Andrew Smith

A bit of news from me; I’ve been awarded a @LeverhulmeTrust Research Fellowship to work on a project entitled ‘Festivals and resistance: large-scale music events in London’s parks 1967-2027’. It's an 18month project that will provide a historical basis for my work on park events.

I'm breaking my Twitter boycott to express my exasperation at this: I'm very aware there are a whole spectrum of views about staging music festivals in public parks. But 75 days of disruption in what is the original 'people's park' is simply too many.

bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Making a rare foray back on here to tell you about a new paper: it's an extended introduction to a special issue on International #Expos which will be published in @PlanningPersp soon. Might be interesting for @bieparis and those following @Expo2030Riyadh
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

#Wimbledon is now the epicentre of lawn tennis in London, but in 1889 the highest concentration of public courts was in #FinsburyPark. When the Metropolitan Board of Works was dismantled that year, its 34 parks contained 36 grass tennis courts, 22 of which were in Finsbury Park.

This is great - and really interesting that fencing off parks for events is now in the public consciousness as something that happens everywhere.