(Re)crafting belonging: cultural-led regeneration, territorialization and craft beer events

• Published in: Social & cultural geography 2023-02, Vol.24 (2), p.292-310
• Main Authors: de Jong, Anna, Steadman, Chloe
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Alcohol; Beer; Borders; Boundaries; Conventions; Craft beer; Cultural activities; culture-led regeneration; events; exclusion; Geographers; inclusion; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Social media; Territoriality; territorialization; Urban areas
• ISSN: 1464-9365; 1470-1197
• DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2021.1939126

This paper contributes to debates on the use of cultural events to regenerate urban areas. Cultural geographers have identified the influence of such events in informing urban belonging, whilst being cautious towards the politics associated with claims of diversity and inclusion. Yet, what seldom features in such geographic accounts are the ways events influence, and are influenced by, inclusions and exclusions beyond their temporal and spatial confines, including how territorial processes flow in and across both online and offline spaces. In this paper, we thus adopt Brighenti's (2010) relational approach to territoriality to reveal the fluid and heterogeneous ways the Independent Manchester Beer Convention renders processes of inclusion and exclusion within, and beyond, the time and space of the craft beer event. Utilising fieldwork observations at the 2018 and 2019 conventions and 4,300 social media posts associated with the 2019 convention, we identify how particular subjectivities come to be included and excluded in different ways through the event. We argue that recognition regarding the fluidity and heterogeneity of territorial boundaries, and the role of affordances in shifting such boundaries, are imperative in the utilization of cultural events in generating inclusions through cultural-led regeneration.