Higher education and the creative economy:
critical frames, paths and spaces for art & artists (in the city)
2014 CRESC Annual Conference: Power, Culture and Social Framing.
Chair: Abigail Gilmore, University of Manchester |
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Leipzig’s visual artist as actors of urban change: Articulating the intersection between place attachment, professional development and urban pioneering.
Silvie Jacobi
Creative Cities Research Assistant
King's College London
Department of Geography & Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries
King’s College London
Creative Cities Research Assistant
King's College London
Department of Geography & Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries
King’s College London
The city of Leipzig has a very strong and active visual arts scene partly sustained by students and graduates from the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts, paired with artistic talent coming to Leipzig because of the city's character as an open field of opportunities. After German Reunification, Leipzig experienced a dramatic loss of population due to large-scale job losses, out-migration and suburbanization. As a result, vast amounts of newly refurbished inner-city property became vacant. Recent research however, indicates a trend of re-urbanization as young demographics move back to the inner city to be in close proximity to social networks, higher education and cultural infrastructure. Previous survey-based research on the attractiveness of the city and retaining factors for creative professionals has enunciated specific hard and soft location factors, which determine rootedness of creative professionals in the city. Some of the most important retaining factors for creative professionals were personal relationships and networks, the city’s cultural offer and the availability of high quality and cheap accommodation and workspace. This research paper analyses the specific role of visual artists as actors of urban change in Leipzig in relation to the city’s unique post-socialist urban form and cultural character. By employing qualitative research methods in form of in-depth semi-structured interviews with Leipzig based visual artists and Academy of Visual Arts representatives, the research will investigate the causal relationship between creative higher education, place attachment and urban change.
The Dance Goes on Forever? Class, Art Schools and the Myth of Mobility
Mark Banks [1] and Kate Oakley [2]
Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester, Leicester UK [1]
Institute for Communications Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK [2]
Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester, Leicester UK [1]
Institute for Communications Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK [2]
Central to the mythology of artistic, media and other cultural labour is the idea of class mobility, from the downwardly mobile bohemian to the aspirational working class talent. Typified by the figure of the arts school student who seeks to dissolve class identity into a critical marginality, higher education, particularly in art and design, has been seen as an engine of this mobility. Empirical studies of the media and cultural labour force have long since challenged these notions, revealing a workforce that is narrow and getting narrower in terms of social class; while arts schools have been pervasively absorbed into the ‘neoliberal university.’
However, such concerns are not new; in ‘Art into Pop’ (1987) Simon Frith and Howard Horne were amongst the first to identify the opportunities provided by the art school, as well as the threats to its continued good flourishing, and the potentially damaging consequences for class mobility. Taking Frith and Horne’s study as a departure point, this paper uses the authors’ own, more recent, research to explore some of the contemporary (and historical) aspects of class and artistic work. It examines the changing class profile of the art student, as well as the class identities of contemporary art students, investigating their understandings of the career pathways and trajectories now open (or closed) to them. It examines the extent to which the art school, once seen as the ‘working class university,’ has played a particular role in enhancing (or challenging) strongly-established labour market inequalities.
However, such concerns are not new; in ‘Art into Pop’ (1987) Simon Frith and Howard Horne were amongst the first to identify the opportunities provided by the art school, as well as the threats to its continued good flourishing, and the potentially damaging consequences for class mobility. Taking Frith and Horne’s study as a departure point, this paper uses the authors’ own, more recent, research to explore some of the contemporary (and historical) aspects of class and artistic work. It examines the changing class profile of the art student, as well as the class identities of contemporary art students, investigating their understandings of the career pathways and trajectories now open (or closed) to them. It examines the extent to which the art school, once seen as the ‘working class university,’ has played a particular role in enhancing (or challenging) strongly-established labour market inequalities.
What frames the local visual arts sector in Manchester?
Abigail Gilmore (1) Hilary Jack (2) and Dave Gledhill (3)
(1) University of Manchester (2) Independent Artist (3) Manchester Metropolitan University (MIRIAD)
This paper draws on the experiences of local practitioners in the city of Manchester, concerned with the promotion and development of visual artists, their art works and the surrounding infrastructure for education, progression and development. Through qualitative research interviews and case studies, it will explore the personal hopes and frustrations of artists in Manchester, outlining the role of different public and private institutions which form the creative ecology and ‘pathways to progression’ in and out of the city and the market, and exploring how these frame these experiences, in terms of access to pay and display, to local and international audiences, and to artistic and career progression. It will critically examine the allocation of public subsidy in relation to the sector, and consider how funding serves particular interests in Manchester, in the context of broader, and longer, structural relationships involving the city’s higher education institutions, art schools, galleries and museums, studio spaces and the local authorites, funding and development agencies
(1) University of Manchester (2) Independent Artist (3) Manchester Metropolitan University (MIRIAD)
This paper draws on the experiences of local practitioners in the city of Manchester, concerned with the promotion and development of visual artists, their art works and the surrounding infrastructure for education, progression and development. Through qualitative research interviews and case studies, it will explore the personal hopes and frustrations of artists in Manchester, outlining the role of different public and private institutions which form the creative ecology and ‘pathways to progression’ in and out of the city and the market, and exploring how these frame these experiences, in terms of access to pay and display, to local and international audiences, and to artistic and career progression. It will critically examine the allocation of public subsidy in relation to the sector, and consider how funding serves particular interests in Manchester, in the context of broader, and longer, structural relationships involving the city’s higher education institutions, art schools, galleries and museums, studio spaces and the local authorites, funding and development agencies
