The Creative Underclass: Youth, Race, and the Gentrifying City
Date and time
Location
Online event
Talk and Q+A with Tyler Denmead, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Director of Studies in Education, Queens’ College
About this event
In this talk, Denmead critically examines his paradoxical role as the founder of an American-based arts studio for youth. Based on nearly twenty years of educational leadership and fieldwork, this auto-ethnographic account shows how some young people credited the studio with providing transformative educational experiences, while, at the same time, acting as a gentrifying force in their neighbourhoods. He will show how the creative underclass is useful in understanding this paradox, as well as how young people’s creative disobedience troubles racist logics at the heart of creative-led urban renewal. As such, the concept of the creative underclass makes us better equipped to engage directly with, and potentially transform, racial and economic inequities in the city.
Tyler Denmead teaches in the Faculty of Education and Queens' College at the University of Cambridge. His most recent journal articles can be read in Studies in Art Education, Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, and Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education.