Creative Industry Magazine London | Creative Boom London

It’s been a while, but here I am. VICE Magazine and Intel linked arms on Saturday 17th July to give London a debaucherously creative intelligent party, at Victoria House in Holborn. It was a knees-up of gigantic proportions, beginning at 12pm with an air of cool creativity – and ending, alcohol-soaked and sticky-floored, at 3am after many DJ sets and live music from Mark Ronson and The Business Intl, amongst others.

The class of 2009. We are a lost generation, the most indebted in history. It ain’t a few thousand, either. We are part of a 300,000 strong army of young, prospective ‘real people’ who have a degree in something or other. This means that we are all at least semi-experts in our respective fields – yes, we have worked hard, we have partied hard, stayed up all night, gone to lectures battling the elements and all feelings of vertigo and sickness in the stomach, done our exams, worn the stupid costume at the end.

I hadn’t thought of this before, but creativity can be a spanner in the works. Or should I say too much creativity. It can be a bit more than just a spanner wedged in between some gears, though; if you think about wars through the ages and all the (negative – is that allowed to be said?) creativity that goes on with regards to who can make the scariest weapon, it can be downright nasty and conniving.

There’s Art on the Underground, Poems on the Underground (split into various things like Science Poems, Music Poems, and plain old London Poems); there are buskers everywhere with trumpets and guitars and keyboards with organ effects; there are so many posters and billboards advertising from suits to women to blockbuster films – let’s face it, they’re there to act as ‘Art’ to our eyes as we trudge our forking ways in the sub-Thames tunnels; there are CBSO screens that play all the way down the hundreds of escalators – more advertising, though. There’s a lot to see.

The narrator is overlooked in modern fiction. Story, and obviously character, are way more important to some people. They are more important than who or what narrates a novel, but not way more.

Bombay Bicycle Club’s new album Flaws is a distinct exploration into folk music, sparked by frontman Jack Steadman’s rummaging through his dad’s old record collection, and a first listen to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. Most of the tracks were recorded in Jack’s bedroom and produced by him, too, with some early tracks laid down and produced by guitarist Jamie’s dad, Neill MacColl. Ironically, it is an album with very few flaws.