Imagined Memories and Material Connections

The Warner Bros. Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter™ as a Home for a Fanbase in Transition

Abstract

I examine the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter™ (TMoHP) as a hybrid cultural arena where fandom, heritage practices and commercial logics are interwoven in a staged environment. Grounded in a museological perspective and sensory autoethnographic fieldwork across six visits between 2016 and 2024, I explore how the site’s design blends material authenticity with embodied and affective “registers of engagement” (Smith 2021) to reveal processes of emotional and imaginative heritage (cf. Smith 2021; Reijnders 2020). Staged highlights and more quiet sensory details alike contribute to an “affective infrastructure” by shaping movement, memory-work, and a felt sense of returning to a familiar place. The analysis investigates these different layers and comprises three sections.

The first examines how scenography, spatial rhythm, and institutional choices produce shifting experiences of authenticity within a commercial context. The second turns to Heimat (cf. Sandvoss 2005), imagined memories (cf. Duffett 2013), and punctum (cf. Barthes 1981) to illuminate how recognition and affect surface in more unexpected ways as visitors navigate the attraction. The final section traces how upscaling, increased digital mediation and new visitor demographics alter the atmosphere and place pressure on fan modes of intimacy and participation.

By examining intersections between fandom and heritage tourism, I argue that TMoHP’s ongoing negotiation of affect, materiality, and belonging reflects broader changes in contemporary culture. The longitudinal perspective also allows me to reflect on the tensions around cultural sustainability of branded experience sites, and how researchers can document research as “snapshots” in a franchise environment that both welcomes its visitors and yet remains closed.