In this paper I will investigate the importance and prefigurative potential of infrastructure and ecosystemic thinking, both for the future of the creative economy and for wider social change.

Artistic innovation, while often characterised as a sudden single happening, is actually the result of many long hidden hours of behind-the-scenes work. The same can be true of political and social innovations and shifts in common sense that can set a direction for progressive transformation. While being hidden from view, an accumulating aggregation of seemingly disorganised and unsystematic actions can provide a pre-history for larger, more visible actions that might openly challenge the status quo.

Likewise, Gibson-Graham chart the many invisible ways of doing economy that challenge the notion that neoliberal capitalism is a monolithic entity impossible to overcome (2020).

However, there still remains the question of how to create and support sustainable, long lasting social and political change and whether and how much disparate and multi-various initiatives need to be organised. This is particularly acute in a cost of living crisis and with a creative economy that is highly precarious. Is it a question of joining up the dots, creating platforms or thinking eco-systemically? With this in mind, I will examine the role of infrastructure, taking Butler’s use of the term for both material infrastructure such as pavements and streets and the social infrastructure of solidarity and support, and Nunes’ notions of organisational ecosystems (Butler, 2016; Nunes, 2021).

In mainstream perspectives, great emphasis is put on potential of the creative economy to come up with solutions to overcome ‘global challenges’, through diversifying production, building competitive advantage, attracting investment, supporting entrepreneurship and innovation, and promoting cultural diversity and well-being (UNCTAD). However, there is also a role for culture in imagining and experimenting with new and different ways of being and doing that contribute to larger social transformation. I will therefore also use Raekstad and Gradin’s definition of prefigurative action, as ‘the deliberate experimental implementation of desired future social relations and practices in the here and now’ (2020: 10), to investigate concrete examples, including the 1970’s anarchist ecologist architect group Street Farmers, and more contemporary ones such as Civic Square and Public Commons Partnerships.

Claudia Firth is Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol Business School, working on the Fair Creative Economies research project. Her work is situated in the interstices between Cultural Studies, Political Economy and Organisation Studies. She is a member of the Sustainable Production and Consumption and Inclusive Economy (SPICE), and the Action Research and Critical Inquiry in Organisations (ARCIO) research groups. Claudia is also an experienced facilitator, working across the cultural and activist sectors. Her research has included work on commons, co-ops, grassroots self-organisation and the contribution and sharing economy, reading groups as critical pedagogy and organisation, and listening as a mode of organizing in arts-activism. Forthcoming publications include articles on political organisation, mutual aid and technology, and neoliberalism in the current conjuncture.