DIY Soul Time: Investigating learning and participation in the Scottish Northern Soul Scene

The Northern Soul scene (NSS) is a cross-generational dance club culture that emerged in the early 1970s across industrial towns in North of England. For over 5 decades the scene has celebrated and showcased often-obscure recordings by relatively unknown African American artists. Unlike many contemporary music and dance club cultures, NSS straddles age boundaries due in part to the longevity of the music and mutual engagement across generations. The impact and allure of NSS has spread across the UK including Scotland where the scene continues to thrive.
From its early beginnings, the scene has been characterised by a do-it-yourself ethos and often described as being underground. The cultural practice of the NSS relies on a close-knit network of participants who self-organise events, hosted in predominantly local working-class communities. The activities of the scene have been documented and promoted through early fanzines in the 1970s giving way to contemporary use of social media and blogs.
Drawing on data from a small-scale qualitative study conducted in the contemporary Scottish scene, this paper presents and discusses aspects of multi-generational participation and learning in a DIY cultural setting. The project utilises the notion of situated learning in the context of the scene, which in turn is conceived as a community of practice. (Lave 1991, Wenger 1998 & Wenger-Trayner 2014). The enquiry focuses on the respective learning experiences of both seasoned participants (‘old-timers’) and more recent joiners (‘newcomers’). The findings offer insight to continuity and change in this DIY community of cultural practice.