Is the Anti Design Festival a spin-off or challenge to the London Design Festival?

Ben Evans at the LDF asked me in February if I would do a big graphic installation at the V&A. My immediate response was no, let's do an anti-design festival. It was not born of a discussion – just two sentences, that was it. They suggested the main gallery space but it has had nothing to do with them since then.

What was your motivation for the event?

Culture in this country has become too governed by commerce and polished outcomes, leaving artists and musicians behind. The banking crisis proves that model doesn’t work. Even the scientists are questioning whether commerciality should be the only criteria. So it's a critical moment. We have been presented with this possibility and we felt a duty to explore it. What we're trying to do is push a door open and put our foot in it. Let other people step in or not, but the door is not going to stay open for long.

What does anti-design mean to you?

Anything that is free form that doesn't fit into the banking cycle. It's not about art, design and music, it’s about thinking. The government say if you're going to do anything, make sure you’re making money. We say you need to make money to fund the experimentation, you don’t make money out of the experimentation. That's the core issue at the heart of the festival. It’s not about making money. It’s about exploring the human aspects.

How did you go about programming work?

We're essentially trying to create an open laboratory. We're not prescribing what's going to happen. So there are 10 or 11 venues and they all have some great ventures going on. All day, there's gallery space stuff and experimental workshops, and every evening, a full-on curated performance. I've been knocked out by the way people have come on board – some people who are normally quite conventional. We really have tapped into a need and desire to do things differently.

You say Britain has been in a creative “deep freeze” for the past 25 years…

Since 1984 to ’85, yes. You’ve got to remember what the government was doing at the time: closing down the unions, deregulating the banks and the media, making schools and hospital into profit centres. Labour carried it on with their capitalist socialism and now we have another government extending Thatcher’s legacy. In some ways, I really hope they do finish the job off. Their attitude – “We don't want anything to do with culture” – could just liberate it completely.

Are artists, as well as bankers and politicians, to blame?

People are yearning for something that is a bit more craft-like but they are missing the big opportunities. Like the internet. It is not really seen as a creative space, a space to explore ideas and aesthetics. I grew up with the independent record industry. The modern equivalent of that is people publishing their own stuff on the internet. But it’s quite formulaic out there. Everything is in a space of huge transition, there is huge potential, but I don't sense people are grabbing it.

You're incoming head of Communication Art & Design at the RCA. How did that come about?

I was talking with them about running a week-long school for deprogramming – we’ve been exploring these ideas for a while now. Then the role came up and [RCA rector] Paul Thompson said why didn't I go for it? I said, “Because I have a job.” But he persuaded me to apply. It's really an extension of what we’re doing here with the festival: melting divisions, sparking new and dangerous ways of thinking about fine art and interactive design, having everything be in a much more open space.

Will you be imparting the wisdom of years to the new generation?

No way! My goal is to make myself redundant, to do enough to make my thinking completely outmoded. What wisdom? Every day, I'm making it up all over again.

Neville Brody was talking to Nancy Groves...

The Anti Design Festival runs from 18 to 26 September at various venues along and around Redchurch Street, London E2.

Quilted Dollar by Ed Vince (2010), courtesy of PayneShurvell.