The Future of Cultural Work

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? 

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.

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)

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.