Anthony Davies

Anthony Davies (b 1965) is a London based writer, independent researcher and organiser, currently working in the Fine Art department at Central Saint Martins College, and with the Wealth of Negations [1] [2] group, coordinating communications for the migrant-led Cleaners & Allied Independent Workers Union (CAIWU).

As a writer on art, politics and economics Davies has published in numerous journals. In the late 1990s, along with Simon Ford, he developed a series of critical debates [3] [4] on young British art (yBa) and the Creative Industries, introducing the dystopian figure of the cultural entrepreneur or ‘Culturepreneur’. This was followed by a series of articles [5] [6] in Mute Magazine on the neoliberal transformation of cultural and educational institutions and later texts including "There is No Alternative: The Future is Self-Organised Parts 1 & 2", co-written with Stephan Dillemuth and Jakob Jakobsen, can be found in various publications.

In addition to Wealth of Negations, Davies is also a founder member of MayDay Rooms [7] (2011-2016), an educational charity based in London and set up as a safe haven for historical material linked to social movements and experimental culture. He has co-organised or participated in a range of self-organised initiatives including Posterstudio, Infopool, Copenhagen Free University [8], Flaxman Lodge, The School of Walls and Space [9], social-crisis-social, Rosa Kerosene and 10th Floor. More recently, with James Stevens and Reverso, he set up a DIY wireless communications and self-archiving platform with autonomous cultural spaces in the Peripheries/Favelas and Workers Occupied Houses of São Paulo, Brazil - culminating in a series of events Distributed Spaces 1-5 and Vagabundo Social [10] an online international forum over the period 2020-2022