Ealasaid Munro

Feminism: a fourth wave?

The internet has emerged as an increasingly important space for feminist activists. Are we witnessing a shift from third- to fourth-wave feminism? Ealasaid Munro examines the history of feminism and looks at what contemporary developments might mean for feminist politics.

Inside a Cultural Agency: Team Ethnography and Knowledge Exchange

This article undertakes an auto-critical analysis of the research teams ethnographic study of Cultural Enterprise Office (CEO), a Scottish creative business support agency. We discuss the teams composition and how this relates to other analyses of ethnographic teamwork. Our research is situated in the wider policy context of the “creative-economic” turn in the UKs research funding. This has been accompanied by increased emphasis on “knowledge exchange” and “impact” in the drive for greater accountability in higher education. The teams evolution in the course of undertaking research is illustrated by reference to four “pivotal moments,” which illustrate how we “performed” knowledge exchange.

Museums’ community engagement schemes, austerity and practices of care in two local museum services

Abstract In recent years, geographers have paid attention to the practices and spaces of care, yet museums rarely feature in this body of literature. Drawing on research conducted with two large museum services – one in England, and one in Scotland – this paper frames museums’ community engagement programmes as spaces of care. We offer insights into the practice of community engagement, and note how this is changing as a result of austerity. Our focus is on the routine, everyday caring practices of museum community engagement workers. We further detail the new and renewed strategic partnerships that have been forged as a result of cutbacks in the museum sector and beyond. We note that museums’ community engagement workers are attempting to position themselves relative to a number of other institutions and organisations at the current moment. Drawing on empirical material from the two case study sites, we suggest that museums’ community engagement programmes could be seen as fitting within a broader landscape of care, and we conceptualise their activities as expressions of progressive localism.

Researching Cultural Enterprise Office

Vus chapter introduces Cultural Enterprise Office (CEO), the book’s object of study. Based in Glasgow, CEO is situated in the wider UK ‘creative economy’ policy framework and its Scottish variant. Studies of intermediaries engaged in cultural business support for ‘creatives1 are rare. How their performance is formed by the wider institutional landscape and shifting ideas and practices has been little examined. Our research has itself been shaped by the current vogue for knowledge exchange between academics and those they research.

'Veil' and the politics of community exhibiting: some thoughts from Glasgow.

This paper is broadly concerned with community engagement as a facet of museum practice. The paper offers a reading of a community exhibition entitled Curious, held at St Mungo’s Museum of Religious Life and Art in the city of Glasgow. I take the reader on a tour of the exhibition, offering insights into its form and function. I show how community exhibitions can pose challenges to traditional museum practice by disrupting taken-for-granted assumptions about curatorial authority, and I emphasize both the range of meanings that can be attached to museum objects and the radical potential of including non-expert knowledge in the creation of displays and exhibitions. I also argue, however, that community exhibitions may be understood as poor relations to traditionally curated exhibits, and that curatorial authority is still key to the production of museum displays.

Organisational Values and Practices of Support

Vus chapter takes a closer look, at the business support practices of CEO, examining how the central ethos of the organisation is expressed through day-to-day client interactions and the language in which business advice is delivered and discussed. Il identifies three corevalues underpinning the delivery of advice and support to clients- being bespoke, being non-judgemental and taking a coaching centred approach to supporting clients and considers the ways in which staff use the idea of client journeys’ to conceptualise trajectories through CEO’s service and the business world. Finally, it addresses the impact of the introduction of structured programmes on organisational values, arguing that these have introduced new terms and different styles of interaction to the organisation, reshaping the idea of being bespoke’.

Origins and Development of CEO

Vus chapter outlines the evolution of Cultural Enterprise Office over is years, tracing its development from the initial feasibility study in 1999, through its launch and four phases of operation. The final section sets out the shape of the organisation and its main business support activities during the period of observation (2013 2014). The chapter addresses the role of institutional narrative; CEO’s changing geographic remit; the way the organisation has drawn on and modified operational models from elsewhere; how it has intersected with and adapted itself to the existing local and national business support infrastructure. It concludes that the quest for survival has required CEO to continually adapt, re- orientating itself towards different sources of funding and responding to current policy trends.

Nation, State and Creative Economy

This chapter shows how the ‘creative economy’ became a central plank of UK cultural policy, from the New Labour government (1997–2010) to the Con-Lib Dem coalition government (2010–2015). Both the globalisation of this discourse and its localisation in Scotland are described. The centrality of the creative economy for Scottish cultural policy under both the Lab-Lib coalitions (1999–2007) and the Scottish National Party (2007 to date) is analysed, with particular attention paid to the common political ground regarding the present institutional landscape. Cultural Enterprise Office is situated in the context of a discussion of current analyses of cultural intermediaries and of cultural entrepreneurship.

Where Next for Cultural Business Support

This chapter concludes the hook. It argues that support for the creative economy now operates within a largely unchallenged set of assumptions. However, given that policy makers evidently think that bodies such as CEO are important for pursuing national goals, loo little attention has been paid to their precarious conditions of existence. Our study has shown that, irrespective of contemporary political change, Scottish creative economy policy has remained highly dependent on UK initiatives and ideas. Moreover, the cross border transfer of people and practices has also been important in establishing commonalities of approach. These, though, should not obscure the continuing importance, specificity and impact of place for the functioning of cultural business support, and not least the role of the local funding regime in shaping its periodically changing mission.

Future-Proofing CEO?

This chapter addresses CEO’s strategic development during 2013–2014, aided in part by targeted funding. In a bid to future-proof the organisation in an increasingly competitive business support landscape, CEO was restructured. It began to develop critical independent research, and sought to re imagine modeh of digital and physical service delivery. The bid for further Creative Scotland funding that would have enabled the more ambitious plans to be pursued was unsuccessful. This chapter explores the development of new goals when their realisation was still thought feasible, considers internal transformations observed in CEO as it attempted to prepare for this next phase, and reflects on the tension between serving and shaping the top-down policy agenda. The chapter contains a statement from the Director on her departure.