Biography

The Fairground Association of Great Britain (FAGB) was founded in 1977 with the aim of having a high standard publication at the centre of its operations, and its initial run as 'Century of Tobers' continued with the 'Fairground Mercury' under the direction of current editor Graham Downie. Its high standard of reproduction is matched by the Fairground Society's efforts, once again reinvigorated with their journal now renamed 'Platform' and ably put together by the team of Stephen Smith and Kevin Scrivens.

As an important sideline it is worth mentioning the magazine 'Three on the Floor' which commenced in 1972 and ran for 27 issues up until 1977. This was put together in part by the late John Carter, on the verge of forming his pivotal Steam Fair, and covered the different 'vintage' of fast Ford cars and Americana. John's input was evident with the magazine going on to feature fairground articles as John assembled his own collection of rides. In the mid 1990s Carter's Steam Fair would create its own dedicated fan-club and a smartly researched and published newsletter emerged for 7 issues.

Both the Fairground Society and the FAGB enjoy strong membership and sound editorial commitment to publish a quarterly magazine. Unlike their forebears the BFS and the FCSF both of these societies embrace a mix of vintage and contemporary approaches. The monitoring of what is happening here and now is paramount in forming the basis of historical research in years to come. The approach to documenting the modern fairground and theme park scene has been aided and accelerated by the internet phenomenon. Specialist fairground websites emerged in the 1990s and quickly adopted the communication and contribution facilities commonly associated with the general emergent architecture of the internet. This 'digital' approach dovetailed with the use of digital cameras, and forums emerged with heavy use of 'on the minute' pictures of new rides and current fairs. The democratic architecture of the internet creates its own problems, with issues around content-overload, ubiquity, unauthorised digital downloads and re-use, etc. Whilst nowhere near approaching the paralysing dictatorial nature that strangled the early fairground associations, it is only too evident that fairground websites require hard working moderators and procedures to allow rules, regulations and decisions to be made.

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