‘Living Space’ at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Spatial tactics and the politics of smooth space

TLDR

Space is a key analytic concept in organizational studies, yet the sociality of space and the spatial practices used to enact workspaces have received little attention. The study ethnographically examines how street artists at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe create hybrid workspaces in public spaces, investigating their spatial tactics and the politics of space they navigate. The authors analyze the spatial tactics artists use to construct hybrid workspaces in public spaces and how they negotiate space with other users. Artists employ distinctive spatial tactics to create smooth spaces that appropriate and socialize hybrid workspaces, revealing how these tactics exploit ambiguities in urban spatial boundaries.

Abstract

Space has become a key analytic concept for the study of organization. While much emphasis has been placed upon the role of designed spaces within the existing literature, as yet there has been little attention paid to the sociality of space and the spatial practices that people employ to enact workspaces. This inquiry provides an ethnographic study of the work of street artists at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. We investigate the spatial tactics that artists employ to create hybrid workspaces within public spaces. We reveal how these spatial tactics are linked to the politics of space by investigating how the artists negotiate the use of public spaces with other users of the space. The study finds that artists employ a distinctive set of spatial tactics to create ‘smooth spaces’ to appropriate and socialize a hybrid workspace. The conceptual contribution of this article develops a processualist account of how hybrid workspaces are created by artists through embodied spatial tactics and how these tactics exploit ambiguities in the spatial boundaries of the existing urban landscape.