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Port Cities
www.southampton.ac.uk
Remembering the Titanic in 2012: ‘City Branding’, Civic Identity and Local Economic Development
Description of the research
The sinking of the Titanic acts as a potent symbol that has persisted well beyond the particular event in 1912. Titanic can be said to epitomize disaster and catastrophe, serve as a warning to blindly trusting technology, symbolize the active role of nature in the form of the (Atlantic) ocean, and necessarily bring up feelings of nostalgia, perhaps as a result of its periodic retelling as a movie. For all these reasons, the Titanic continues to fascinate and enthral academics and the public alike.
This research project will use the forthcoming 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic in April 2012 to examine how this event is memorialized in the five cities most touched by the disaster: Belfast, Halifax, Liverpool, New York City and Southampton. The Titanic was conceived and financed in Liverpool, built in Belfast, and officially set sail from Southampton. The majority of victims of the Titanic were buried in Halifax (Canada), and its ultimate destination was New York City. We are interested in examining the meanings attached to Titanic memorials in each of these cities.
The project will also investigate how the processes of Titanic memorialisation are integrated into strategies for economic development and the extent to which these formal promotional activities by civic authorities accord with local understandings of this powerful event. We will use a variety of methods to investigate these research interests, including archival research into the memorials themselves, setting the memorials into historical and political context, interviewing important image-makers on their strategies for using the Titanic for city development, and speaking to tourists and local residents to understand how they view the Titanic legacy in terms of their attachment to their locality.
Impact of the research
The results of this research will help municipal decision-makers, citizens and academics interested in the place-memory relationship better understand the links between the Titanic legacy and their city image. More specifically, we plan to offer the following real-world benefits:
* knowledge of the different ways cities are memorializing the sinking of the Titanic;
* evaluation of the economic success of different city-based strategies, including links between the Titanic and city-imaging/branding;
* understanding the interpretations of the Titanic memorialization made by local citizens;
* and insights into the Titanic 'tourist experience' in different cities.
Collaborations
We are seeking to collaborate with a variety of city officials and cultural leaders from across the five Titanic Cities. These will include interviewing city officials such as the cultural committee, town/urban planning and development, and Titanic Cities contact person, complemented by members of the ‘growth coalition’: politicians, local media, tourist boards, museums, and heritage associations
Researchers
Geoffrey DeVerteuil ([email protected])
Steven Pinch ([email protected])
School of Geography, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ
