Photo © Bolton Museum and Archive Service

Drawing its inspiration from Humphrey Spender's Mass Observation photographs of Worktowners in Blackpool, this conference focuses on the leisure experiences of people on holiday in twentieth century Britain. This period witnessed marked changes in holidaymaking, brought about by advances in transport, the growth of "mass" tourism, the Holidays with Pay Act of 1938 and the multi-faceted expansion of the tourism industry. From the seaside resorts, holiday camps and organised outdoor holidays of the inter-war period to the competition from Mediterranean resorts, the use of holidays as signifiers of social status and the consumption of the exotic through travel in the post-war decades, the construction of the 'tourist gaze' and the meanings attached to holidays have been continually reworked throughout the twentieth century.

This conference is, therefore, keen to capture and reflect the wide variety of leisure experiences that holidays and tourism have generated. While for some people a holiday meant going away, others were obliged, or chose, to spend their holidays at home, for example. In addition to summer holidays, the extended leisure opportunities at weekends and Bank Holidays have enabled the continuation of holiday activities such as cycling, walking, sun worship and visits to other places throughout the year. These forms of domestic tourism have been central to our everyday understandings of holidays and tourist experiences and need researching alongside the more visible tourist trips abroad.

The question of what is being consumed through tourist experiences is integral to how we make sense of holidays. The ways in which a sense of place and / or national identity are constructed; the (re-)packaging of the past through heritage sites and experiences and the use of both to include / exclude different social groups require investigating to understand tourism more fully. While some of these areas require analyses of representations and visual culture, we also need to explore how these constructions are experienced and we welcome methodological papers on how to research and record tourism and holidays.

AUDIENCE

The conference will be of interest to leisure and tourism historians and researchers, cultural historians and to curators and photographers involved in the recording and archiving of holiday experiences and destinations. We welcome proposals (max. 300 words) for papers of twenty minutes that address any aspect of holidays and tourism in 20th century Britain under one or more of the conference sub-themes:

• Home and away: constructing the 'tourist gaze'
• Cities, seasides and the spaces of tourism
• Weekends, wakes and bank holidays: domestic tourism in C20th Britain
• Holidaying in the past: heritage as tourism
• Researching holidays as leisure experiences
• Snapshots, records and archives: representations of holidays and tourism

Susan Barton, author of
      Working class organisations and popular tourism, 1840-1970;
Bella Dicks, author of
      Culture on display: the production of contemporary visitability;
Fred Gray, author of
      Designing the seaside: architecture, society and nature.

PROPOSALS

Please submit proposals to R.Snape@bolton.ac.uk
and to helen.pussard@googlemail.com

by Friday 15th January 2010.

Dr. Bob Snape, University of Bolton at r.snape@bolton.ac.uk

Helen Pussard, at helen.pussard@googlemail.com