From A ‘to’ B – Where’s to?:
 Exploring the alternative spaces in-between in an entrepreneurial city

Seanor, Pam; Bodkin, Carlton

Abstract

This paper is about the ‘inbetweeness’ as a means of creating and reflecting upon how people engage with space, not solely as resistance against but also in part being complicit in the promotion of transformation of space, as being ‘green’ and sustainable, in the entrepreneurial city. It is an empirical study of an event with practitioners in September 2014, part of a half day of ‘Green Narratives’ workshops promoting Bristol in the run up to the European Green Capital 2015. The venue chosen for the event, Paintworks, is a regenerated space, once a warehouse site abandoned from the decline of manufacturing, redeveloped as a new combination of the creative quarter in the city and entrepreneurial space. Wandering/flâneuring around the space of Paintworks offered an opportunity to illustrate an engagement with the microcosm of city to consider breaking the divide between economic or leisure; instead it is both a space of social and work. We provided a map for participants, not simply to navigate the place, but to show how they might engage whilst wandering between areas of housing and work spaces. Participants were invited to use the map and wander through a space from point A, the location of an event, to a non identified point B located on the map. As such, wandering as a research methodology and considering wandering as a means in exploring and better understanding how participants make sense of the city through lived experiences, particularly the in between boundaries between lived and work space. Whilst there is much of the ‘spatial turn’ and of the ‘movement-in-organization’ in critical management studies to examine alternative notions of entrepreneurialism, we look at the notion of inbetweeness to consider something other than movement as between two differing endpoints, but as a space in itself and propose that ‘to’ is where the everyday occurs. Through this approach we attempt to be sensitive to alternative forms of entrepreneurship and consider comments during the wander and afterwards, discussions in the bar [e.g. point B] as emergent narratives. These were of: Negotiating boundaries between past and current re-use of space; Transition points, colours used in spaces and waymarkers; and Subversion: ism. To problematize our findings, the wander and subsequent discussion provides insightful ways to reconsider intertwined ideals of sustainability and conceptual issues of political imaginings of entrepreneurship, and how participants seemed to engage with and to subvert these popular notions. The paper seeks to contribute to a lively debate by taking a critical approach of the entrepreneurial city portrayed as behaving much like businesses. Firstly, the paper takes a different approach, and though of wandering/ flâneuring seeks to interrupt movement, for the sake of movement, in spaces but considers the possibility of pausing to consider inbetweeness in exploring notions of transition and social change. Secondly, and related to the first point, it aims to put forward discussion of other possibilities than duality. Thus, it is not assumed participants are passive, nor confrontational, but take on place/time:based actions, and of how they use narratives to support their endeavors.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: 9th International Conference in Critical Management Studies: Is there an alternative? Management after critique
• Start Date: Jul 8, 2015
• End Date: Jul 10, 2015
• Publication Date: Jul 1, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 6, 2019
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: wandering, entrepreneurial city, flaneur
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/832124
• Publisher URL: http://www2.le.ac.uk/conference/cms15
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : 9th International Conference in Critical Management Studies: Is there an alternative? Management after critique