This event is now fully booked. If you want to go on the waiting list please email bookshop@fiveleaves.co.uk. We email a reminder to all those who have been booked  three days before the event and this sometimes results in cancellations.

Culture is at the heart to what it means to be human. But twenty-five years ago, the British government rebranded art and culture as ‘creative industries’, valued for their economic contribution, and set out to launch the UK as the creative workshop of a globalised world. Where does that leave art and culture now?

Facing exhausted workers and a lack of funding and vision, culture finds itself in the grip of accountancy firms, creativity gurus and Ted Talkers. This book is about what happens when an essential part of our democratic citizenship, fundamental to our human rights, is reduced to an industry. Bold and uncompromising, the talk offers a powerful vision for change.

Justin O’Connor is Professor of Cultural Economy at the University of South Australia. His books include Red Creative: Culture and Modernity in China with Xin Gu and Reset: Art, Culture and the Foundational Economy.

In association with Manchester University Press

This event is chaired by Dr David Wright, an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Warwick. His research interests cut across all areas of cultural policy and the cultural/creative industries. He is the author of Understanding Cultural Taste.