DEMOS

I have just returned from the Boho Britain Seminar and find that the complexity of the issues that the talks have raised for me needs to be fed back. Mind you a packed train from Victoria to Brighton is no place to consolidate such thoughts. The words of Richard Florida that still ring in my ears are "this is a change of very large magnitude" I have to agree. Although I realise that this change has been active for some considerable time and am aware that Richards encapsulation of the process is as much of an attempt to control that change as it is to track it. It was a strange experience to hear such a distinguished assembly of 'suits' referring to a subject that I have been deeply involved in since the early eighties not only with acceptance but also with positive optimism. In the seminar the emergence of an idealised candidate through which the boho process is precipitated almost reads as a copy of my c.v. (But perhaps this is true for everybody and is part of the brilliance of Richard F's phraseology). I have for the last twenty five years made a living outside of anything that could be described as a job (as have most of my peers) through encouraging, organising and exploring notions of creativity and selling the process as a service. I have co-initiated communities that have inadvertently triggered regeneration and been ousted by the resulting gentrification on no less than 5 occasions. I have often been called upon to rectify urban problems by instigating arts based projects in areas in need of regeneration - more recently have found myself in the privileged position of exploring mechanisms of creativity amongst research scientists and educationalists. Up until today I didn't even consider this "work" as a legitimate activity let alone know how to describe it, but now I find that the personal specialism that I have developed is sexy. To me there were no new revelations in the processes that the seminar covered only a familiar ring of truth. However the aspect of the seminar that really threw the spanner in the works for me was seeing so many of the respective disciplines represented missing the point in such a fundamental way. The changes that we see will fundamentally alter the mechanisms of value that we use and already the eagerness to find fast ways to exploit the moment looks anachronistic (particularly Rick Peisers desperate attempt to legitimise the insensitive redevelopment of shopping malls) Chris Smith perceptively summarised when he said that "Creativity begins and ends with the individual" The activity of creativity is intensely personal, We all partake of it, but for most the current mechanism stifles it in the workplace only to offer it again as the carrot to a lifetime's unquestioning service. Strangely enough most peoples ultimate desire (on retirement for example) is essentially a simple form of freedom, be it gardening or a perpetual holiday (often these images are directly associated with the last point at childhood when creative freedom was encouraged). OK so it is usually accompanied with hopes of affluence too but this surely is just the familiar trained mechanism for enabling freedom. My point is that celebrating creativity throughout ones working life actually places the end as the means. The process literally becomes the reward. Notions such as finding exploitation opportunities become clear for what they really are - enjoyably manipulable systems of logistics that presuppose the inequality of the exploited (voluntarily or otherwise). Now I realise that, in itself, this sounds like something from Marxism today. But I suggest that when one analyses the core group (those outsiders that precede the new creative technologies) this is the very paradox that they are trying to shortcut and in doing so they are continually providing new substance. A rich enough source to satisfy the professional creativity of the best exploiters.