Law and urban space: culture, sport and social policy

This module provides an introduction to the regulation of sporting and cultural spaces. It focuses on the ways that access to these spaces and the behaviours that can be performed within and around them is regulated by both public and private legal structures.

Examinations of the interactions between both the law and popular culture more generally, and sport and the law more specifically, have become well-developed fields of socio-legal study. Drawing on this body of work, the themes developed throughout this module, whilst delivered through a series of sporting and cultural case studies, will have wider ramifications to, and for, the law and socio-legal studies.

This module draws upon specific themes related to the tutors’ areas of research. It illustrates the symbiotic nature of teaching and research, and the importance of researchers within the academy passing on their research and insight. We will begin by introducing the contested meanings of law and popular culture and sports law to illustrate how new fields of study emerge to meet regulatory challenges. We will then focus on specific issues that have had an impact on the regulation of cultural and sporting events and venues:

• Access to sporting and cultural spaces is regulated by event tickets, which can act as levers of social inclusion, social exclusion and control. But what in law is a ticket and what can you do with it?

• Once in a sporting or cultural venue, the behaviour of fans and spectators is regulated by both the ticket’s terms and conditions and, in some cases, the law. Why do event organisers and hosts control fans and is state control necessary and lawful?

• Spaces that were once public and open to all are increasingly being privatised, with access to them and what can be done in them being regulated. How and why have parks and public spaces become policed by private companies and what is the impact on lifestyle sports like Parkour?

• The summer edition of the Olympic Games is the largest sporting and cultural event in the world. The event owner, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), places specific demands on hosts that they regulate Olympic areas to protect their income and commercial revenue streams. We will interrogate how the IOC has developed an indirect legislative power, and through a variety of theoretical lenses, whether this alternative power structure constitutes ‘law’.