It’s the Political Economy, Stupid brings together internationally acclaimed artists and thinkers, including Slavoj Žižek, David Graeber, Judith Butler and Brian Holmes, to focus on the current economic crisis in a sustained and critical manner. In sympathy with the subject matter, the book features powerful original artwork for the cover, and an internal design theme based on the movements of Goldman Sachs stock market values by activist designer Noel Douglas. What emerges is a powerful critique of the current capitalist crisis through an analytical and theoretical response and an aesthetic-cultural rejoinder. By combining artistic responses with the analysis of leading radical theorists, the book expands the boundaries of critique beyond the usual discourse. It’s the Political Economy, Stupid argues that it is time to push back against the dictates of the capitalist logic and, by use of both theoretical and artistic means, launch a rescue of the very notion of the social.

This paper develops reflections on design creativity as a cross-curriculum tool in mainstream formal education at primary/elementary level. Evidence comes from a contemporary UK case study of a series of workshops whereby architectural design professionals introduced design creativity into mainstream primary teaching and learning situations, developed through the UK Creative Partnerships‘ programme. This programme, which until recently was funded through central government, introduced principles of collaborative creativity through targeted programmes of change and enquiry involving pupils, teachers and creative practitioners. Following the processes of designing and delivering a programme to embed creative exploration through design tasks which focus on the learning environment, the authors, both architectural practitioners and educators, undertake further reflection back to the architectural profession and the societal role of collaborative creative design. We propose a hybrid practice in which architects might swap skills with teachers, pupils, teaching assistants and school management. This process reveals new creative concepts to pupils and staff, and unearths latent abilities within pupils as they work collaboratively to develop and provide design services for the built fabric or spatial use of school spaces.

This chapter examines how the new figure of the female periodical illustrator intersected with mid-century debates over the lack of employment for middle-class women, the nature of the female artist and the hierarchies of an industrialising image trade. It presents how the illustrator's cultural status in relation to the other practitioners was frequently articulated in reference to sexual politics in ways that both opposed and enabled the idea of women drawing on wood. The chapter reveals Florence and Adelaide Claxton as a case study, looking at the significance of graphic illustration in their careers and the niche they established within the periodical press for humorous social scenes. The tendency for art historians to concentrate on 'sixties school' illustration has eclipsed the contemporary popularity and currency of Florence and Adelaide Claxton's work. Florence and Adelaide Claxton's profiles as popular illustrators of social subjects in the 1860s positioned them on the ephemeral margins of the fine art establishment.