NEARLY £45,000 is being offered to a student able and willing to spend three years studying carnivals along the Jurassic Coast of Dorset and East Devon.
“Studying” here means both taking part and observing, so a bonny mix of skills is potentially called for.
If you’re tempted to apply – and the studentship is still being advertised – first ask yourself:
Do I know how to fix thousands of light-bulbs to the back of a flat-bed lorry?
Do I want to spend hours dancing on the back of said flat-bed lorry to the inevitable Witch Doctor song?
Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang
Walla walla, bing bang
Ooo eee ooo ah ah ting tang
Walla walla bing bang…
Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang
Walla walla ,bing bang
Ooo eee ooo ah ah ting tang
Walla walla bing bang
After that – ah ah – will I have enough energy left – bing bang – to answer such questions as: To what extent have elements of transgression, empowerment and resistance played a role in the movement and experience of the area’s carnivals?
Or – walla walla – How does the mobilisation of carnival in different policy agendas impact on community engagement and participation within the practice of carnival?
Ooo eee ooo
You’ll have gathered from the word “mobilisation” that there’s something big lurking behind all this.
Yes ting tang it’s the Olympics, and in particular the sailing events being held in Portland Harbour and in Weymouth Bay in 2012.
Aim “to forge a globalised carnival community”
The Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site Arts Programme (JCWHSAP) has picked up on carnivals as – potentially – a focal point for Dorset and East Devon’s Cultural Olympiad.
Analysing how this works out in practice will be what the winner of this particular £45,000 (plus travel costs) studentship really gets their money for.
The cash, incidentally, has come from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the chosen PhD student will be supervised by two academics in the University of Exeter’s Geography Department (UEGD).
The academics say that JCWHSAP’s “carnival theme has an agenda of connecting communities along the Jurassic Coast with communities sharing strong carnival cultures across the globe, the aim being to forge a globalised carnival community expressed through embodied performance and arts practice.
"A globalised carnival community... based upon deep historical connection." (A side show in Vermont, courtesy of Flickr Commons)
“This vision of carnival, therefore, is seen to have a strong social integrative function, serving to celebrate a keen sense of place, based upon deep historical connection, but which is also contexualised within a relational network of global linkage.”
So carnival-participants and carnival-goers in Bridport, Lyme Regis and especially Weymouth can all expect to be ethnographically interrogated.
And that’s not all
Two further studentships – worth about £45,000 each – are also being offered by the partnership of JCWHSAP, AHRC, and UEGD.
‘Stone Exposures: Photography, Landscape Change and Anticipatory Adaptation’ (2011-2014) and ‘Dynamic Arts Practices and the Geographies of World Heritage’ (2012-2015) will also range through Dorset and East Devon.
The overall theme of the research programme is ‘The Jurassic Coast and the arts of community engagement: heritage, science, policy and practice on a dynamic coastline’ and the overall aim is to investigate arts practice and policy.
Can contemporary arts be used to inform and engage local people and visitors?
Can they communicate the nature and value of a changing coastline?
What part can the arts play in the public understanding of science and heritage management?
The programme is the only one of its kind.
It is supposed to inform the future management of the World Heritage Site, in other words it could affect the lives of tens of thousands of people.
You must decide for yourself whether it’s worth spending tens of thousands of pounds on.
Walla walla, bing bang
To apply for the first PhD studentship in ‘The practices of carnival: communities, culture and place’, go to http://admin.exeter.ac.uk/academic/scholarships to complete an online web form and submit personal details, a CV and an example of scholarly work.
For general enquiries about the application process, email Helen Pisarska at the University of Exeter at geog-studentships@exeter.ac.uk or phone (01392) 723310.
The closing date is 12pm on Friday 21 May.
I have often pondered
Your summary of the requirements tells us that “This vision of carnival, therefore, is seen to have a strong social integrative function, serving to celebrate a keen sense of place, based upon deep historical connection, but which is also contexualised within a relational network of global linkage.” I must admit that is a point that I have often pondered whilst watching the amusing Spiderman band make their way up West Street on Carnival night. No wonder the organisers of the bash in Rio de Janeiro are going to send a team of observers to Bridport. They want to pick up a few tips.
Well, the spider’s speciality is linkage, and it is, after all, Dorset’s ambition by 2014 to lead the world in placing culture at the heart of quality of life.
If that is a serious ambition – and according to the Dorset Cultural Strategy, it is – then that would surely mean observers coming from places like Rio.
I’ve been thinking about the piece above since I wrote it.
I think perhaps my talk of thousands of light-bulbs reflected memories more of places like Bridgwater than Weymouth, Bridport and Lyme Regis in recent years.
Weymouth Carnival nearly finished all together, in Bridport the DT6 Carnival Club packed up – they used to burn up lots of electricity.
I do wonder whether the people who drew up the carnival questions – and there’s plenty more than the ones I quoted – have ever actually stood in West Street on a damp summer’s evening or hung around in the Pavilion car park in Weymouth.
What will be interesting to see is whether Cultural Olympiad pressure blows any kind of real life into Weymouth Carnival – or will it just be artificially inflated?
WTF?
As the young people would say: WTF? Can you send me an application form immediately, please?
Gibberish
Steady Maddie – there is a queue you know. We can all turn our hands to gibberish at a push