Abstract

A festival of contemporary music was established in 1978 in Huddersfield, an industrial town in northern England. The event acquired an international reputation, enjoyed to the present day. Yet the news media continued to report as 'surprising' the successful juxtaposition of avant-garde art with an industrial town. An explanation is constructed via an analytic discussion of fashionability, the avant-garde, and the nature of continuing news. This discussion is further set within the context of the generic urban transition from the industrial to the post-industrial, and the movement known as cultural regeneration. The work of Simmel, Nietzsche, and Bourdieu are deployed in these analyses. The concluding argument is that the news media are relating, simultaneously, three stories: that of the success of a festival; that of the cultural regeneration of urban centres seeking a role in a new economy; and a generic rags-to-riches narrative. The news reporting of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival is thus a multiple metaphor for a continuing cultural change.