Art v. Creativity - Jeremey Deller on the case

Jeremy Deller's Folk Art exhibition at the Barbican does it for me.

Jeremy and Alan Kane have spent years collating this vast collection of contemporary British Folk Art. The kind of stuff that everyone makes in everyday culture. On display you will find images of Norfolk wrestlers dressed in costumes decorated with flowers by their wives, video of the 14 July Tableau staged outside Maison Berteaux, airbrush work on vans, prison tattoos, a motorbike helmut as a skull. The collection fills the Barbican's Curve space starting with A scarecrow of Michael Jackson and ending with a very large plastic Elephant.

Here then is a critically engaged work of contemporary art, doing what contemporary art does at its best - force us to take a fresh look at the world around us, reconsider our relationship to it and the ideas that sustain us.

Folk Art at the Barbican

Driving Corporate (In)sanity?

Notes from another Reality.



We were visited this week by the "marketing innovation team" of a top brand three letter acronym automobile manufacturer. It had been a rather strange and wonderful introduction. Some weeks before one of our students had managed to secure a research internship with this company - his remit being to assist them to create the means, methods and capabilities to transfer creativity into the organisation. No small challange! At the same time a friend who has worked with us previously as a journalist and editor put her friend in touch with me. Her friend is a freelancer and was interested in working with the Juice Network. A little later she contacted me, full of pleasure, because she had been given our names by her client to contact us for a totally different reason.

Turns out she is a London Scout for the trend organisation CSCOUT. CSCOUT had been engaged by the automobile manufacturer to take some of their top team to meet and experience the hot trends in London. We are pleased to be on the map - long may it last.

While in London their visit included the BlueWater Shopping Mall, spent time with the Adam Street Club Network SoFlow , visited us at the LSE, visited a management consultancy's creative space EDS-BOX and had a tour of The Hospital The Hospital.

Their questions were about transferring creativity into an organisation, and the documentation of creative events, and networks.

We introduced them to:
- Thorsten Roser - a PhD student working on knowledge networks
- Dr Miguel Imas - Miguel works on narratives, storytelling and architecture for skateboarders
- Prof Patrick Humphreys - Patrick is Director of the Institute of Social Psychology Institute of Social Psychologyl and Director of the London Multi-Media Lab London Multi-Media Lab
- Paul Ashcroft - a partner in the Ludic Group The Ludic Group
- Liz Faber - a partner in Push Digital Push Digital
- Vivien Goldburg - PhD student working on play in organisations
- John Thackera - Director of Doors of Perception and author of numerous books including just published In the Bubble In the Bubble


A lively conversation ensued amongst the academics, we had many questions from the "Marketing Innovators", and of course the experience generated many more questions than it answered. The client was clearly looking for a rational methodology and tool that could ensure creativity (process, content) would flow into the organisation. Is this possible? What about Creative Events? How should they be conducted? Should they be conducted at all? How should they end? What about working beyond just the event? Is this another failed utopia? Can any Creative Process be rational? Can creativity be taught? How can these things be documented? What are the processes that ensure creative outcomes? Are these possible in an engineering, driven, corporate context? What is the definition of Creativity? How does narrative and storytelling drive creativity? What about Creative Environments? Is contextual functionality enough? Isn't the Question that is asked of a diverse group more important?