Performing new worlds? Policy, politics and creative labour in hard times

This paper addresses the problem of how to engage with the politics of public policy in the current period of cuts, austerity and retrenchment. It explores current strategies of divestment, design and decentralisation, assessing the scope within each for creative enactments and alternative pathways. It then explores 'public-making' as a means of countering the affective consequences of austerity, and shows how practitioners mediate and manage the tensions that result through multiple forms of 'border work'. Finally the paper explores the troubled relationship between progressive policy enactments and neoliberal appropriations.