By Dr Lucy Wright The sports hall is packed when I arrive; a frenetic and uneven sea of folding chairs, pushchairs and packed lunches, and people everywhere. A mayhem of children and adults spill inside and out, chatting, practising routines, changing clothes. I survey the space steadily, my eyes searching for some haven of familiarity... Continue Reading →
By Prof George McKay Yes I was a teenage punk rocker in Norwich in the later 1970s, and People’s club (Tuesday and Saturday nights), St Andrew’s Hall and the UEA were my live music haunts. For records, Ace Records on Lower Goat Lane, for books, Freewheel anarchist bookshop on St Benedict’s. A couple of decades... Continue Reading →
By Prof George McKay DiY Culture: Party & Protest in Nineties Britain (McKay ed., Verso, 1998) One of my more influential books! From the ‘Notes towards an intro’: In the mid-Fifties the jazz revival had produced an offshoot, a musical phenomenon which became much bigger than itself, the skiffle craze. Skiffle was do-it-yourself music, primitive... Continue Reading →
This quite large-scale new international publishing project has been recently (summer 2017) contracted with Oxford University Press: The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock. I have been gestating and working on the idea for a couple of years or more on and off, but things really started happening when I invited music journalist and scholar Dr... Continue Reading →
These photos were taken at our Punk in the Provinces event held on the 23rd November at Norwich Arts Centre, featuring talks from: Prof Matt Worley, University of Reading, discusses his brand new book No Future: Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture 1976-84 Richard Balls, Norwich-based author of Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll: The Life... Continue Reading →
Participatory Arts and DIY Culture is a 12-month project funded under the AHRC’s Connected Communities Programme. The Principal Investigator is Professor George McKay, AHRC Leadership Fellow for the Connected Communities Programme, and Professor of Media Studies at the UEA and the Senior Research Associate is Dr Lucy Wright. This website will document the project's activities as we... Continue Reading →
By Prof George McKay [The text below, part of a memoir, was written c. 1992-4, about the penultimate UK Sex Pistols gig, in Cromer, Norfolk, Christmas Eve 1977. The author was 30 or so then, thinking back to being a teenager while he could still grasp some of the detail] GOD SAVE THIS MAD PARADE A little... Continue Reading →
By Prof George McKay On the twin occasion of a major retrospective of her work over 50 years and the surprising appearance yesterday of one of her pieces as the full front page of a national British newspaper, I thought I would share some of the short essay I have written about Gee Vaucher for the... Continue Reading →
Arts and DIY 