Information Observatory

Artists in Tech Cities

This report was co-authored with Professor Toby Miller earlier this year in collaboration with the East London-based arts organisation SPACE. This research project looked at the convergence between artist communities and tech sectors and the un/intended impacts on artists and local communities under the promotion of ‘creative’ industries in the region where we live and work: Silicon Roundabout/Shoreditch and Here East in East London.

“…UK’s Technology City is a place where policy makers seek to coalesce the arts and technology sectors under one umbrella and translate human creativity into economic value. It elucidates the inherent contradiction between the politics of creativity subscribed to by urban policy makers and the technology sector, as opposed to artistic freedom. The creativity pursued by many artists frequently exercises and strives for an artistic autonomy that transcends market interests; however, the politics of ‘creativity’ in the Technology City further absorbs art into market relations. Aesthetic expression must justify itself in terms of productivity and economic outcomes. Depoliticizing ‘creativity’ masks the inherent incompatibility of absorbing artistic expression into market relations, justifying urban dispossession…”

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