• About
  • Outputs
  • People

Cultural intermediation & the creative economy

Cultural intermediation & the creative economy

Tag Archives: Cultural Work

Cultural Work/Cultural Value Symposium, Open University, 21 February 2014.

06 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by saskiawarren in Conference, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Artists, Cultural Intermediation, Cultural Value, Cultural Work, Labour, Open University

The eerily quiet campus of Open University was the locale for an invigorating symposium which set about teasing out the knotty tensions in how we understand value in cultural work. Mark Banks (Open) kicked off the day with an introductory paper on ‘What is Cultural Work Worth?’ Banks resisted the model of a totalising economy, instead pointing towards Justin O’Connor’s work to think of the two values of culture and economy as a genealogy entwined, though not collapsed, into one relation. Culture matters, Banks argued, because of the examination of life, the sharing of cultural and social needs, and the generating and distributing of resources (a doubling of value across the cultural and economic). Calvin Taylor (Leeds), who followed Banks, sought to develop these ideas through a tripartite, rather than ‘bipolar’ model, inserting the need for ethics into how we value the cultural. A tour de force of theory from eighteenth-century philosophy (Locke; Third Earl of Shaftesbury; Smith; Hume; Bentham) to contemporary feminist theory, Taylor questioned the foundations of creative value measured according to utility. In foregrounding social production, and not the marketplace, a space was offered for challenging the dominant paradigm that cultural labour is commodified labour, and that we live within a fundamentally economic set of relations.  Pointing towards the domestic as a scale of non-commodity or exchange forms for cultural work, the paper resonated with our recent research on localism in community-orientated activity. Alike the petty cultural producer, can non-commodity community cultural work be scaled up and spill over out of the localised context? If a new value regime could become the dominant one at a regional, national and global scale, then it remains to be elucidated how this would be worked through, and benefits distributed.

Image

Excellent other papers included  David Hesmondhalgh (Leeds) on  ‘Cultural, Aesthetic and Economic Value: The Case of  Music’ (including a short Candi Staton interlude) and Kate Oakley (Leeds) on ‘Work, Justice and  Mobility: Policy for Cultural Labour’. In the latter Oakley pointed towards a lessening in mobility in recent years in the cultural creative sector (hardly surprising under the Con-Dem coalition) and a spatialised inequality to where cultural workers are clustered (London!). Still, while not exactly diverse, the average worker is 35, female, earns under £20,000, works two jobs and has a degree (and often postgraduate) qualification. Not exactly big returns in spite of – or perhaps because of – an affectual (cultural) economy of passion and sense of vocation.

Recent Posts

  • Ordsall creativity celebrated at University of Salford event
  • Place, people and plants………….
  • Summer’s over, but festival season is just starting!
  • Ideas4Ordsall
  • Creative Commissions in Balsall Heath

Archives

  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • May 2012
  • March 2012
  • January 2012

Twitter Updates

  • RT @Jessicasymons: Headlining ontheplatform.org.uk on creative industries: 'creative’ is original output, ‘industries’ are mechanisms fo… 6 years ago
  • RT @Jessicasymons: @UEParticipation @AGMcat Interesting article written in 2014 gets to heart of same issues emerged @CultIntermed in Salfo… 6 years ago
  • RT @Beth_Perry_SURF: An offering for #WorldPoetryDay - 'Just Urban Research?' youtu.be/oSm_VGE_lPc @CultIntermed @CHIMEproject @JamandJu… 6 years ago
  • RT @Beth_Perry_SURF: The necessary limits to coproduction? @MistraUrbanFut @jamandjustice @CultIntermed http://the theguardian.com/environment/20… 6 years ago
  • RT @philjonesgeog: Time, Rhythm & the Creative Economy: new paper accepted in Trans IBG with @SaskiaWarren1 academia.edu/23325572/Time_… @geogbh… 6 years ago

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Cultural intermediation & the creative economy
    • Join 332 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Cultural intermediation & the creative economy
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar