Nancy Stevenson

University of Westminster and Write Retreat UK · School of Architecture and Cities

This paper examines the relationship between events and social sustainability focussing on community led, not-for-profit, social events. Drawing on broad literature, I consider the nature of social sustainability, exploring five aspects which are developed through community events, namely social capital, interaction, participation, sense of place a...

This paper uses a case study to consider community event practices that include local people in discussions about the regeneration of their neighbourhood and capture their responses to change. It is set in an area adjacent to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the site of London 2012 Olympic Games and tracks the Hackney Wick Curiosity Shop (hereafte...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore spatial and social practices associated with a community street party through the lens of literature on encounter, conviviality and placemaking, considering its role developing a place-based sense of community. Design/methodology/approach The research is based upon a case study of a street party in L...

This paper supports the notion that stories can be used to share diverse experiences and build cultural understanding. It is developed from a case study of a module which teaches and practices story-making and story-telling to develop cross-cultural communication and understanding. The paper illustrates a staged process of teaching and learning thr...

This paper uses ‘walk-along’ interviewing to investigate embodied experiences of walking on the South Downs Way, a long-distance trail in southern England. Using a qualitative methodology – encompassing 93 walk-along interviews and auto-ethnographic reflections of two walker/researchers – it explores how walkers conceptualise their own walking expe...

Nancy Stevenson (2023) Beach Hut People. Publishing Household. ISBN 978 1 7393567 0 5 Beach Hut People takes us beyond hut layout and design and beyond the pleasures of people watching at the beach. It is a collection of shared stories from people who regularly spend time in these small wooden sheds at the edge of the sea. The stories were collec...

This paper considers the wellbeing outcomes of a community festival that was developed and staged in 2020, during the first lockdown associated with the Coronavirus Pandemic (hereafter the Pandemic). It is an autoethnographic account that reports on wellbeing benefits as people engaged in a festival project together. Social aspects of wellbeing wer...

Writing experiences have a crucial role in the wellbeing of academics and PhD researchers and this paper seeks to extend a body of work on writing retreats, by exploring them from a wellbeing perspective. Drawing from literature on wellbeing and the practical experience of developing and delivering writing retreats, it highlights wellbeing outcomes...

This article provides an understanding of how tourists experience heritage urban spaces by investigating features that influence tourist experiences most. It is framed within urban design literature which refers to three elements of urban space namely physical setting (or form), activity, and meaning. These elements are used to explore how urban sp...

The aim of this study is to explore the idea that people can imagine themselves in a destination and can have imagined experiences. This broadens our understanding of how people think about destinations and provides an extension of the established destination image literature and that which explores actual tourist experiences. The research involved...

People make decisions to visit cities for a wide variety of reasons – some are interested in their image and reputation, some want to visit specific attractions, to attend an event, see friends and family, to study or work. This presentation considers city image, focussing on the design characteristics that appeal to tourists and underpin their dec...

This paper explores the nature of social capital arising from engagement in local festivals and the implications of this for the social sustainability of an emerging destination. Two case studies are developed from a longitudinal research project which investigates local festivals staged in the Hackney Wick and Fish Island area adjacent to Queen El...

Longitudinal studies have the capacity to provide more nuanced explanations of tourism and event phenomena, taking account of complexity, change and context. This paper is a self-reflexive, methodological study of research practice. It investigates my experience of engaging with cultural event producers in an emerging destination over a seven-year...

This research explores the role creative clusters play in the development of tourism. It involves an in-depth study of characteristics, motivations and experiences of visitors to creative urban areas using qualitative analysis of 142 interviews in creative, non-central locations in East London. The data show that the concentration of creative indus...

This article provides much needed understanding of destination images held by non-visitors. Recognizing the characteristics of non-visitor images and their formation is important in order to understand images more widely. This qualitative study assesses images of London. The views of three hundred people in the Czech Republic who have never visited...

Regeneration proposals typically seek to use a range of physical, economic and social initiatives to tackle inequality and improve areas. Often they attempt to change the image of places, making them more attractive to tourists, investors, and residents. The role of tourism in these regeneration processes is complex and contested. Tourism elements...

The role of tourism in delivering wider economic legacies is strongly stated in recent national tourism policy documents. The Olympic Games are envisaged to have the legacy impact of ‘4 million extra visitors’ and ‘50,000 extra jobs’ over 4 years (DCMS (2011). Government Tourism Policy, p. 15). This paper considers the nature of Olympic tourism and...

There are ambitious regeneration aspirations associated with the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games including: to transform the heart of East London (DCMS, 2007) and to give the communities hosting the Games the same chances as residents in other London Boroughs (Host Boroughs, 2009). This report assesses the planning and delivery of the physi...

This study sets out to identify and investigate the factors that influence Cultural Legacy by considering the development and delivery of the CO in connection with the 2012 Games. Its significance to the Olympic Movement arises from its focus on the local perspectives, processes and practices emerging in the enactment of the CO and their impact on...

This paper evaluates an initiative to improve the effectiveness of personal tutoring by embedding it into the curriculum. Structured group tutorials help students make the transition to learning in higher education. These tutorials are delivered within a core module and focus on enabling students to develop study skills, reflect on their learning a...

This review considers the main tourism policy documents published by the UK Department for Culture, Media & Sport which are explicitly linked with the hosting of the Olympic Games in London in 2012. It reflects on the use of evidence gained from wider events hosting strategies utilized elsewhere, but notes concern about the lack of a coherent marke...

This paper investigates debates about complexity theory and its applications in the social sphere and considers its potential contribution to enhance understanding of tourism policy making. It identifies five concepts and outlines how they might be employed to enable researchers explore the complex social circumstances and human interactions that i...

This research explores tourism policy making, from the perspectives of policy makers using grounded theory. It focuses on Leeds, a city in the North of England, which is characterized by its turbulent environment. The paper identifies themes around policy making, including low status, lack of clarity, uncertainty, lack of consensus and congruence a...

This research investigates how photographs can be analysed to extract meaning. Two methodologies, visual anthropology and social semiotics, are used to analyse a collection of images and accompanying texts generated by a group of first year tourism students in London. Photographs are categorised into subject areas including iconic buildings, street...

Tourism policy making is essentially a social process, involving interactions and nego­tiation between individuals and groups of people. These interactions are influenced by a wide range of factors and circumstances that occur within the wider policy environment. The social nature of the policy process is underplayed in much tourism policy and plan...

Summary Much of the research into Personal Development Planning (PDP) has been focused upon its application as a mechanism to reflect upon and improve student learning and performance. From a personal tutor perspective, however, it has much wider possibilities to improve the support offered to students by developing and enhancing interactions betwe...

Tourism planning literature is dominated by approaches that focus on its tangible elements or physical manifestations i.e Inskeep (1991, 1994) Godfrey (200) Gunn (1994, 2002) Veale (2002). The study of these tangible elements presents an interesting but incomplete picture of the tourism planning/policy process. Research by McKercher(1999) Russel an...