Making space: Investigating the diversity conundrum for British music festivals

Abstract

Culture always speaks to the history and meaning of place. Music festivals in particular carry considerable significance as they are produced through spatial and temporal processes that extend their symbolic and material meaning beyond their local settings. The onset of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in Bristol intensified debates about festival diversity. Drawing on interviews with Bristol-based festival producers, this article examines popular music festivals and the places, communities and identities they represent. Rather than repeating the common criticism of festivals for being too white, we contribute to the debates by unravelling complex processes embedded within festival production. Using Lefebvre’s concept of conceived space, we argue that (racial) diversity is a spatial conundrum for music festivals. We demonstrate this through the way festival space is conceived: culturally–as it is framed within established music festival discourses; economically–through entrepreneurial networks of independent producers within local music cultures; socially–their ideals (including diversity), tastes and lifestyles inadvertently organise and represent particular symbolic and material formations of (racialised) identities and communities.