I was nine years old when I visited the Millennium Dome and I recall the memories like a fever dream. As a child entering a new century, the building and its contents was an awe-inspiring theatrical world that held a promise of the high-tech future of the twenty-first century. However, the Dome as technological, political and cultural imaginaries would soon collapse, as the Millennium Experience and exhibition would only run for a year, soon dismantled, sold and transformed into The O2 Arena. Even the imagined future of the Dome, that it “ . . . might become the centre for a national educational network, computer-based accessible to all, a throbbing hub, connected to everywhere” did not come into fruition (Nicolson, 1999: 227). For decades the failure of the Dome has symbolised a melancholic story of New Labour Britain, a ‘fall from grace’ (Gray, 2003), and a technological dream not come true. However, recently the Millennium Dome has re-entered the cultural imagination through images shared on TikTok and the platform X. Children born in the years after the refurbishment of the Millennium Dome, who have only really known neoliberal Britain under a Conservative government, encounter the Dome through the visual culture of nostalgia. And there is some confusion and fascination at what once existed inside The O2 Arena where global music acts now performance. As a millennial, I confess the Millennium Dome has had undue influential on my imagination, and in this essay I revisit cultural studies of the early noughties to discuss why the Dome failed and speculate what the re-emerging interest in it might tell us about our current moment.
“Picture the scene. The clock strikes midnight on December 31st, 1999. The eyes of the world turn to the spot where the new Millennium begins – the Meridian Line at Greenwich. This is Britain’s opportunity to greet the world with a celebration that is so bold, so beautiful, so inspiring that it embodies at once the spirit of confidence and adventure in Britain and the spirit of the future in the world. This is the reason for the Millennium experience. Not a product of imagination run wild, but a huge opportunity for Britain. It is good for Britain. So let us seize the moment and put on something of which we and the world will be proud. Then we will say to ourselves with pride: this is our Dome. Britain’s Dome. And believe me, it will be the envy of the world.”
(Blair 1998, cited in McGuigan, 2003: 671)
What remains of this ‘millennium project’ (Davey, 2000: 419) is only the tent-like dome structure in Greenwich, London. Now as The O2 Arena it no longer resembles the ‘Millennium experience’ it was purpose built for. The Dome began under the Conservative government of John Major, it was decided that the upcoming millennium required a series of events and landmarks and it was agreed this would be funded by the National Lottery and distributed by a quango; the Millennium Commission (Gray, 2003: 442). As Professor of Cultural Analysis, Jim Mcguigan explains, the incoming Labour government had the opportunity to abandon the project, but instead, they adopted it as a symbol of the new regime and as such it became bound up with the New Labour government elected to office in May 1997 (Mcguigan, 2003: 670-671). The Dome was promised to be a cultural site for the creation and sustainment of cultural and political imaginaries of nationalism after years of Conservative rule. “The idea behind [the Dome] was not only to celebrate the millennium but to regenerate a nation . . . ” (Nicolson, 1999: 3). Part of the promise of regeneration, was the choice of the highly polluted gasworks site as the location (BBC News, 2000; Thornley, 2000; Gray, 2003). Under Thatcher’s government, Greenwich had been neglected in the docklands regeneration (Mcguigan, 2003: 673). It was imagined the Dome would embody post-Thatcherism and New Labour notions of inclusiveness and togetherness and this was tied into the decontamination of the land (Nicolson, 1999; Mcguigan, 2003; Gilliat-Ray, 2004; Thornley, 2000). The construction began in 1997 and the large dome does not dominate or piece the cityscape of London, such as The Shard, rather it just about visible from the London Eye another tribute to the Millennium (Mcguigan, 2003: 672).
The monumentalising of time was not only in the name ‘Millennium Dome’ but also in the land title and its relation to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Professors Geoff Lightfoot and Simon Lilley are critically of the association to GMT as a sanitisation of imperialism, they write;
“It represents nothing more than a centring of prior imperial ambition for the better calculation of the extension of that ambition, a resonance that sits uncomfortably with the intended happy, clappy style of the millennial celebration that was staged there, and thus, one which must be occluded or sanitised in a less threatening notion of national pride.”
(Lightfoot and Lilley, 2002: 241)
They further their criticism to the Dome’s architect Richard Rogers, for appropriating a future based on a particular reading of a selective past (Lightfoot and Lilley, 2002: 242). As Professor Sheila Jasanoff articulates, “Political imaginaries shape the future as they reinscribe or reconfigure the past . . .” (Jasanoff, 2015b: 338). It was hoped by Prime Minister Tony Blair the Dome would embody “spirit of the future in the world” but only by breaking with the past (Blair 1998, quoted in The Guardian, 2007). Peter Mandelson a key character in the project, who arguable is stretching his influence once again within the current political arena, insisted at the time “that the Dome was to be about the future, not the past” (Mcguigan, 2003: 683). Similarly, Adam Nicolson writes optimistically in Regeneration: The Story of the Dome, “The Dome, and everything around it, the spreading skirts of its National Programme, was to be, in other words, a lamp held up for the future, a beacon of hope” (Nicolson, 1999: 252). But in actuality, the Dome became a symbol of the “continuing nostalgia for the technologies of modernity”, as Lightfoot and Lilley (2002: 242) argues, a vision of the future of more of the same. In a speech prior to the opening of the Dome, then PM Blair evoked the language of modernists,
“This is a celebration that is good for British business. The Millennium Experience is a chance to demonstrate that Britain will be a breeding ground for the most successful businesses of the twenty-first century.
The twenty-first century company will be different.”
(Blair, 1998 quoted in Nicolson, 1999: 200)
The Dome exhibition would only run for a year.
The slogan ‘one amazing day’ (Mcguigan, 2003) was a promise of a day in a fantastical high-technological world with “ . . . educational, spiritual and community aspects approached through rides, boats, moving pavements and cyberspace” (Lister, 1998). In the 1999 television commercial a range of voices narrated the following,
“One day I’ll land on earth like an alien from out of space
One day I’ll go to a place where people defy gravity
One day I’ll travel through a human body
One day I’ll be able to change my face at the touch of a button”(Kesavva, 2012)
The language used to advertise the Dome evoked visions of the future through technological advancements. The fourteen exhibitions were titled and described with metaphors to appeal to the imagination of the attendees (Wyatt, 2000: 109). Such as Dreamscape, Body, Mind, and Living Island (Lister, 1998; Nicolson, 1999). It was believed the meaning of the Millennium Experience – the technological neoliberal future of New Labour Britain - would be embedded within each zone (Nicolson, 1999: 254). This is exemplified by the renaming of Spirit Level to the Faith Zone. Sophie Gilliat-Ray uses the Faith Zone as a case study to examine “ . . . the struggles and the conditions associated with the idea and the policy of inclusion in relation to religion in modern Britain . . . ” (Gilliat-Ray, 2004: 459). Arguing the Dome was constrained by existing relationships, structures and expectations, and
“These constraints were one of a number of factors influencing the construction of the Faith Zone at the Dome, and the result was that visitors were presented with only a partial reflection of religion in Britain.”
(Gilliat- Ray, 2004: 462)
The majority of the thematic zones used technoscientific language, imagery and ideas, for example, “The heart of the Body zone . . . [was] just that—a giant, beating, anatomically correct model of the human heart” (McConnell, 2000: 76). The Journey Zone exhibited the history and future of transport technologies (including trains, planes and cars) through a sponsorship gaze (Mcguigan, 2003). In the spirit of New Labour, the zones had corporate sponsorships with varied levels of intrusion; the Ford Motor Company controlled the Journey Zone (showcasing no other motorcars) and British Telecom had the Talk Zone (Gray, 2003; Mcguigan and Gilmore, 2002; Nicolson, 1999). Mcguigan notes the Journey Zone was exceptional in that is did not obliterate time – past, present and future (Mcguigan, 2003: 683). For the exhibition of the future of transport, the University of Sussex devised four different futures, such as vehicles that run on methanol or a problematic future of too many cars, displayed on wide head-height monitors (Nicolson, 1999: 254; Mcguigan, 2003: 683). On the wall read a sign: ‘There is not one future, there are many’ (Mcguigan, 2003: 683). We are living in the one with recurring potholes and the cancellation of Hs2. Mcguigan and Gilmore argue, that while visitors did not complain about corporate sponsorship it played a role in the failure of the Dome (Mcguigan and Gilmore, 2002: 19).
Prior to the opening of the Dome the press ranged from the pessimistic to the optimistic (Gray, 2003: 441). However, subsequent to the opening and eventual closure, “The Dome was generally considered to be a cultural disaster in the news media and public conversation” (Mcguigan, 2003: 669). The Dome failed to generate the affection of the British public and the press (Mcguigan, 2003; Gray, 2003), and “became a political embarrassment for Britain’s New Labour government” (Mcguigan, 2003: 669). A ‘fiasco’ still discussed in Newspaper columns two decades on. Lightfoot and Lilley make clear, that the Millennium Dome was an attempt to monumentalise society at a particular moment in time however, there was a lack of reflection and problematisation of the very moment that was being monumentalised (Lightfoot and Lilley, 2002: 250). This, I argue resulted in the collapsing imaginaries of the Dome, for as Professor Sheila Jasanoff writes, as modern societies,
“We rightly celebrate the seer, the visionary, the transformative political thinker. But imagination also operates at an intersubjective level, uniting members of social community in shared perceptions of futures that should or should not be realized.” (Jasanoff, 2015a, 6)
Elaborating further in ‘Imagined and Invented Worlds’, that in their origin stories of imaginaries (individual or collective) ideas matter, “But ideas about scientific and technological futures need to gain assent outside such bounded communities in order to become full-fledged imaginaries” (Jasanoff, 2015b: 326). Despite Mr Blair’s emotive Royal Festival Hall speech in 1998, the Millennium Experience is considered a failure.
In many ways the Dome is remembered as “ . . . an incoherent vehicle for old delusions of national grandeur allied to corporate power in a neo-liberal world” (Mcguigan, 2003: 687-688). The Millennium Dome was political, cultural and technologies imaginaries held by a few that failed to capture the collection imagination; a rejection of a future that refused to reckon with its past. But in other ways the Millennium Project succeeded as capitalism and neoliberalism entwined together and continues to influence the political imagination of the establishment and the language used to discuss the future of Britain. After many brutal years of neoliberalism, the vote for Brexit, the consequences of privatisation causing disfunction across the railway network and the pollution of our rivers and seas perhaps the Dome offers a way to revisit the past two decades to understand where we might be heading? In an election year that is polling to switch the government from Conservative to Labour, it is not surprising the Millennium Dome is resurfacing in the national imagination as the public are asked once again about the future of Britain. The nostalgia for the Dome is a reminder that when imaginaries fail and fall away they leave room for other possibilities.
If you have not seen inside the Dome I recommend clicking here to see the post on X.com that sparked the publication of this essay.
If you enjoyed reading this I recommend reading:
BBC News (2000) ‘The Dome: A politicised tent’. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/849304.stm [accessed: 21.01.18]
Gilliat-Ray, S., 2004. The trouble with 'inclusion': a case study of the faith zone at the Millennium Dome. The Sociological Review, 52 (4), pp.459–477.
Gray, C. (2003) The Millennium Dome: Falling From Grace. Parliamentary Affairs. [Online] 56 (3), pp. 441–455.
Jasanoff, S. (2015a) ‘Future imperfect: science, technology and the imaginations of modernity’, in Dreamscapes of modernity [electronic resource] : sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 1–33.
Jasanoff, S. (2015b) ‘Imagined and Invented Worlds’, in Dreamscapes of modernity [electronic resource] : sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 321–341.
Kesavva (2012) Millennium Dome advert 1999. Available: youtube.com [Accessed: 21.01.18]
Lister, David (1998) ‘Unveiled: Blair’s theme park for the Millennium PM promises Greenwich
extravaganza will be envy of the world’. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/unveiled-blairs-theme-park-for-the-millennium-1146773.html [accessed: 21.01.18]
Lightfoot, G. & Lilley, S. (2002) Moments, Monuments and Explication: The Standing of the Millennium Dome. Culture and Organization. [Online] 8 (3), pp. 239–254.
McConnell, J. (2000) The Millennium Dome. The Lancet. [Online] 355 (9197), p. 76. McGuigan, J. (2003) The social construction of a cultural disaster: New Labour’s millennium experience. Cultural Studies. [Online] 17 (5), pp. 669–690.
Mcguigan, J. & Gilmore, A. (2002) The millennium dome: Sponsoring, meaning and visiting. International Journal of Cultural Policy. [Online] 8 (1), pp. 1–20.
Moore, R (2020) ‘The Millennium Dome 20 years on… revisiting a very British fiasco’ available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/01/millennium-dome-20-years-on-new-labour [accessed: 09.05.2024]
Nicolson, A. (1999) Regeneration: The Story of the Dome. London: Harper Collins Publishers.
The Guardian (2007) ‘Blair in his own words’ Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/may/11/tonyblair.labour1 [accessed: 21.01.18]
Thornley, A. (2000) Dome Alone: London’s Millennium Project and the Strategic Planning Deficit. International journal of urban and regional research. 24 (3), pp. 689–699.
Image created using an AI generator: it is an artificial imagining of the Millennium Dome collapsing not a depiction of real life events.