The People's Pier: The popular culture of pleasure piers and cultural regeneration through community heritage

“人民码头”是一个研究项目，调查社区码头作为一种新兴的社区枢纽形式。它侧重于码头和社区连通性的两个相关方面;第一，如何通过采取集体行动来保护码头等当地遗产资产，加强社区的信心;第二，如何利用社区码头及其流行文化遗产在不同群体之间建立积极的关系，并赋予社区权力。然而，复兴进程是复杂的，并不总是包容性的;它们可能既造成分裂，又不公平。因此，该项目还将探索码头周围作为社区空间的分离和冲突过程。社区所有制企业往往被认为是现有社区集体努力和团结在共同利益周围的能力的结果。该项目采取了不同的观点，考虑社区如何通过社区所有权和相关过程（如集体行动）连接和出现，以“拯救”和发展码头。这种过程既涉及联系，也涉及分离，可以理解为一个社区在自己的过程中。此外，该项目旨在探索如何利用海滨休闲码头丰富的流行文化遗产作为造福社区的资源。在这样做的过程中，拟议的项目在互联社区计划中开辟了新的调查领域。它将流行文化置于社区建设的核心，并肯定流行文化是社区文化遗产的一部分，从而挑战传统的遗产观。这项研究是与两个社区合作伙伴合作进行的，他们正处于恢复，发展和可持续经营社区企业码头的不同阶段：黑斯廷斯码头慈善机构和克利夫兰码头和遗产基金会。我们一起确定了他们面临的一些紧迫和更长期的挑战。其中包括：除了草根倡导者的核心群体之外，还包括参与当地社区的活动;码头作为一种新型空间开始生活时，不同潜在观众和利益相关者之间的紧张点-码头作为城市社区空间;围绕使这些历史环境的流行文化遗产与当代观众产生共鸣的策略，而不仅仅是对维多利亚时代码头魅力鼎盛时期的怀旧。基于这一观点，我们正在建立互联社区的观点，即遗产在我们的社区中。但该项目不仅仅是回顾过去，它主要关注的是如何通过其流行文化遗产丰富社区码头的当前和未来经验。该项目还刻意寻求与整个码头的过去接触的方式，强调它们最近的战后文化历史，这往往被忽视。这项研究是在关于文化主导的再生的更广泛辩论的背景下进行的。随着英国海滨度假的消亡和其他沿海产业的衰落，英国海滨度假胜地的当地社区几十年来一直与物理解体，财政衰退和社会剥夺有关。然而，黑斯廷斯码头社区股份计划和其他类似的社区所有权企业的成功表明，当地海滨社区采取行动，积极促进再生。虽然更广泛的政府投资范围或海滨旅游的趋势使这个项目成为背景，但我们主要感兴趣的是当地社区组织在最具标志性的海滨地标游乐码头周围动员所表现出的非凡弹性，例如Clevedon和Hastings的社区码头以及为产生，维持和发展社区参与而开辟的潜力。

'The People's Pier' is a research project that investigates community piers as an emerging form of community hubs. It focuses on two related aspects of the pier and community connectivity; first how communities of place may be strengthened in their confidence by taking collective action to safeguard a local heritage asset like the pier and second how the community pier and its popular culture heritage can be utilised to build positive relationships across different groups and empower the community. However, regeneration processes are complex and not always inclusive; they can be both divisive and inequitable. The project will therefore also explore processes of disconnection and conflict around the pier as a community space. Community ownership enterprises are often regarded as an outcome of an existing community's collective effort and ability to rally around a common interest. This project takes a different view by considering how communities connect and emerge through community ownership and related processes such as collective action to 'save' and develop the pier. Such processes involve both connections and disassociation and may be understood as a community making processes in themselves. Further, the project seeks to explore how the rich popular culture heritage of seaside leisure piers can be used as a resource for the benefit of the community. In doing so the proposed project opens up new areas of enquiry within the Connected Communities programme. It places popular culture at the heart of community building and it affirms popular culture as part of a community's cultural heritage, thus challenging traditional perspectives on heritage.This research is conducted in collaboration with two community partners who are at different stages of realising their goal of restoring, developing and sustainably running a community enterprise pier: The Hastings Pier Charity and The Clevedon Pier and Heritage Foundation. Together we have identified some of their immediate and more long-term challenges. These include: activities to engage the respective local community beyond a core group of grassroots advocates; points of tension between different potential audiences and stake holders as the pier begin life as a new type of space - the pier as an urban community space; strategies around making the popular culture heritage of these historic environments resonate with contemporary audiences beyond a nostalgia for the Victorian heydays of pier enchantment. Taking this view, we are building on the Connected Communities perspective that heritage is in our communities. But the project is not just looking back, it is primarily interested in how the current and future experiences of the community piers can be enriched by its popular culture heritage. The project also deliberately seeks to find ways of engaging with the whole of the piers' past, by giving emphasis to their more recent, post-war cultural history, which is often overlooked. The research is set against a background of wider debates about culture-led regeneration. Following the demise of the British seaside holiday and the decline of other coastal industries, the local communities of Britain's seaside resorts have for decades been associated with physical disintegration, with financial decline and social deprivation. The success of the Hastings Pier community shares scheme, and other similar community ownership ventures, suggests however that local seaside communities take action that actively contributes to regeneration. Whilst the broader scope of government investments or trends in seaside tourism contextualize this project we are primarily interested in the remarkable resilience demonstrated by local community organisations mobilizing around the most iconic of seaside landmarks the pleasure pier, as exemplified by the community piers of Clevedon and Hastings and the potentials that opens up for generating, sustaining and developing community engagement.