29 November 2011, University of Wolverhampton
The Subcultures Network held a successful workshop on 29 November 2011, examining the relationship between culture and politics during the collapse of consensus politics in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The papers included Keith Gildart examining the songs and lyrics of the Kinks; Bill Osgerby analysing New English Library literature from the 1970s; Lez Henry discussing British soundsystems; Anna Gough Yates looking at the Shocking Pink fanzine; Pete Webb assessing anarcho punk; Lucy Robinson critiquing the rise of the charity single; and Matt Worley looking at far left and far right attempts to appropriate elements of British youth culture in a period of perceived crisis. We hope to submit these as a special issue to an academic journal in the new year.
In the afternoon, the steering committee met to discuss future plans. We intend to send a panel representing the Network to the international working class association conference in New York (June 2012), and will plan to organise one or two smaller workshops/symposiums over the coming 12 months. In the meantime, the Network will work up an AHRC Network bid, with the objective of raising funds for larger conference in 2013. Finally, we discussed outputs from the September conference. A proposal for a book centred on punk is currently being drawn up, alongside a wider multi-themed collection that we hope will reflect some of the common research strands that emerged at the conference. As always, we hope that other ideas for publication, symposiums and contacts will be fed into the Network from beyond the steering committee.