Mark Banks

The politics of cultural work

This book investigates the constraints and freedoms of cultural work and, in particular, the ways in which different sociological traditions have sought to theorize the cultural industries workplace and the creative cultural worker. It is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of the varied critical theory, governmental and liberal-democratic approaches to cultural industries labour. Perhaps most notably, the book revisits and develops Alasdair MacIntyre’s work on social ‘practices’ in order to frame a new analysis of apparent emergence of ‘re-moralized’ cultural labour.

Risk and trust in the cultural industries.

Preliminary claims have been made that working practices within cultural industries such as fashion, music, design and the night time economy may differ from Fordist or modernist arrangements. Cultural firms are often imagined to be more innovative, information-rich, dynamic, flexible, non-hierarchical and dependent on local clusters and networks than their Fordist counterparts (Lash and Urry, 1994). As their impact and significance increase, understanding how creative and cultural industries actually work is of high priority. This paper presents preliminary findings from an on-going ESRC funded study of cultural Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) within Manchester, England. Drawing on one element of the project, this paper considers the significance of risk and the importance of social trust for the cultural entrepreneur. Following a discussion of Beck’s development of risk as an analytical concept, and its intersection with Giddens’ notion of ‘active trust’, the paper examines how risk and trust are defined, experienced and negotiated by entrepreneurs in Manchester’s cultural industries. It is suggested that senses of risk are constitutive and often pivotal to the whole economic and social basis of cultural entrepreneurship – risk being central to choices made not only in business but in the lifeworld more generally. The paper then investigates the importance of trust for facilitating as well as countering or offsetting risk. Empirical evidence is presented to show how risk and trust co-relate and interact as constitutive elements within a wider set of shifting relationships between work, leisure and lifestyle in the ‘creative city’.

Looking for work in creative industries policy

In this article, we first outline and account for the utopian description of work in much UK creative industries discourse. We then offer a contrasting assessment that shows how creative workplaces are marked significantly by insecurity, inequality and exploitation (including self‐exploitation). In the third part, we examine recent developments in UK policy discourse, exposing a reluctance to recognize or engage with these manifest problems of creative labour. The article concludes by suggesting that this absence reflects something of the focus and limitations of creative industries policies in the current period, where government initiative appears increasingly driven by a narrowly focused skills and employability agenda, one that seeks to disavow problems of labour markets and bring greater discipline to those (relatively) autonomous institutions that generate creative workers, as part of the wider purpose of producing a more integrated and governable ‘creative economy’.

Teaching and learning entrepreneurship for micro and small businesses in the cultural industries sector

Reports on an ESRC-funded, in-depth qualitative research project into 50 micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in the cultural industries. Our evidence sheds light on the extent to which the teaching and learning strategies adopted by higher education, further education and other VET providers are effective in providing entrepreneurship education and training for this innovative, high skill sector. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs in this sector learn best by being able to experiment with ideas, by “doing” and networking with others and by working with more experienced mentors in their sector. The article concludes by suggesting a more “naturalistic” approach to teaching and learning entrepreneurship for micro and small businesses in the cultural industries sector.

Moral Economy and Cultural Work

While the ‘culturalization’ of the economy has led some to welcome the ‘turn to life’ (Heelas, 2002) and anticipate the remoralization of economic activity, others argue the cultural turn is conducive only to consolidating neo-liberalisms characteristic demoralization of economic relations.The cultural industries, as a leading sector of the culturalized economy, are seen to be particularly culpable in this respect, offering the illusion of freedom, but actually eroding the ethical basis of work through tendencies for individuation and exploitation. Building on the recent renewal of interest in ‘moral economy’, this article argues that claims for the demoralization of cultural industries may be premature. Empirical evidence is presented from interviews with cultural entrepreneurs in Manchester, UK, to reveal how social and political values are biographically important and made evident in the routine context of work. The conclusion offers that individualization may provide some opportunity to re-establish (non-economic) moral and ethical values at work.

After the creative industries

In the 1990s, the rise of the ‘creative industries’ as a discourse and instrument of policy signalled a desire amongst governments to harness cultural production to a renewed economic agenda. The apparent break with the notion of ‘cultural industries’ – with its problematic connotations of art and politics – precipitated an intensified commodification of artistic activity, and the purposeful integration of creativity (and ‘useful’ forms of culture) into a variety of economic and social policy initiatives. The promotion of creative industries in a period of rapid economic restructuring seemed to hold out a coherent forward-looking vision for those regions looking to reinvent themselves in the face of fast-moving national and global forces – and to do so in a way that appeared to articulate a progressive and inclusive role for individual creativity and collective forms of symbolic expression. The creative industries were therefore promoted by enthusiasts as ‘good for the economy’ and ‘good for culture’ – and while policy makers were eager to establish the ‘hard’ evidence for these claims, there were also many observers willing to buy into, and create their own, speculative and rhetorical claims regarding the virtues of this nascent sector. Yet, at first glance, the creative industries do appear to have been an economic and political success. In the UK the revenue and employment statistics indicate steady (if uneven) growth (though as we write the prospect of global recession looms significantly), and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has recently re-launched its creative industry strategy with some renewed vigour. At the forefront of the new Creative Economy Programme (CEP), the document Creative Britain (DCMS 2008) sets out an ambitious agenda which once again sought to reiterate the significance of the creative industries to the UK’s economic future. In diverse territories across Western and Northern (and increasingly Eastern and Southern) Europe, in Australasia, China, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, the rise of creative industries has also been marked (Hartley 2005, Kong et al. 2006, O’Connor and Gu 2006, Primorac 2006). Even in North America, where there has been a less uniform uptake of the creative industries discourse (at least as it is understood in much of Europe and Australasia) the recognition that arts and culture have become more significant contributors to economic growth and development has now spread significantly (Caves 2000, Americans for the Arts 2005, Cunningham, this issue). While, in policy terms, the creative industries can be said to have arrived, there remains, on the ground, some serious disquiet. Firstly, it is contentious whether this loosely defined set of economic activities has generated the full range of commercial, social and cultural benefits so widely claimed or anticipated; and, secondly, at the more conceptual or

Attitudes to Formal Business Training and Learning amongst Entrepreneurs in the Cultural Industries: Situated business learning through 'doing with others'

The article provides qualitative empirical evidence of why entrepreneurs in the cultural industries-a fast developing small and medium enterprise (SME) sector in the UK and one that is illustrative of new working practices within a post-industrial economyrarely take up formal business training and support. The main argument of the article is that business learning for entrepreneurs in this sector is situated within the social, cultural and economic contexts of the real world in which they operate and that the cultural capital developed through embedded activities in those environments provides the stimulus for that learning. Our article concludes by providing a tentative and alternative approach to business training in the sector that advocates a more dialogic and discursive environment for trainee support.

Craft labour and creative industries

This article examines the role and status of craft labour in the creative industries. While it tends to be overlooked, craft labour is an integral part of what is ostensibly an artist‐led and ‘creative’ work process. The article highlights the necessity of craft in the creative industry ‘workshop’, and the relative autonomy enjoyed by its practitioners. However, while craft labour is depicted as vital, it is also subordinate to artistic labour, and amenable to reform through rational management and refinement of the division of labour – thus a series of likely threats to future craft production are outlined. The article concludes by appealing for further scrutiny of the conditions of craft labour in creative work, not only to reveal its particular and specific qualities, but to extend the somewhat limited scope of contemporary analyses of cultural and creative industry labour and politics.

Autonomy Guaranteed? Cultural Work and the “Art–Commerce Relation”

The aim of this article is to examine synthetically the concept of “autonomy” in cultural and creative industries work. Following a brief discussion regarding the definition(s) of autonomy, and its historical linkages to discourses of art, the author then rehearses three prominent social science critiques which suggest that the possibilities for autonomy in cultural work have been seriously diminished or compromised. Against these readings, utilising Bill Ryan’s work on the “art–commerce relation”, the author then discusses how autonomous cultural work is, in fact, impossible to destroy since ensuring its survival is a prerequisite for the production of value in cultural and creative industry production. Finally, the author considers how this provision of freedom may then serve to underwrite autonomous cultural work of a more radical and, crucially, negotiated character than that conventionally conceived of in the orthodox critiques.

Spaces of (in)security: Media and fear of crime in a local context

Reflecting recent efforts to understand fear of crime as a locally situated process (Walklate, 1998; Lupton and Tulloch, 1999; O’Mahony and Quinn, 1999; Sparks, Girling and Loader, 2001), this article analyses the importance of two different ‘local contexts’ for shaping audience interpretation of media crime. The first of these is the home. The integration of media technologies into the moral economy of the household, and textual readings made within the context of a contested ‘politics of the sitting room’ (Morley, 1992), provide a framework for the interpretation of media crime. Second, and of most interest here, senses of community attachment associated with living in a particular locality are judged to shape the meaning and interpretation of media crime. The article draws on interviews with two households in a suburb of Manchester and argues that the impact of media crime must be considered within a framework that takes place seriously, both as a context for everyday action and as a force in shaping community identity and personal and shared senses of fear and (in)security. The article highlights the historical neglect of spatial context in studies of audience reception of media crime and argues for the need to develop more ‘place sensitive’ research into the impact of media discourses on audiences’ fear of crime.