontaneous’ use and meaning that Chattertonand Unsworth long for in Leeds. The ways in which the ice rink is actually used, theembodied, communal acts of ice skating, suggest a contesting of some of the criticalresponses to the privatisation of public space seen as an inevitable consequence ofurban entrepreneurialism (see, for example, Silk, 2007).
Watching the skaters, and also watching the watchers and the hangers-around atthe Ice Cube, I was troubled by Chatterton and Unsworth’s prognosis, though I wellunderstand their ambivalence towards a space like Millennium Square. And theimages of the skaters and the discussions of other researchers interested in play andspace suggest that the rink is doing some of that important work of redefining thepublic, public space and public uses of public space. The ways that different groupsof skaters occupy and use the rink, for instance, reveal more than passive observanceon a commodified spectacle.
In the middle of the rink a small group of teenagers is standing, barely skating at all,earphones from iPods clamped to their ears, presumably replacing the ‘chart pop’soundtrack of the rink with something ‘cooler’. They enact teenage cool by not skatingwith the crowd, but occasionally exhibit skill by doing some little move, a spin or a back-ward swerve – they are also flexing some form of subcultural capital, by refusing to jointhe ‘herd’ skating in counter-clockwise unison. Mostly they just stand still.
One way of thinking this through involves turning to related discussions centredon play and on dance as forms of ‘expressive embodiment’ that might facilitate whatRadley (1995) calls ‘the fabrication of a “different world” of meaning, made with thebody’ (p. 12). As Silk (2007) notes, the body has been somewhat neglected in leisurestudies; a focus on embodied experience, however, helps move the analysis beyondthe impasse of a purely ‘top down’ interpretation of ‘entrepreneurial display’. Whilethere are debates about the status of ice skating professionally as dance or sport(Jordan & Thomas, 1997), the display at the Ice Cube seems a vivid example of whatRadley refers to as the ‘collective body-for-fun’, which emphasises ‘a world of sensa-tions, of movement, of the loss and recovery of physical control’ and which, Radleyargues persuasively, offers ‘the grounds for configuring an alternative way of beingthat eludes the grasp of power’ (p. 9). Skaters, like dancers, experience individual andcollective embodied movement ‘which is not merely the private, subjective enjoymentof the body, but also a symbolic transformation of feeling with the body … That is tosay, they inhabit an “imaginary” world of their own making, central to which is theircomportment and that of their fellows’ (p. 11). Such experience, Radley suggests,creates a ‘potential space’ for expressive, affective embodiment. Skaters and specta-tors together concoct this experience.
I watch for a long time, even though I’m freezing cold (the skaters soon get warm, itseems, though falling on the ice gets them wet). There’s something about the movement,the patterns, as groups form or merge and then break up, as people move at differentpaces, some graceful and others faltering. It is, without a doubt, a spectacle. Watchingthe spectators is also very revealing. Some have come along with skaters – often parentsor grandparents who have brought kids. But others are passing by from the shops,cutting across the Square, and pause to watch a while. Strangers strike up occasional
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conversations, though it’s often hard to single out a particular skater and talk about them.In fact, it seems to me there are two ways of watching the skating: to try to watch aparticular skater, which is surprisingly demanding given the constant movementand flux; or to ‘de-focus’ and let the overall patterns and movement pass across yourfield of vision. It’s an amazing sight, mesmerising – the movements are not reallysynchronised or co-ordinated, yet there are patterns, endlessly changing, as individualsand groups skate and stop, skate and stop. There are comic moments, falling over,people laughing at themselves, laughing at the pleasure of skating. The good mood isvery infectious.
Radley’s analysis is built on by Thrift (1997, 2004), who sets out to theorise thebroader ‘affective register of cities’ (Thrift, 2004, p. 57) and to think about the spatialpolitics of affect. Thrift points out, in fact, that expressive embodiment and affect havebeen increasingly engineered into urban landscapes: there exists what we might call‘entrepreneurial affect’ as part of place promotion, which ‘produc[es] new forms ofpower as it goes’ (p. 68). This suggests that the ‘elusive body’ that Radley wrote aboutmay also have been conscripted into entrepreneurial governance regimes, and that afocus on embodied practices might take us elsewhere.
Like Radley and Thrift, Sheehan (2006) is interested in play as ‘a means throughwhich we understand, perform and shape self and city’ (p. 247). Her focus is onroad races, in which runners often playfully participate in a collective encounterwith urban public space. She locates running as ‘adult play’ and seeks to uncoverhow the experience of running-as-play ‘mobilizes fantasy as a means to open bothspatial and temporal understandings of lived experiences’ (p. 249). Like skating,road running combines discipline with indulgence: some runners train and try to runtheir fastest, others are there for fun and still others alternate between these twoimpulses as the race proceeds. Noting the importance of running speed to the expe-rience of space, Sheehan draws on the notion of the ‘accelerated sublime’, arguingthat moving at speed changes perceptions and experiences of the city. The race, sheconcludes, can be thought of as collective ‘meaning-making through event’ (2006,p. 260) – a sociable engagement with other runners, spectators and the city itself.This playfulness permeates the entire experience, for participants and onlookersalike.
In between sessions, the ice is cleared, checked and cleaned. Sometimes, as today, thewaiting crowds are entertained by a ‘professional’ skater, who does some tricks. A gangof teenage boys starts heckling her, shouting that they can do better tricks. Others in thequeue giggle at the banter.
Sharing this interest in play, Stevens (2007) explores different manifestations ofthe ‘Ludic City’, focusing largely on unplanned (and unplanned-for) outbursts ofurban playfulness. As he writes, ‘play illustrates a quite different set of relationsbetween perceptions, intentions, actions and objects’ (p. 197) which challenge urbanplanning’s rationality. Drawing on previous theorists of play, Stevens identifies afour-fold typology of urban play: competitive, chance, simulation and vertigo, thelatter defined as ‘behaviours through which people escape normal bodily experienceand self-control’ and which include ‘falling, sliding, jumping, climbing, dancing,spinning and moving quickly’ (2007, p. 41). Vertigo also involves a tension betweenthe desire for risk and for control, moments of letting go and then of regaining balanceor control. In public urban spaces, before assembled strangers, urban play is frequentlyvertiginous, Stevens argues.
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Another busy Saturday at the rink, and the fine weather has drawn in crowds of onlook-ers, too. People stand on the steps of the Town Hall to get a good view. Nearby, a groupof teenage boys seizes the opportunity of a captive audience, by performing ‘freerunning’ moves on various structures around Millennium Square. It seems like they’retrying to match, or better, the skill on display on the ice with their own exhibition – andmaybe also pointing out that fun can be had for free?
One of the central problematics in Stevens’ work is that play should be affordedor enabled, but cannot really be directly planned for. Organised playful events, hesuggests, stifle the immanent creativity of spontaneous play – play which is often‘against the grain’ of rational urban planning. In situations like ice skating or roadracing, however, there is a constant play between the rules of the game and the free-dom to improvise. Both Sheehan and Stevens also emphasise that playfulness extendsbeyond the ‘players’, too, to draw in spectators who are also participants in the spec-tacle of play. Sometimes their participation becomes part of the event itself, as in thefree runners mentioned above, but at other times ‘unscripted’ participation disrupts thespectacle of skating sociality:
Today the observation platform right next to the rink is fenced off. I ask a steward whythis is, and she tells me they have had troublemakers in the evening sessions who havebeen standing there, sticking their arms out and trying to knock over passing skaters. Shegives me the familiar speech about how a few idiots spoil everyone’s fun.
The embodied pleasure of moving over ice, the sensorial pleasures of the cold, thefestive socialities of the season and the visual pleasures of the spectacle of people skat-ing, are intensely productive of an urban vitality that is popular, democratic andintensely sociable. It provides a clear instance of what Latham (2003, p. 1699)describes as the ‘contemporary enthusiasm for the city’ – an enthusiasm he suggestsis too often absent from critical writings on urban governance. Yes, the skating is regu-lated, by stewards and the gaze of CCTV. Yes, it has its exclusions, on the grounds ofprice, and to some extent on skill and competence. But to write the ice rink off as ashallow manifestation of entrepreneurial display (or entrepreneurial affect) is to denythose productive features listed here. Entrepreneurial display is matched by the displayof skating socialities and the uses of the body as a spectacle which can ‘create a fantasyof change, escape and of achievement’ (McRobbie, 1991, cited in Thrift, 1997, p. 150).As Montgomery (1995, p. 107) puts it, ‘cities need public spaces where social inter-action can take place’ (see also Mordue, 2007). For a few weeks, the Ice Cube seemsto me to be fulfilling that need.
Conclusion
There can be no denying the reading of temporary public outdoor ice rinks in UKcities that sees them as a tactic of entrepreneurial governance. Understood as a giftto ‘the people’ from urban managers and corporate sponsors, they are also utilisedas tools for economic regeneration, place promotion, health improvement, socialinclusion and just about every other key national and local government agenda(except, it should be noted, environmental sustainability agendas – Birmingham’s T-Mobile rink used, according to its web page, the ‘cooling power of over 1000household fridges’). Ice rinks are designed to draw people into city centres – peoplewho might not otherwise be there, whether ‘locals’ or ‘visitors’. They are weapons
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in inter-urban competitiveness, though their proliferation round the UK lessens thisimpact. They perform ‘entrepreneurial display’, literally staging entrepreneurialgovernance, and enlisting participants as producers and consumers of the skatingspectacle. Yet it is important to note the ways that skating as an embodied, affec-tive, playful and communal activity is productive for those who skate and those whospectate, as well as being productive for urban managers. While much of the litera-ture on culture-led regeneration has focused on mega-events and hallmark infra-structure, it has overlooked how people use the spaces created in the post-industrial,entrepreneurial city, and the affective, sociable experiences these spaces can beproductive of. As Hughes (1999) concluded in his study of festive time, such expe-riences ‘recuperate space with carnivalesque images of celebration and conviviality’(p. 132). Looking at ice rinks indicates there is much more to learn from thinkingmore deeply about how skating on thin ice might be more than a metaphor for theprecariousness of new urban managerialism: it is also literal action and interaction,a ‘collective body-for-fun’, out of which larger questions, and maybe even someanswers, might emerge.
AcknowledgementsResearch support and additional observational data were provided by Aimee Jones. Thanks tothree referees and the editors for helpful and supportive comments. The paper has benefitedgreatly from ‘live’ airings and subsequent discussions at the Universities of Sunderland, Hulland Leeds.
Notes1. The websites consulted in writing this paper are listed here. I have chosen not to clutter up
the body of the paper with lengthy URLs. ● www.bbc.co.uk/stoke● www.belfastcity.gov.uk/celebratebelfast2006● www.bexley.gov.uk● www.birmingham.gov.uk● www.bradfordurc.co.uk● www.enfield.gov.uk/FortyHall● www.enjoyengland.com/attractions/events/calendar/december/ice-skating● www.exeter.gov.uk● findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_/ai_n16877062 (Independent)● www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2007/nov/02/uk.wintersports● www.gigsinscotland.com● www.haverhill-news.com● www.ipswich.gov.uk/Angle● www.leeds.gov.uk/icecube● www.londonfoodfilmfiesta.co.uk● www.londonskaters.com● www.manchester.gov.uk/festivemcr● www.mymetro.com● www.polar-productions.com● http://www.raisingkids.co.uk/xmas/fea_skating● www.rochdaleobserver.co.uk● www.rutland.gov.uk● www.thewestonmercury.co.uk● www.travel.guardian.uk● www.visitbritain.com
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● www.visitnewcastlegateshead.com● www.wrexham.gov.uk
2. There is another sorry chapter to Stoke-on-Trent’s ice rink saga. The company whosupplied the rink went into administration several days after the rink opened, and it wasclosed within two weeks. The ice rink was locally seen as the brainchild of the electedmayor, Mike Wolfe, who had to bear the brunt of subsequent criticism. Entrepreneurialgovernance can be a risky business.
3. A confession: I did not skate at all during the observational fieldwork, for fear of bothexhibiting my own incompetence and of the risk of injury. A different paper would nodoubt emerge from direct embodied experience on the ice.
Note on contributorDavid Bell is Senior Lecturer in Critical Human Geography at the University of Leeds, UK,where he is also leader of the Urban Cultures and Consumption research cluster. He is DeputyDirector of the university’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies.
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