Melanie Selfe

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.

'Doing the work of the NFT in Nottingham' or how to use the BFI to beat the Communist threat in your local film society

On 22 September 1966 the Nottingham Film Theatre opened its doors to the public. This was the first in a wave of Regional Film Theatres (RFTs) to be established around the UK in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Modelled after the programming policy of the British Film Institute’s (BFI) flagship London venue, the National Film Theatre (NFT), the RFTs have been generally, if uncritically, regarded as the rolling-out of cinematic enlightenment from the metropolis towards the regions – not least because the most freely available sources on the subject are BFI sanctioned ones such as Butler (1971) or the Institute’s own magazine Sight and Sound. The RFT programme, as executed, was not without controversy. It drew criticism from different directions, and was charged variously with displaying both too much and too little central control. For the new staff within the BFI’s Education Department the roll-out seemed ad hoc, unplanned and at odds with the politically informed, structured film education they were trying to foster. Colin McArthur, who joined the department in 1968, describes the expansion as ‘driven more by money than by cultural policy’ and recounts a departmental joke of the era – that ‘anyone ringing up for a catalogue of BFI Distribution Library holdings would be asked if they would like a regional film theatre at the same time’ (2001: 114): a flippant jibe which tellingly offers no suggestion of what regional demand there might have been for the scheme. A comprehensive history of the RFT programme has yet to be written, but when it is, it will reveal a much more complex picture. RFTs were developed in partnership with a variety of local bodies and in each area those mixtures of governmental, commercial and voluntary interests also need be taken into account. What I want to explore in this article

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.

Intolerable flippancy: the Arnot Robertson v. MGM libel case (1946-1950) and the evolution of BBC policy on broadcast film criticism

This article examines the ultimately unsuccessful libel case brought by the novelist and BBC film critic E. Arnot Robertson against Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The action followed a letter the film company sent to Robertson’s employer in 1946, asserting she was ‘out of touch’ with public taste, excluding her from their press screenings and requested the broadcaster’s assistance in preventing her from reviewing further MGM films on air. Robertson charged the film company with libelling her professional competence and imperilling her earnings. This article explores the origins and outcomes of the ensuing three-year legal dispute. Drawing on trade journals, law reports, press coverage and BBC records, the article considers the contrasting models of the ‘audience’ underpinning the wider conflict between the film trade and the ‘quality’ critics. It explores the role of BBC policy and ‘broadcast style’ in making radio criticism a flashpoint and traces the specific circumstances that led the two parties into court. Finally, it considers the lasting legal and cultural consequences of the case. Turner (Robertson) v. MGM redefined the legal meaning of ‘fair comment’, it reshaped BBC policy on broadcast criticism, and shifted the consensus on what constituted responsible and professional criticism – making wit a less respectable critical tool.

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.

Reading the geographies of post-war British film culture through the reception of French film

This paper examines the ways in which British specialist film culture anticipated and received the resumed supply of French films at the end of the Second World War. It finds that in serious film journalism and within the rapidly expanding film society movement, new French cinema was the focus of at least as much British attention as Italian neo-realism – the European cinema more famously associated with the era. The paper posits that a number of factors, including anti-Americanism, combined to position the delayed wartime and immediate post-war French releases as a site of impossible expectations and subsequent interpretative difficulty for British cinephiles. In particular, through a case study of the local mediation of French cinema in the English city of Nottingham, this paper considers the role of published criticism for setting the local viewing frame within the provincial film society movement. By tracing the tensions surrounding the circulation of film prints, information, and opinion relating to these prestigious cultural imports, it becomes possible to gain greater insight into both the range of nationally specific meanings attributed to the imported films and the geographic and cultural inequalities at work within the film culture of the country of reception.