While displaying its past affiliation with the avant-garde, London continues to promote it in the present. After giving away his album in our newspapers Prince chose the O2 for his month-long residency, and it looks like Micheal Jackson is about to follow suit. Nine Inch Nails took music packaging to new levels with propagandist billboards, and videos distributed on USB keys. A plethora of bands made one-off reunions here. Even long-dead celebrity Tutankhamun got in on the action.
Fighting against city homogenisation, the fashion epicentres of London continued to wow the world. Spitalfields continued to reinvent and re-open, culminating in an Alternative Christmas event, asking us to base our stocking-fillers around original and homemade festive treats, and breathing (!) new life into The Twelve Days of Christmas with a helium choir. New crafts and fashions exploded into the nooks and crannies of Camden Market in reaction to the proposed “facelift” and Portabello Market has a rapidly growing status as a multicultural experience on the weekends. St Pancras reaffirmed our status as an international hotspot, and as CreateKX show, the Kings Cross area is poised to become yet another arts hotspot over the next few years.
Perhaps the reason why London is the city of choice for so many creatives is that it is a city constantly in a state of flux. Paris may be beautiful, but a city with a uniform display of design and architecture hardly suggests progression, and whist a lot of talent emerges from New York, it lends itself more to experience than gestation. London's arms are wide open to new cultures, influences, and experiences, and it shows at every level. Tourists want to visit us, businesses want to service us, and our image and language are everywhere. There may no longer be a British Empire, but when it comes to culture, London undeniably dictates to the world.
