Conference Report: EAUH Lisbon 2014
It was my pleasure to give a paper at the European Association for Urban History conference this week in Lisbon on behalf of the Redress of the Past, contributing to a panel investigating the definition of European small towns, and the economic, social, and political challenges they have faced in the the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Papers on the impressively diverse panel of scholars from across Europe included an examination of the urban design challenges to small towns in Walloonia (Belgium); socialist urbanization strategies in GDR small towns; and the strategies of manufacturing 'tourist experience' in Myshkin, Russia. I presented an analysis of small town pageants from 1905 to the present day, focusing in particular on the ways in which they could stimulate the local economy and civic culture of the small town - providing a bulwark against larger trends in Britain that were diminishing their economic and political status. Drawing on the work we have done on Sherborne, Bury St. Edmund's, and Axbridge, I also showed a short clip of the Runnymede Pageant of 1934 - a lively start to a 9am Saturday session!
Interestingly there seems to have been little work done on small towns, and even less that has assessed the disproportionate importance given to small towns. Perhaps the only example is the work of historian Michael Woods where he has pointed out how Gilbert Hudson, a Yorkshire pageant master, argued that small towns were more successful in small towns than large cities because:
“in the former cases, there is a better preservation of the old social traditions – a remnant even of the more philanthropic aspects of feudal conditions – which enables the best-fitted, best-educated people to take the lead and set the example in matters of taste and organization, than in the latter, where modern industrial, political, and educative influences have upset the old social ideas.”
There was a considerable overlap in themes between my paper and the discussion of Myskin in particular. While covering substantially different places and periods, both showed the important effects that eulogising a historical and mythical past could have in the present. Both papers seemed to go down well, and stimulated a lively discussion from those in attendance. Unsurprisingly, considering the broadly European character of the conference and delegates, some in the audience wanted to know more about the wider historical precedents of the historical pageant movement - from Wagner to William Tell. A question about the parties involved in the production of a pageant also allowed me to try some ideas out on the differences between social control and 'social steering' - the latter, I think, a much more useful concept in understanding the pageant motive. After all, people posed to themselves their own level of involvement, and the ideals encouraged in pageantry (community, history, identity) could be shared across classes. Trickier to answer was a question about the decline of the movement in recent decades. Axbridge, from 1967 to the present day, does provide a strong example of the enduring legacy of the Edwardian 'pageant fever', but it is certainly far less common. Nonetheless I think we will continue to uncover more recent events as the project progresses.
Overall it has been an interesting conference and a good opportunity to meet some others interested in historical pageants - not least a scholar working on pageantry in twentieth-century Helsinki, Finland. Hopefully when the conference happens again in 2016 we will have completed enough data capture research to give another paper that can visualise the ebbs and flows of the movement more clearly.
*For the above quote see Michael Woods, ‘Performing Power: local politics and the Taunton Pageant of 1928’, Journal of Historical Geography, 25, 1 (1999), p. 65.