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 [log in to unmask] 
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 [log in to unmask] 
Conference fee: £70 (waged) £25 (Postgraduates/unwaged), includes lunch and 
refreshments. See www.cresc.ac.uk for programme updates and further details.