ABSTRACT
This article seeks to reveal the limitations of state-initiated arts and cultural projects as well as spurious notions of ‘empowerment’ by examining them in terms of homogeneity, universality and technocracy. It focuses on issues of instrumentalism with the arts and explores how state-initiated ‘community engagement’ programmes like Creative People and Places may effectively reproduce state agendas linked to social capital theory and thereby to neoliberalism. … READ MORE
This blog post is about ASH – Architects for Social Housing. It uncovers a different side to ASH’s founder that is rooted in the establishment and seeks to work with local councils to promote citizenship and art as a public good. It suggests that these values (and others) are at odds with the aggressive and passionately political persona often adopted by ASH. … READ MORE
I did a talk at Diffusion ‘Revolution’ Festival Symposium at Cardiff University today. I’ve uploaded my presentation with notes here. Click the link below to read it and remember to turn notes on in bottom right hand corner of presentation when it loads… The talk is called Artwashing: From Mining Capital to Harvesting Social Capital.… READ MORE
