Artists, Alternative Creative Spaces and Urban Transformation: Three European Case Studies

Recent times have seen the growth of a range of cultural protests in Italy, including the creation of an imaginary ‘People’s Centre for Arts’ in a thirty-one story skyscraper in Milan by a group called Macao, whose focus on guerrilla-branding tactics and self-organised cultural production has resulted in a broader radical experiment in creative democracy (Valli, 2015). In Berlin, a 26 year old ‘art house’ KuLe has recently documented its history and considered its future in the rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood of Mitte (Kule, 2016), while in the city of Amsterdam, the former squat OT301 has sought to maintain its radical roots in its transition from ‘broedplaatsen’ (breeding place) to independent ownership (EHBK/OT301, 2014). These varied, yet connected cases, are a small sample of a wide range of global examples of artistic and creative resistances, spaces, and movements, that exist in cities, despite counter urban tendencies to discourage them from forming and thriving. For despite a decade and a half of recognition about the importance of creativity in urban development and regeneration (Florida, 2002), corporate property-led urban development and neo-liberal austerity politics over the last couple of decades have paradoxically also led to new attacks on artistic livelihoods, as well as produced new conflicts and struggles over cultural spaces in cities (Mould, 2015; Sholette, 2011). The main aim of this paper is to assess the transformative potential of such alternative creative groups and spaces through a close examination of these three European case studies. The case studies chosen are analysed via five key themes including: 1. conditions of emergence 2. organisational form 3. artistic urban interventions 4. sustainability/ incorporation, and 5. the capacity to create collective cultural networks and link up with wider urban social movements.