Urban Backstages

If we think of the public facing cultural sites, largely aimed at national and international tourists and visitors, such as monuments, museums, galleries and theatres, where culture is consumed and displayed as the ‘urban stage’, then its behind-the-scenes counterpart is the ‘urban backstage’, which includes both the hidden spaces where cultural production, experimentation and rehearsals take place and the underlying conditions that underpin these activities. The urban backstage is made up of invisible networks, relationships and labour that exist out of public view in our cities, producing ‘everyday cultures’ which are vital in fostering and cultivating a shared cultural identity and sense of belonging in our urban spaces.

From this provocation the project Urban Backstages was born, a multi-year research programme spanning three cities: London, Glasgow, Marseille. In each of these cities, we spent about a month investigating sites of everyday cultural production. Our focus was, and is, personal, amplifying the voices, stories and experiences of artists, performers, makers, designers, craftspeople, fabricators, cafe owners and those running small business that support cultural production locally. We looked at their workspaces, ranging from repurposed factories to live-in work units, to garages, to purpose-built studios and converted railway arches. Our aim was to develop a broader account of the diversity of practices that generate the cultural life of the city, beyond traditional artist studio and artisanship, so we included light industry, digital production, materials suppliers and practices that may seem outside the scope of conventional understanding of culture such as hospitality and hairdressing, but which underpin cultural exchange and production particularly within diasporic and working-class communities. We wanted to better understand the contribution small scale producers make to the cultural life of the city and how the spaces they work in shape what they produce.