Recording Leisure Lives: Holidays and Tourism in 20th century Britain

This is the third annual ‘Recording Leisure Lives’ conference presented by the University of Bolton and Bolton Museum and Archive Service in partnership with the Leisure Studies Association. 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 – both at home and away. It will be of interest to leisure and tourism historians, cultural historians and to curators and photographers involved in the recording and archiving of holiday experiences and destinations.

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

We welcome proposals (max. 300 words) for papers of twenty minutes which 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

Please submit proposals to r.snape@bolton.ac.uk and also to helen.pussard@googlemail.com by 15 January 2010. A post-conference volume [with isbn] of reviewed papers will be published by the Leisure Studies Association. All presenters are invited to submit a paper for consideration for this volume.