Creative work and higher education: Industry, identity, passion and precarity

1. Creative work and higher education: Industry, identity, passion and precarity Dr Dan Ashton Bath Spa University QuickTimeｪ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture.

2. Discussion session • The creative employability context • Creative identities • Unethical and amoral aspects?

3. The employability context • Employability and higher education DIUS (2008) Higher Education at Work “we want to see all universities treating student employability as a core part of their mission” BIS (2009) Higher Ambitions “we will expect all universities to describe how they enhance students’ employability”

4. The creative employability context • Creative economy policy informs this focus on employability. • DCMS (2008) Creative Britain “Talent is the lifeblood of the creative industries. If the UK is to retain a world leading creative sector, it will be through winning the race to develop our creative skills” (19)

5. Creative Careers research • Creative Graduates Creative Futures • Creative Career Stories

6. Becoming ‘industry-ready’ • How students come to understand and relate to themselves as ‘cultural workers-in-the-making’. • Paul du Gay (1996: 264) and ‘cultural-making up’: “adoption of certain habits or dispositions [that] allows an individual to become - and to become recognised as - a particular sort of person” • Students becoming ‘industry-ready’ (This is just one of many ways of relating to oneself - du Gay, 2007).

7. Research on this Digital Gaming • Ashton, D. (2011) ‘Upgrading the self: Technology and the self in digital games perpetual innovation economy’, Convergence 17(4) • Ashton, D. (2011) ‘Playstations and workstations: Identifying and negotiating digital games work’, Information Technology & People, 24(1): 10-25. • Ashton. D. (2011) 'Pathways to creativity: self-learning and customising in/for the creative economy', Journal of Cultural Economy 4(2) • Ashton, D. (2010) 'Productive passions and everyday pedagogies: Exploring the industry-ready agenda in Higher Education’, in Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education 9(1): 41-56 • Ashton, D. (2010) 'Player, Student, Designer: Digital Games Design Students and their Changing Relations with Games', Games and Culture 5(3): 256-77 • Ashton, D. (2009) 'Making it professionally: Student identity and industry professionals in higher education', Journal of Education and Work 22(5): 283-300 Film and Television • Ashton, D. (forthcoming) ‘Media Work and the Creative Industries: Identity Work, Professionalism and Employability, Education and Training • Ashton, D. and Thebo, M. (2010) ‘Researching the Media and Cultural Industries’, in Stanbury, D. (ed.) New directions in career studies: English and Media Degrees (Ideas for modules that explore career, identity and subject). Reading: Centre for Career Management Studies, pp.3-4. • Ashton, D. (2010) 'You just end up feeling more professional: Media production and industry-ready personhood' in Networks 10, 14-19.

8. Snapshot • Ongoing research with staff and students at Artswork Media: “production company run by media professionals and third year students at Bath Spa University” • 2008 - ongoing • Participant observation • (following production projects, observing briefing meetings and guest sessions with industry professionals) • Interviews and Focus Groups with staff and students • 2011 - onwards • Involved with ‘Professional Practice’ module.

9. Introducing the studio • Short films produced by the AWM team • “… a way of testing and exploring different ways of teaching”

10. AWM insights: industry and identity The emergence of the professional self Working with clients to briefs Confidence in ability and value of work Technical training; entrepreneurial acumen; creative exploration ‘Creative industry-ready’ personhood

11. ‘Not-becomings’: Further questions on professionalism, creativity and employability • Ros Gill and Andy Pratt (2008): “we need to understand not only the possible becomings, but also the not-becomings” How else can these ways of relating to oneself be explored? As Henry Giroux (2000) asks, what “relation should public and higher education have to young people as they develop a sense of agency?”

12. Critical perspectives on creative work • The lack of trade unionization and labour organization in many areas of cultural work is striking, and is both cause and outcome of industries that are individualized, deregulated and reliant upon cheap or even free labour, with working hours and conditions (particularly among freelancers and intermittents) that are largely beyond scrutiny (Ros Gill and Andy Pratt, 2008: 19)

13. Critical perspectives on creative work • Summary of critical debates Ashton, D. (2011) ‘Media education and media industries: Identity, anxiety, and aspirations’, Media Education Research Journal, 1(2): 85-93. • Kennedy (2010) ‘Net work’ provides a helpful summary: “Flexibility, adaptability and project-based work lead to insecurity, long working hours and a constant drive to re-skill” (189) “There may be an affective, risky, networked, creative turn in cultural and media theory, but such a turn is not so evident in media work practice. Media work, new or old, has always been risky, precarious, based on (unequal networks), affective, emotional, empassioned - except perhaps, for the small minority who managed tp secure some permanent work and favourable conditions at the BBC in the UK” (190)

15. Current issues of facilitating ‘valuable’ experiences • Jeremy Dear (General Secretary, National Union of Journalists); letter to the guardian (July 2009): “While on-the-job experience is an essential part of media training, bogus work experience placements are increasingly being used to fill long-term staffing gaps with free labour. The result: only those with the financial security of well-off families or a willingness to build up massive debts can get into careers in journalism. Just when we should be nurturing and supporting the people coming into the industry, media employers are exploiting dreams and excluding new talent”

16. Recognizing passionate investments • Labour of love and extraordinary lengths “The game industry seems steeped in a history where workers must love what they do and this is accentuated by the extraordinary negotiations they are willing to make to be able to do it” (Deuze, 2007: 229) • Energy, enthusiasm and excitement for media production On the television industry Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2009) explore the idea of emotional labour and “while recognizing the pleasures of creative work […] provide evidence of the real difficulties faced by young workers”. • Rites of passage and rituals and normative values?

17. ‘Good work’ (Hesmodhalgh and Baker, 2009: 39; abridged table).

18. Summary • The creative economy investment in creative identities calls for an analysis of employability that engages with questions of identity and ‘human capital’. • Introduced ongoing research exploring the context and practical means for the formation of particular forms of personhood. • Instrumental ‘industry-ready’ personhood in negotiation with range of investments and concerns.

19. Discussion • Identify how employability can be examined in terms of critical reflections on working conditions and industry norms and practices. • Often evident through teacher-practitioners and guest speakers. • Sharing examples and practice on curriculum development; work placements; internships; etc. • “How are students able to articulate their passions and career aspirations alongside a recognition and responsiveness to the unethical and amoral aspects of work in the creative and media industries?”

20. Thanks • Bringing together discussion points and questions together for ADM-HEA paper. Please let me know if you are willing to be involved: d.ashton@bathspa.ac.uk • Acknowledgements - Bath Spa University for research fellowship funding.