Winter wonderlands: public outdoor ice rinks, entrepreneurial display and festive socialities in UK cities

This paper provides a critical discussion of the uses and meanings of temporary outdoor ice rinks, which have become increasingly popular in UK cities over the last decade. The installation of ice rinks in cities in winter time is framed in a number of contexts, including entrepreneurial governance and civic boosterism, the uses of culture by the local state, invented winter and Christmas traditions, the effects of cold winter weather on sociality and other forms of embodied play argued to be reshaping urban socialities. Conceiving ice rinks as a form of ‘entrepreneurial display’, the paper also draws on theories of ‘expressive embodiment’ to explore how rinks also encourage particular ways of performing and interacting that contest current critiques of the effects of entrepreneurial urban governance.