Kate Rich

Artist, trader and feral economist based in Bristol UK. Ongoing research contexts include

• Feral Trade, a grocery business utilising the spare carrying capacity of the art world to trade coffee and other vital goods outside formal systems
• Cube Cinema, a volunteer run arts co-operative and Community Land Trust
• Cube-Cola, DIY open source soft drink production
• Irational.org Art server collective
• Institute for Experiments with Business (Ibex), part of the FoAM international network of trans-disciplinary labs
• Sail Cargo Alliance, an assembly of traders, brokers and ship owners working together to revive the historic practice of sailing cargo in wind-propelled ships.

My current research focus is to establish the format, rationale, context and curriculum for the Feral MBA, a radically reimagined business school for artists (and others). Against the backdrop of a Creative Economy that considers 'creativity' as a form of human capital to be harnessed for productivity and economic growth, the Feral MBA takes up a very different perspective. It asks how approaches and understandings from art could be applied to experiment with fundamentally different formats, values and outcomes for and in business itself. This project is diversely resourced and supported through a practice-based PhD at the Digital Cultures Research Unit at the University of the West of England (UWE), and the FoAM international network of trans-disciplinary labs.