The unfashionable cultural worker? Considering the demography and practice of artists in Greater Western Sydney

Abstract

Urban cultural policy is increasingly focused on economic development and city reimaging rather than the priorities and experiences of local artists and cultural workers, while those approaches embedded in creative industries/creative cities frameworks, implicitly imagine creative workers to be young, ‘hip’, male, urban, and geographically mobile. Drawing on the findings of a major study of creative practice in Australia’s most culturally and demographically diverse urban area, Greater Western Sydney, this paper considers the creative, biographical and social profile of local cultural workers. Respondents were older, predominantly female, highly educated, and not particularly mobile. And although actively involved with local creative communities and networks, they do not fit established community arts and cultural development paradigms any more than those of the creative industries. These findings suggest that the typical cultural worker may not be the imagined artist of creative industries-informed cultural planning, nor those generally considered in accounts of creative work. The paper argues that in order to support the work of a diversity of local artists and cultural workers, including those who may be ‘unfashionable’, what is required are inclusive explanatory frameworks of cultural labour, and cultural planning and urban cultural policy approaches informed by community consultation and engagement.

Keywords:

• Creative practice
• urban cultural policy
• cultural planning
• socially engaged artists