'The Barcelona for darts': Cultural justice and everyday practice

This thesis starts with a simple question: what does thriving cultural practice look like in Stoke-on-Trent? Delving into two case studies, based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I explore questions of cultural value and meaning between a darts league and a line dancing club – and in the delving other value arguments emerge. The title of this thesis is borrowed from Phil Taylor – the 16-times darts world champion and Stoke’s best-known sporting success story. Rather than thinking of Stoke as ‘left behind’ (in the jargon), these two case studies challenge the hollowness of that idea. Stoke can claim the best darts leagues in the world, enough to play every night of the week and attracting international talent, and line dance classes led by a famous choreographer. At the right pub on the right night, Stoke-on-Trent is Barcelona-like – and in this thesis I will unpack this comparison, and what it means and does.

My analysis centres around two different cultural justice framings: justice for practices overlooked as ‘low’, and justice for cultural objects and activities themselves. Here I bring the case studies into dialogue with these demands, and expand into questions of culture, class, place, taste, and politics in solidarity. While the darts and dancing were different, they shared some things: often needing the same infrastructure; it being difficult to wrestle analytically a sense of the activity beyond the way the activity was done; and that they could each be usefully described as ‘everyday’ – though here everyday is used as a way to hold together different contradictions, like grieving at a working men’s club or bumping into a famous darts player in a pub.