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ABSTRACT
The creative economy has seen cultural policy swallowed up by a narrow vision of economic growth, its impacts on the urban fabric captured by property developers, and its promises of meaningful activity challenged by the exploitation and inequities of cultural labour markets. So it needs to be abandoned and re-thought, but on what basis? This paper analyses the potential for cultural work to encourage alternative visions of the “good life”, in particular, how it might encourage a kind of “sustainable prosperity” wherein human flourishing is not linked to high levels of material consumption but rather the capabilities to engage with cultural and creative practices and communities. We critically explore these ideas in three locations: a London borough, a deindustrialised city in England’s midlands and a rural town on the Welsh/English border. Across these diverse landscapes and socio-economic contexts, we look at different versions of the good life and at the possibilities and constraints of cultural activity as a way of achieving kinds of sustainable prosperity.
Notes
1 Local authority and neighbourhood statistics here and elsewhere are drawn from 2011 Census data available from the Office for National Statistics via nomisweb.co.uk.
2 The BBC and The Guardian recognised that their coverage was overly negative. BBC Radio 4’s Today programme has since run a series of items on positive stories about the towns, and in April 2017 The Guardian began a project to present locals’ views of the city.
3 Property guardians live in vacant buildings (often offices, old fire stations or community centres, etc.) to prevent vandalism/squatting. Tenants have highly subsidised rents, but properties are on short-term and insecure contracts.
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Notes on contributors
Kate Oakley
Kate Oakley is Professor of Cultural Policy at the School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds. Her research interests include the politics of cultural policy, labour in the cultural industries, and inequality. Recent books include Cultural Policy with David Bell (Routledge, 2015) and Culture, Economy and Politics: the case of New Labour, with David Hesmondhalgh, David Lee and Melissa Nisbett (Palgrave, 2015). She is currently researching the role of arts and culture in sustainable prosperity as part of the CUSP Project (http://www.cusp.ac.uk/) and working on inequality and cultural work with https://culturalworkersorganize.org.
Jonathan Ward
Jonathan Ward is Lecturer in Cultural and Creative Industries in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds. His research explores the conditions of cultural labour, and its social, policy and spatial contexts.