Fair Play ― Art, Performance and Neoliberalism

What is the quality of participation in contemporary art and performance? Is it damaged by cultural policies introduced since the 1997 election of New Labour – and especially since the 2008 recession – which have 'entrepreneurialized' artists, cut arts funding and cultivated corporate philanthropy and the 'creative industries'? Might it contribute to urban gentrification, particularly in London? Has its democratic potential been at all fortified by artists' innovations in crowdfunding, pop-ups, networking, installation art and immersive theatre; their engagements with ideas of home and folk culture; and their practices of labor and craftsmanship? How can it enhance understanding of relationships between the individual and the group? How can it improve social welfare and nurture social life?

Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism explores these questions through the work of important contemporary artists and organizations including Marcus Coates, Phil Collins, Jeremy Deller, Michael Landy, Grayson Perry, Rachel Whiteread, Lone Twin, Punchdrunk, Tate Modern and the National Theatre.

JEN HARVIE is Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at Queen Mary, University of London. She is author of Theatre and the City (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Staging the UK (MUP, 2005), co-author of The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (Routledge) and co-editor of a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Reviewon Globalisation and Theatre (2006), Making Contemporary Theatre (MUP, 2010) and the Palgrave Macmillan series Theatre &.