Winning and losing in the creative industries: an analysis of creative graduates' career opportunities across creative disciplines

Abstract

Following earlier work looking at overall career difficulties and low economic rewards faced by graduates in creative disciplines, the paper takes a closer look into the different career patterns and economic performance of “Bohemian” graduates across different creative disciplines. While it is widely acknowledged in the literature that careers in the creative field tend to be unstructured, often relying on part-time work and low wages, our knowledge of how these characteristics differ across the creative industries and occupational sectors is very limited. The paper explores the different trajectory and career patterns experienced by graduates in different creative disciplinary fields and their ability to enter creative occupations. Data from the Higher Education Statistical Agency (HESA) are presented, articulating a complex picture of the reality of finding a creative occupation for creative graduates. While students of some disciplines struggle to find full-time work in the creative economy, for others full-time occupation is the norm. Geography plays a crucial role also in offering graduates opportunities in creative occupations and higher salaries. The findings are contextualised in the New Labour cultural policy framework and conclusions are drawn on whether the creative industries policy construct has hidden a very problematic reality of winners and losers in the creative economy.

Keywords:

• creative industries
• “Bohemian” graduates
• higher education
• creative work
• human capital

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support of the Impact of Higher Education Institutions on Regional Economies Initiative (ESRC grant number RES-171-25-0032, co-funded by Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), Scottish Funding Council, Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) and Department for Employment and Learning (DELNI)). Responsibility for views expressed rests solely with the authors.

Notes

For information on the Joint Academic Coding System, see http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=158&Itemid=233

In the UK, HE institutions can be placed into several different groups: Russell Group universities (comprised of 20 research-intensive universities), other old universities, new universities (established as part of the abolition of the binary divide in 1992) and higher education/further education colleges.

Although six months may seem relatively early on in graduate careers, it is still a useful indicator of both longer-term labour market success (Elias et al., 1999) and assimilation into the graduate labour market.

We acknowledge that this definition has quite a few limitations but, considering that our analysis is set in the UK policy framework, this is seems to be the most suitable definition to adopt.

Comunian et al. (2010) acknowledge the difficulties and limitations in connecting the mainly UK-based literature on creative industries with broader US-based argument (Florida, 2002) about the role of “Bohemians” in regional economic development.