Walking the city from Saturday 31st August to Sunday 1st September
The organisational team went on a trip to Blackpool, once Britain’s most spectacular seaside resort, in order to gather experiences to be further explored and debated at the conference on Reclaiming Spectacle. Local guides Wendy and Dave gave us a tour of the Winter Gardens, the Ballrooms, Blackpool Tower and the North Pier, including special access to some of these venues. We also enjoyed over 10 km of beach and promenade, the piers, fortune-tellers, the only surviving first-generation tramway of this country, fish and chip shops, the attractions of the Pleasure Beach and especially a fairground ride by artist Marisa Carnesky, The Ghost Train, that took us through a maze of darkened tunnels inhabited by actors, creepy animatronics, spectacular magic illusions and moving stage sets, telling a story about Jewish emigrants among other things. The group stayed overnight for drag performance at Funny Girls as well as the opening of the famous Blackpool Illuminations, a spectacular end to our day of walking the city.
The pictures below were taken by Joanna Ebenstein, Petra Lange-Berndt and Mark Pilkington.
The Congress for Curious People 