Karl Spracklen, a Gardener of Ideas: Leisure and a Dissenter’s Guide to Events

A festschrift is perhaps an appropriately themed word to celebrate the writings of somebody named Spracklen. Both words have old Northern European origins, festschrift being German (a festival or celebration of writing) and Spracklen being Old Norse (a man with creaky legs). Both the German language and Old Norse have their origins in Indo-European Proto-Germanic, which over the centuries has traveled, evolved and influenced a range of languages that are spoken across Europe and beyond today, including the English language (House of Names, n.d.; Online Etymology Dictionary, n.d.). In a similar vein, the subject of this essay, Professor Spracklen (hereafter ‘Karl’), has done much of the same traveling, evolving and influencing through his academic and professional development, his serious leisure pursuits and extensive scholarly outputs. I muse over these and add my own critique in this piece, with attention to his work related to events, and specifically Karl’s writing on protest as event. The deeply social and political elements… Before going any further and in the interests of openness and transparency I must state that Karl is a good friend; he is also a former colleague, and he was my PhD supervisor. I first encountered Karl in 2009 when I was in the third year of creating a new undergraduate program at the then-named Leeds Metropolitan University (renamed Leeds Beckett University in 2014). I was based within the ‘Tourism Subject Group’ which was instructed to diversify their ‘product’ offering. Prior to this I was Course Leader for a suite of Higher National Diploma (HND) programs in Business-related subjects, but my undergraduate degree was in Tourism Management, and my vocational background was in the entertainment-industries, so this seemed like the perfect new opportunity for me. In 2007 I moved across faculties to take on this role.