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Abstract

The paper aims at bringing to the foreground the debate on labor in the cultural and creative economy. Since the mid-nineties, the cultural shift in the theory on development and the political rhetoric about the knowledge and/or information society, cultivated the promise of a new world, where creative labor would be highly favored and supported. However, several analyses of the creative labor and its markets, show that social inequalities in the cultural and creative industries, persist as a systemic feature.

Considering the current economic recession, the paper focuses on the one hand, on the cultural and creative labor policy. On the other, it focuses on how cultural workers – and particularly young people – manage the contradictions they face, in an environment where the structural characteristics of artistic work have become widespread, leading to an ever-increasing vulnerability of work in general.

The national and European policy, at present does not seem to care about a serious discussion on uncertainty, precariousness and the features of creative labor that make artists or creative workers in general particularly vulnerable both socially and economically. Furthermore, although the specific nature of creative labor is known by dozens of analyses and a lot of research, the policy on culture does not take it into account, despite the reports and the opinions expressed by advisory bodies, such as the European Economic and Social Committee or the Committee on Culture and Education of the European Parliament. A second important thing ignored in the political plans for the place of culture in the new economy, is the set of general trends observed and their implications.

The failure to recognize the evident social disparities in creative labor, highlights the limitations of a policy for the creative economy, which focuses in a myopic way on developing exclusively the skills that will make artists and potential creative workers readily "employable". This weakness, however, entails a lack of initiatives to address the challenges in the creative industries. The peculiarities and specific features that distinguish the cultural and creative labor, are perhaps some of the most important challenges for the policy in these fields.

However, as the challenges are not addressed by political means, creativity is undermined after all because the internalization of asymmetries and social inequalities by creative workers, compromises their ability to reflect critically on reality and on their own position and roles therein. Finally, creative labor becomes a mechanism for social integration. At present, the dominant policy at European and national level, seems unwilling to face these challenges. Therefore, it is necessary the discussion on the cultural and creative labor to develop.

Last Updated: 06 November 2016

Abstract

In this paper the findings of an exploratory study are presented. The study was initially planned as part of a proposal for an EU project, with the universities of Poznan, Westminster, Valencia, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki) as partners, but it was finally developed as an independent research, part of which is still in progress. This study concerns the artistic labor markets during the current economic recession and places particular emphasis on young artists. The paper, after complementary editing and review, was published as a chapter in a collective volume (see more details here).

Last Updated: 06 February 2017

Abstract

The paper analyzes the multidimensional relations and interactions between museums on the one hand, and local communities and the broader society on the other. Some of the intrinsic and external factors are discussed that can support or undermine any attempt of these organizations to enhance social inclusion, not only of certain audiences, but of the creators as well. Museums, even if they seek to become, they cannot be "closed" organizations, because:

• They manage resources, they have turnover, they generate income and expense, and contribute to the GDP.
• They produce and manage knowledge, since they employ scientific staff.
• They apply and create innovation, not only in technological terms, but also in terms of innovative management models, as research centres, and in terms of the activities and innovative initiatives to develop their audience.
• As employers and places of work, they manage difference in terms of gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs, social class etc.
• As mediators, they manage the access of the public to cultural resources and the access of the creators to the public.
• Managing the collective memory, they are authorities of interpretation.
• They are subject to political regulation upon which their margin of initiatives and activities depend.

Museums make decisions and choices on all these aspects of their operation, regardless of the strategy they adopt or the model of management they employ. These decisions and choices concern in both a direct and indirect way several dimensions of social exclusion and there is always space for contribution to social inclusion.

However, there are several internal and external factors that define museums as institutions of exclusion par excellence, although this does not mean that they do not have any possibility whatsoever to moderate this feature that distinguishes them as institutions of cultural identity. In any case, whatever vision inspires the attempts of any museum to contibute for social inclusion, it hardly can ignore the reality of its intrinsic limits, as well as those imposed by the dogma "development through austerity".

Last Updated: 29 July 2023

Abstract

The paper focuses on the major changes concerning the conditions in which contemporary artworks are created and the institutions through which they circulate in the global market. The key features of globalization as a complex process, like universal interdependence, the acceleration of interactions, the "deterritorialization" of contemporary art, and the integration between the local and the global, as well as the predominance of the financial capital in the broader system of production, have brought about structural changes in the global art market and in the art world in general.

Following the analysis by Diane Crane and others about the changes observed during the last decades, the paper outlines the emergence of a very small number of mega-collectors and a few centers for trading contemporary artworks that acquired a central role in the art world bringing about significant functional changes. This development has been the result of changes in cultural policy at the local level and in a market-oriented direction that led to the systematic undermining of traditional institutions for the legitimation, protection and dissemination of the arts, such as museums, critics and communities of artists. In these circumstances, the development of a peculiar form of "financialization" of the art world on a global level has been favored.

The artistic creation of the present is the cultural heritage of the future. Consequently, several issues need to be seen in a new perspective, considering that the circulation of contemporary art is confined within a very small circle of wealthy super-collectors, a few powerful art dealers and auction houses, and a small number of international art fairs. These issues are related with the freedom of access to the arts and its future, the support of cultural development and contemporary creation (particularly where neoliberal notions about culture and the arts are dominant), as well as the protection of the artists' rights. Moreover, since traditional distinctions between fine and popular arts have become ambiguous and sometimes obsolete, the different positions concerning the global arrangements and regulations of the trade of cultural goods, as well as the arguments upon which they are based, need also to be reconsidered.

Last Updated: 28 July 2023