Kirsty Usher

PhD Project Title: The Travelling Manual Labourer: A Qualitative Study of the Anarchic Working Culture of the Festival Rigger and their Hidden Cultural Impacts

I use a a range of creative methods in my approach to research, including filmed footage from my ethnographic field studies, in-depth interviews and archival research. The filmed footage includes first person perspectives through the use of Go-Pro style attachments for the participants. Research questions:

How and why do festival riggers enter their profession? What are their skills and how have they acquired them?

When looking at this working culture on a broader scale across the UK, where does it fit in our modern version of Capitalism? Does it contribute to arguments for anarchistic alternatives to the capitalist model?

How is it regulated as a sector? Does it need regulating? Are there gendered pay disparities?

 Using public health policy to guide my question framework, how do they perceive their work-life in terms of wellbeing?

 How are travelling manual labourers mobile and immobile at various points? What are the transnational movements of these workers? How are they included and excluded from mainstream society?

What, if any affinities and relations do these mobile workers have with other mobile subjects in travelling/working communities?

How has legislation presented barriers to their life and livelihood, and how have specific historic events become enshrined in festival ‘folklore’?