Resisting the Creative Economy on Liverpool’s North Shore: Art-Based Political Communication in Practice

Abstract

The speed and scale at which Liverpool is redeveloping is indicative of global advances in market-driven geo-economic restructuring, while the creative economy model has been one of the central tenets of urban regeneration over the past forty years. This paper focuses on the construction of a new creative quarter on Liverpool’s North Shore Dock, and the modes of creative resistance that are being enacted by some residents in the area. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork that has been carried out over the past two years, this research foregrounds the tensions that exist between two different forms of creativity, and the ways in which these are negotiated, in particular through the use of community-oriented film screenings as part of an activist repertoire that was developed by one artistic collective in the campaign to save their building from demolition. Overall, the paper offers some insight regarding different (often opposing) forms and ideologies of urban redevelopment, pointing towards an alternative politics of place that distances itself from the ever-expanding sphere of the market and the so-called creative economy.