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

公民权利是个人和集体思考、感受和梦想其所在地和社区未来的多种方式。它们揭示了潜在的定性途径，研究人员可以通过这些途径探索日常现实和对当地政治文化的理解，并提出新的问题来解决文化节日更广泛的社会影响。创新，创造性的方法，与公民的合作是在艺术，人文，政治和社会科学研究的交叉点。通过分析我的博士研究参与者的公民身份，我认为Hull 2017利用当地的历史和情感来营造一种自豪的城市情感氛围-这是一种情感治理策略，有助于不加批判地接受Hull 2017作为一个“胜利”。在这样做的过程中，我表明，公民自豪感和“繁荣”的地方之间的相关性是一个假设，需要进一步调查。我还发现：（i）公民自豪感有不同类型，并非所有类型都必然证明政策成功;（ii）公民自豪感是暂时和脆弱的-难以衡量，而且不会持续很长时间。鉴于新兴的Levelling Up背景及其通过当地文化促进自豪感，这项工作被证明是及时的，在学术界，政策和实践中具有潜在的重大影响。这项奖学金将使我能够扩展和传播我对公民想象和公民自豪感的知识，以及它们与文化节日和英国政治文化的关系。基于我的博士学位的方法和研究结果，它将支持其他案例研究的新研究：考文垂英国文化城2021和伯明翰节2022 -英联邦运动会文化计划-以及分析有关伯恩茅斯，基督城和普尔（BCP）地方当局文化节的现有数据。选择后者是为了考虑规模较小的节日对超地方性节日和政治文化的影响，这是我最近在南安普顿大学担任研究助理的案例研究。为了补充我的博士数据，我将把这项研究写进《关键事件研究系列》的专著中。我还将根据我博士学位的概念框架撰写一篇文章提交给具有高影响力的跨学科期刊《环境与规划D：社会与空间》。我将进一步介绍我的工作在会议上：美国地理学家协会，政治研究协会，和区域研究协会。我还将在皇家地理学会会议上召集一个小组。这些成果将巩固我的出版记录，并使我能够向广泛的学术群体展示我的研究结果。此外，我将把这次关于公民自豪感和“升级”的对话带到一系列相关的行业利益相关者，如智库，文化和地方政府机构。随着英国政府在《拉平》白色文件的技术附件中确认其致力于开发公民自豪感指标，该奖学金将对这一过程做出贡献和批评，提供新颖的理论和方法论见解。该奖学金还将通过定量和混合方法研究的培训来支持我的方法学技能。这些将帮助我成为一个更加全面和灵活的研究人员，使我在获得有竞争力的研究资金的良好地位。他们还将使我能够教授研究方法课程，从而提高我的就业能力。最后，我会寻求导师的建议，为我的学术生涯奠定下一步，如审查工作机会和奖学金和讲师的申请材料。

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.