Creative Edge: Reconceiving Suburban London

This one-day workshop explored this seeming reversal in London's creative polarities. Through discussion and debate between academics drawn from a range of disciplines together with writers, artists and musicians the workshop considered the trajectories, contradictions and possibilities of London suburbia. These include a historical role as an experimental field of modernity, growing ethnic and class diversity as well as an increasingly polycentric morphology. Through this in-depth investigation of London's multifaceted suburban landscapes, the workshop aims to add important cultural and critical dimensions to a new political emphasis on London's outer boroughs following the election of Mayor Johnson. 

Speakers included Martin Clark (Blackdown), Georgina Cook, Martin Dines (Kingston University), David Gilbert (Royal Holloway), Nico Hogg, Charles Holland (FAT), Rupa Huq (Kingston), Tim Lott  and Mark Swenarton.

London's outer suburbs have stereotypically been portrayed and understood as safe, boring and an anathema to inspiration, especially against more dynamic, spectacular and multilayered central districts. Yet, London's suburbia has proved a fertile and innovative seedbed for creativity, particularly in contrast to an increasingly gentrified, generic and bland historic centre. From the literature of Hanif Kureishi, JG Ballard and Zadie Smith to the musical adventures of Siouxsie Sioux, Suburban Base records and Burial, the suburbs have become central to cultural representations and imaginations of contemporary London. This one-day workshop explored this seeming reversal in London's creative polarities. Through discussion and debate between academics drawn from a range of disciplines together with writers, artists and musicians the workshop considered the trajectories, contradictions and possibilities of London suburbia. These include a historical role as an experimental field of modernity, growing ethnic and class diversity as well as an increasingly polycentric morphology. Through this in-depth investigation of London's multifaceted suburban landscapes, the workshop aims to add important cultural and critical dimensions to a new political emphasis on London's outer boroughs following the election of Mayor Johnson.  Speakers included Martin Clark (Blackdown), Georgina Cook, Martin Dines (Kingston University), David Gilbert (Royal Holloway), Nico Hogg, Charles Holland (FAT), Rupa Huq (Kingston), Tim Lott  and Mark Swenarton.

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For further information please contact andrew.harris[at]ucl.ac.uk

See review of workshop in Building Design