[Ideas] Oli Mould: Against Creativity

Creativity is the buzzword of our times. Championed as the driving force of contemporary society and the knowledge economy, it is presented as an essential part of our lives – influencing designs for office interiors, inner-city makeovers, and even government attempts to renew precarious parts of their economies. Is there anything wrong with this? According to human & urban geographer Oli Mould, yes. He demands that we rethink the story we are being sold. Brilliantly and counter-intuitively, he shows how creativity is a barely hidden form of neoliberal appropriation, which refuses to recognise anything – job, place, person – that is not profitable. Oli refuses to go with the flow and offers a radical and timely redefinition of creativity, one embedded in the idea of collective flourishing, outside the tyranny of profit.

ABOUT

Oli Mould is a lecturer in Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has a passion for researching and writing about the creative practices of cities (both those that contribute to capitalist accumulation and those that seek to resist it), architecture, the representation of cities in film, and labour in the creative economy. Currently, he is engaged in work on urban politics, creativity and social justice. He blogs at tacity.co.uk and is the author of Against Creativity.

GOOD READS 

Against Creativity (2018)

Urban Subversions and the Creative City (2015)

KEY LINKS

Oli Mould's Blog

Articles on Open Democracy