This article explores contemporary forms of creative practices and their survival under siege from what Stuart Hall (2011) describes as the neoliberal revolution, in the context of the tightly policed education system in the United Kingdom. The fragility and importance of the democratic struggle is discussed with reference to Chantal Mouffe's work on democracy (2005), and Carr and Harnett's (2010) on similar lines but with specific reference to education. Using twentieth-century theorists John Dewey (1916/1966) and Herbert Read's (1948) ideas of progressive education, in which democracy and education should be seen as mutually reinforcing, I argue that the continuing presence and viability of these critical and idiosyncratic creative practices may be an indicator of the health of an equitable education system, and perhaps of the democratic polity as a whole. To explain the kind of creativity that I think is relevant and applicable, here I focus on the theoretical work of Nicholas Bourriaud (2002) on relational aesthetics and apply his relational concepts through examples drawn from the contemporary art events of the Liverpool Biennials, and from the primary school children's contemporary artworks of the Room 13 group. In all these cases the site of the work/event is significant for an understanding of their relational and critical features, as well as their collaborative and transient characteristics, which are antithetical to cultures and systems of neoliberalism, and are instead more commensurate with democratic resistance. event is significant for an understanding of their relational and critical features, as well as their collaborative and transient characteristics, which are antithetical to cultures and systems of neoliberalism, and are instead more commensurate with democratic resistance.