With
all the recent talk about the state of political resistance, it's easy to
forget alternative narrative of resistance - how the counterculture and
alternative culture informs and shapes space. This article charts an early
movement – the Stonehenge Free Festivals – that reframed place. And how it was
closed down. So why does alternative culture matter to placemaking?
Alternative culture (music, nightclubs,
coffee houses, festivals, and so on) has formed the backbone of social and
cultural change in the UK. It has contributed to the transformation of
attitudes towards sexual freedom, women's liberation, gay liberation,
tolerance, a critique of the mass media, artistic and cultural space, to name a
few. The boundaries between normativity and outsiderliness were broken down as
a result of what might broadly be understood as the 'counterculture'.
