CfP: The Future of Cultural Work

The Future of Cultural Work
Organisers: Mark Banks and Stephanie Taylor (CRESC, Open University)
Rosalind Gill and Andy Pratt
(Centre for Culture, Media and Creative Industries Research,
King's College, London)

Date: Monday 7 June 2010
Venue: Open University London Regional Centre, Camden.

Call for Papers

As creativity and creative work have become buzzwords for progress, so the cultural
and creative industries have become an instrumental feature of national economic and
cultural policies. Most recently, cultural, artistic and creative labour has been
identified as leading the transition to a more fluid, affective and converged
‘innovation’ economy, where cultural work is valued more for its ability to diffuse
ideas and ‘creative energies’ than for its intrinsic value, or for its (potentially)
socially transformative or redemptive potential. Firms, national governments, promoters
of ‘creative cities’ and development agencies alike have offered a plethora of
interventions designed to stimulate growth through organizing and managing creative and
cultural work (see ‘Creative Britain’ for example). Such a process has rested on the
assumption of a frictionless and mutually beneficial relationship between capital and
labour, and culture and economics; where distinctive forms of artistic and cultural
production and economic and governmental priorities appear to co-prosper in harmonious
union. However, while the specific qualities of cultural and creative work are now
assumed to be progressive and beneficial to both capital and labour, recent events cast
doubt on the status of creativity as (in Andrew Ross’s words) ‘the oil of the 21st
century’. The instrumental gearing of culture to innovation policy, the consolidation of
‘free’, ‘co-creative’  - but precarious, individualized and poorly-remunerated - work in
media, cultural and arts organizations, a deep-rooted global recession that has
eviscerated opportunities for cultural labour, and in the UK a general election that may
alter fundamentally the creative industries script, has markedly transformed this
discursive and material field. Here, the benign union of culture and economics, the
prospects for rewarding and meaningful cultural industry employment, and the extent to
which creative/cultural work could or should meet the demands of economic restructuring
and governments, come once again under scrutiny. This conference therefore asks: What is
the status of creativity and creative work in this new decade? What is the current and
future relationship between the creative and cultural industries and the discursive and
material practices of culture and economy?

Keynote speakers: David Hesmondhalgh, Georgina Born, Mark Deuze, Melissa Gregg (final
list TBC)

Papers are invited on the following (or similar) topics: the conditions of
creative/cultural workers; freelancing, ‘free’ and co-creative labour, cultural work and
critical socio-spatial politics; work, exclusion and marginality; the role of creative
and cultural work in economic and cultural policy; cultural work and 'cultural
diplomacy'; impacts of technology and ‘convergence’, the creative nation
post-recession/post-election.

Please email abstracts (150 words max for a 20 minute paper) to
m.o.banks AT open.ac.uk by Friday April 9th. Places are limited and
successful acceptance will be confirmed in mid-April. To register for the conference
please contact Karen Ho k.d.ho AT open.ac.uk. Conference fee: £70
(waged) £25 (Postgraduates/unwaged), includes lunch and refreshments. See
www.cresc.ac.uk  for programme updates and further details.