Oli Mould

Everything you have been told about creativity is wrong. From line managers, corporate CEOs, urban designers, teachers, politicians, mayors, advertisers and even our friends and family, the message is 'be creative'. Creativity is heralded as the driving force of our contemporary society; celebrated as agile, progressive and liberating. It is the spring of the knowledge economy and shapes the cities we inhabit. It even defines our politics. What could possibly be wrong with this? In this brilliant, counter intuitive blast Oli Mould demands that we rethink the story we are being sold. Behind the novelty, he shows that creativity is a barely hidden form of neoliberal appropriation. It is a regime that prioritizes individual success over collective flourishing. It refuses to recognise anything - job, place, person - that is not profitable. And it impacts on everything around us: the places where we work, the way we are managed, how we spend our leisure time. Is there an alternative? Mould offers a radical redefinition of creativity, one embedded in the idea of collective flourishing, outside the tyranny of profit. Bold, passionate and refreshing, Against Creativity, is a timely correction to the doctrine of our times.

Against Creativity

Check out the author's video to find out more about the book: https://vimeo.com/124247409 This book provides a comprehensive critique of the current Creative City paradigm, with a capital ‘C’, and argues for a creative city with a small ‘c’ via a theoretical exploration of urban subversion. The book argues that the Creative City (with a capital 'C') is a systemic requirement of neoliberal capitalist urban development and part of the wider policy framework of ‘creativity’ that includes the creative industries and the creative class, and also has inequalities and injustices in-built. The book argues that the Creative City does stimulate creativity, but through a reaction to it, not as part of it. Creative City policies speak of having mechanisms to stimulate individual, collective or civic creativity, yet through a theoretical exploration of urban subversion, the book argues that to be 'truly' creative is to be radically different from those creative practices that the Creative City caters for. Moreover, the book analyses the role that urban subversion and subcultures have in the contemporary city in challenging the dominant political economic hegemony of urban creativity. Creative activities of people from cities all over the world are discussed and critically analysed to highlight how urban creativity has become co-opted for political and economic goals, but through a radical reconceptualisation of what creativity is that includes urban subversion, we can begin to realise a creative city (with a small 'c').

Urban Subversion and the Creative City

Capitalism has become so dominant that it is difficult to ever imagine a world in which its injustices and inequalities are not violently present. In this ambitious and compelling book, Oli Mould turns his diagnosis of capitalism's perversions towards defining the new set of ethics we need to succeed in organizing a more just society. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, capitalism has been rocked to its foundations and 'the commons' as a means of providing for all people in our world has come crashing into the foreground. However, in order for the commons to be a viable alternative to the injustices of capitalism, it needs to be grown to a planetary scale. This is not an easy process, but if we can commit to act ethically in the world, then suddenly anything is possible. Blending theoretical thinking and real-life examples of commoning in action, Mould guides the reader through a suite of ethical mindsets – mutualism, transmaterialism, minoritarianism, decodification, slowness, failure and love – which can stand firm against capitalism's seemingly inexorable ability to co-opt and subsume all before it. When thought of collectively, these ethics can offer tantalizing visions and practical approaches towards a world beyond capitalism.

Oli Mould

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