Cultural policy is seen as essential in helping to regenerate previously unfashionable areas of east London and right across the capital. Every neighbourhood seems keen to emphasise its credentials as a creative, artist-friendly hub and no urban space is complete without short-let ‘pop-up’ shops and restaurants, temporary cinemas or urban beaches. Supporters argue that such playful, small-scale interventions can help ‘citizens take ownership of their city’ and engender a community spirit seen as sorely diminished after the 2011 riots.

Yet others are more sceptical about the merits of such schemes, seeing them as invariably corporate-sponsored examples of ‘hipster gentrification’, which undermines rather than bolsters civic engagement, with even the creatives of east London’s Tech City complaining development of the area will change its ‘unique character’.
While many artists claim to be committed to being friendly with residents and helping to improve neighbourhoods, the sceptics argue that they are, knowingly or unwittingly, helping gentrification. CityLab magazine recently called it ‘Artwashing’: getting an area cleaned up before properties are bought up cheap, with existing residents removed and flats sold for the highest price possible.

Some hail the rise of artist-led cultural initiatives as a radical challenge to both the problems of austerity and the perceived stifling sanitisation of contemporary public life. Are playful, small-scale interventions and urban explorations a challenge to the sanitised city, or merely part of it? To what extent do they provide a means to nurture the urban realm and engender community spirit? In any case, is gentrification inevitable?

Speakers

Alan Miller
co-director, NY Salon; co-founder, London's Truman Brewery; partner, Argosy Pictures Film Company

Emma Dent-Coad
leader, Labour Group, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council; design and architecture journalist

Feargus O’Sullivan
Europe correspondent, CityLab

James Stevens
strategic planner, Home Builders Federation
Chair
David Bowden
coordinator, UK Battle Satellites; columnist, spiked

#BattleFest2014: Cultural regeneration or gentrification?