Creative accounting: consumer culture, the creative economy and the cultural policies of New Labour.
Year: 2000
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: In Stephen Bayley's book Labour Camp: The Failure of Style Over Substance, the former creative director of the New Millennium Experience shares his views on New Labour's cultural policies and practices.As the title suggests, Bayley's opinion is not exactly favourable; and this in itself is not particularly surprising, given Bayley's dramatic resignation as creative director of the Dome and the general reputation of the 'style guru' for designer tantrums and waspish comment.What Labour Camp does, firstly, is to argue, through anecdote and invective, that from Cool Britannia to Lord Irvine's wallpaper, from the Dome to the 'branding Britain' debates, New Labour manifests the triumph of 'style' over 'substance', has offered a cultural regime consumed by the superficial aspects of image.Moreover, this is not just any old 'shallow' image either, but an exceptionally dull and debased one: the second charge of the book is that cultural standards are being lowered.As proof, Bayley shudders, we now have in charge of the Arts Council former Granada chairman Gerry Robinson, the 'caterer to Nescafé society'.i Bayley's account is structured by the belief that design or art or should not be 'political' and that it can somehow exist in a zone 'outside' politics.Similarly, the critique rests (somewhat incongruously, coming from the former director of the Design Museum) on the idea of 'style'
Author: Jo Littler
Language: English
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1752787342