1,720,995 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
New pathways into creative work?
Get PDFThe experience of aspiring creative workers contrasts sharply with Paul Willis’s classic account of entry to working life from almost half a century ago, in his book, Learning to labour (1977). Creative work entails intellectual rather than physical effort. Unlike secure mid-twentieth century manufacturing jobs, creative employment tends to be precarious, badly paid and individualised, without either the support or constraints of a collective workplace culture. The long hours of creative work, the pressure to be flexible and mobile, and the high level of personal investment sit uneasily with the claims of workers’ partners and dependents. However, the emotional labour involved in creative work and the pressure to be continuously positive, disclaiming difficulties, may involve a similar denial of self to that described by Willis, despite the much celebrated association of creativity with self-actualisation, or its appeal to middle-class aspirants. This concluding chapter considers the pathways that are implied in accounts of contemporary creative work. The chapter questions the promise in the aspirational creative discourses of Higher Education and creative workplaces, but also notes the agency of workers in negotiating the ups and downs of creative employment. Finally, it considers the significance of a worker viewpoint of a creative pathway
Recommended from our members
Collection Introduction: The 'New Normal' of Working Lives
No full textLauren Berlant (2011) has written of the need to understand the problem of living contemporary lives, including the 'new normal' and 'new ordinary' (p.261). This collection investigates the new normal of work and employment through international, interdisciplinary research into contemporary worker experience. The introductory chapter sets out the themes of the collection and introduces individual chapters. It argues that the most significant feature to emerge in the studies is the affective weighting attached to personalised and increasingly individualised work, and the shift this provides around how people want to work and organise their lives. Within different employment arrangements, this ambition promotes the intensification of labour and therefore becomes an 'obstacle to flourishing' (p.1) and an example of the 'cruel optimism' discussed by Berlant
Creative aspiration and the betrayal of promise? The experience of new creative workers
Get PDFThe promise of ‘doing what you love’ continues to attract new aspirants to creative work, yet most creative industries are so characterised by low investment, shifting foci and ongoing technological innovation that all promises must be unreliable. Some would-be creative workers negotiate their own pathways from the outset, ‘following their dream’ as they attempt to convert personal enthusiasms and amateur activities into income-earning careers. Others look to the proliferation of available training and education options, including higher education courses, as possible pathways into creative work. This chapter reviews recent research from the USA, Australia and the UK on the effectiveness – or otherwise – of higher education as preparation for a creative career. The chapter discusses the obstacles that many creative workers, including graduates, encounter on their creative pathways, for instance, as a result of informal work practices and self-employment. The chapter also looks at sources of advantage and disadvantage, such as those associated with particular geographic locations or personal identities. The chapter concludes by introducing the subsequent chapters in the collection. These critically explore the experience of new creative workers in a wide range of national contexts including Australia, Belgium, China, Ireland, Italy, Finland, the Netherlands, Russia and the United Kingdom
Music, cities, and cultural and creative industries policy
No full textThe current interest of policy makers in contemporary popular music should be seen as connected to the growing worldwide interest in development of the creative industries and creative cities. In contrast to the move away from the inner cities that characterised the post-WWII ‘Fordist’ era of capitalism, and its separation of the city into zones of urban production and suburban consumption, the period since the 1980s has seen a growing worldwide interest in the development of cities as sites for creativity and consumption. While this has been driven in part by urban regeneration projects, termed gentrification or ‘yuppification’ by their critics, it has also reflected a growing realisation that, in a creative economy, the wealth of a city or region resides not only in its physical and human capital, but also in the less tangible networks of knowledge capital and social capital that lead to the clustering of creativity and innovation in particular geographical locations. \ud
\ud
A central element of the cultural ‘competitive advantage’ of cities and regions in a global creative or knowledge-based economy is the significance, diversity and vibrancy of activities in the night-time economy. The night-time economy is a term that is used to describe the diverse range of service-related and creative industries associated with leisure, entertainment, hospitality and tourism, which cater to the ‘liminal zone’ between work and home for the local population, and activities related to travel and tourism for those visiting a city. This paper explores such claims in relation to the popular music industry in Brisbane, and considers the implications of such developments for cultural policy more broadly
Diversity initiatives and addressing inequalities in craft
Get PDFThe UK’s creative industries workforce is dominated by the white and relatively privileged, and it appears the craft sector is no different. According to the Crafts Council, compared to the average profile of all occupations, craft workers are more likely to be male and white. The Crafts Council is attempting to support greater diversity in the UK craft sector through various schemes and research projects. This chapter reflects on one such project, a 2018 Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded Creative Economy engagement scheme, which sought to provide social media skills training to women makers from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds in two UK cities: Birmingham and London. The workshops, facilitated by the author, investigated the specific challenges facing women makers of colour who wish to use social media for the benefit of their craft practice. These challenges centre on the volatile nature of social media platforms, where makers of colour are subject to disproportionate scrutiny. There are also concerns that social media skills gaps may block the pathway of contemporary craft micro-enterprise. The concept ‘mutual aid’ draws attention to the positive possibilities of social media for unblocking those pathways for makers of colour through mutual support and mobilisation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Beyond Work? New expectations and aspirations
No full textThis chapter considers the extent to which new aspirations and expectations have become attached to work, and the possible emergence of new norms linked to the models of the creative worker and entrepreneur. Through an analysis of interviews with UK artist-makers, the chapter investigates the meanings, values and affect that they attach to their creative practices. The chapter concludes that the creative practices are valued as 'not work' and as offering personal associations and forms of fulfilment which contemporary work is seen as unable to provide. The chapter argues that earlier understandings of work persist, reinforcing negative meanings and affect for even the educated and qualified middle class who might once have expected to find self-actualisation and personal reward through their careers
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
- …
