225 research outputs found
Creative aspiration and the betrayal of promise? The experience of new creative workers
No full textThe 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
Recommended from our members
New pathways into creative work?
No full textThe 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
Book review: craft and the creative economy by Susan Luckman
No full textIn Craft and the Creative Economy, Susan Luckman looks at the rise of the craft entrepreneur and the growth of the handmade economy as an Internet-driven phenomenon. This is an appealing look at the renewed trend towards craft and making that gives valued attention to both the role of digital networks and the gendered and classed implications of this particular aspect of the contemporary creative industries, writes Paz Concha
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
Online Selling and the Growth of Home-Based Craft Micro-enterprise: The ‘New Normal’ of Women’s Self-(under)Employment
No full textSelf-employment remains a financially risky undertaking and one often pursued at the expense of financial security. Discussing an Australian study of design craft micro-enterprises, this chapter argues that the growth of craft self-employment is masking considerable un- and under-employment, especially among women. The ease of establishing a professional business profile and the ability to network via social media as a marketing tool provide nascent craft entrepreneurs with a sense of real, sustainable, and significant work, justifying continuing. Their situations exemplify Berlant’s ‘cruel optimism’, whereby that which we desire ‘is actually an obstacle to [our] flourishing’ (Berlant, Cruel optimism, Duke University Press, 2011, p. 1). The social and economic costs to individuals, families, and the wider society of all this effort and risk-taking are profound and require greater attention
Diversity initiatives and addressing inequalities in craft
No full textThe 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
The aura of the analogue in a digital age: women’s crafts, creative markets and home-based labour after Etsy
No full textThis article examines the renewed popularity of the handmade by examining the current renaissance in the street credibility of previously disparaged women\u27s craft practices, particularly those employing yarn (for example knitting, crochet, needlepoint and weaving) and fabric (sewing, felting). The author historically locates current debates around craft production and creative work by drawing upon the British Arts and Crafts movement, with its own longstanding association with women\u27s\u27 labour in the home and desire to realise sustainable ethical labour practices. Notably, both the periods under discussion mark profound shifts in the economic organisation of society – then, the Industrial Revolution; now the de-industrialisation of much of the \u27industrialised\u27 world and the rise of the (digitised) knowledge economy – and see a concurrent increase in the popularity of the handmade original as a desirable aesthetic object.
 
'I'd (still) rather be a cyborg': the artisanal dispositif and the return of the (domestic) goddess
No full textFirst Published January 22, 2020This article identifies the rise of a series of tropes around authenticity, retreat and celebration of the artisanal as they manifest around the growing popularity of cooking and craft as activities that have become vehicles for a larger reimagining of ideal middle-class modes of living across much of the Global North. Through media examples of cooking and craft that valorise nostalgia and ‘dropping out’, and following McRobbie’s work on the creativity dispositif, we argue that these cultural practices are united by an artisanal dispositif that fetishises the ‘traditional’ in a context of intensified mediatisation. We revisit Haraway’s iconic text – ‘A cyborg manifesto’ – to identify what is at stake in the ‘return’ of the artisanal and its ongoing tensions between the technological and the traditional. We argue that rather than retreat, to quote more recent work by Haraway we need to ‘stay with the trouble’ in all its complexity.Susan Luckman, Michelle Phillipo
Review of Craft and the Creative Economy
No full textReview of Craft and the Creative Economy by Susan Luckman - Book revie
- …
