Researching Cultural Enterprise Office

Abstract

Why this book mattersThis book is about a cultural agency -Cultural Enterprise Office (CEO) -set up to help individuals and very small enterprises working in the 'creative economy'. CEO's central purpose is to make such 'creatives' become more business-like and thereby improve their chances of making a living over the longer term.CEO is based in Glasgow, a city richly endowed with a wide range of cultural life and a key location for those engaged in creative work in Scotland. In what follows, we have set out to analyse the web of relationships that CEO has with those it advises and assists -its 'clients' -as well as the wider world of government and support bodies -its 'stakeholders'. For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, we have provided a detailed account of the inside workings of this kind of cultural intermediary.

Building soft skills in the creative economy: Creative intermediaries, business support and the ‘soft skills gap”

“…I also draw on ethnographic field notes (taken as part of my participant observation within CEO, within advice sessions and client meetings, and at events organised by CEO), and present material in the form of ethnographic 'vignettes', adapted from my field notes (Gertler 2003;Humphreys and Watson 2009). In other publications arising from the project, myself and other members of the research team have discussed CEO's development and practice (Schlesinger et al, 2015a), and the experience of conducting team ethnography (Schlesinger et al, 2015b).…”

“…Moreover creative work remains insecure and precarious, there is a culture of long hours, and an expectation that creatives will work for free in order to 'get a foot on the ladder', or in an attempt to secure further work (Schlesinger and Waelde 2012). Coupled with this is the expectation of hypermobility, and hyper-flexibility both in terms of the type of work that is taken on and the roles that creatives are expected to play within projects or businesses − for example, creatives may balance freelance and salaried work, collaboration and project management, and so on (Munro 2016;Schlesinger et al, 2015a). Banks and Hesmondhalgh, (2009) have written that despite the reality of the conditions of creative work recent UK creativeeconomic policy propagates the view that with enough drive and determination, anyone can succeed within the creative industries.…”

“…Banks and Hesmondhalgh, (2009) have written that despite the reality of the conditions of creative work recent UK creativeeconomic policy propagates the view that with enough drive and determination, anyone can succeed within the creative industries. For Banks and Hesmondhalgh, (2009) and others (Kelly and Champion 2015;Oakley 2014;Schlesinger et al, 2015a), framing the creative industries as a sector where the only prerequisite for success is 'hard work' ensures that creative workers take responsibility for developing the skills required by the market, such that they form a reserve pool of exceptionally highly-skilled and flexible labour. For Banks and Hesmondhalgh (2009: 422) this reserve pool matters in terms of national competitiveness more generally.…”

“…Bilton and Cummings (2010: 107) have suggested that entrepreneurship works as 'the bridge between the art of innovation, and a viable market", though Schlesinger et al (2015a) have noted that this formulation appears to work more as a theoretical "ideal-type" than as a descriptor. Oakley (2014) and others (Bilton 1999;Ellmeier 2003;Henry 2007;Taylor et al, 2011) have empirically investigated the contours of specifically cultural and creative entrepreneurship, noting that creative entrepreneurship refers to self-employed cultural and creative workers − who juggle freelance work, portfolio work and other, often non-creative work − as well as micro and small business owners.…”

“…There is a great deal of dependency between the Scottish government and the UK government when it comes to the governing of the creative economy (Schlesinger et al 2015a(Schlesinger et al , 2015b. Generally speaking, the Scottish government has taken on board the same set of assumptions that drive the development of creative activity elsewhere: that the creative and digital industries are high-growth sectors, central to the development of the wider economy; that they are potential drivers of economic and social regeneration, and that intervention is key to ensuring that creative microbusinesses and individuals fulfil their potential within the sector.…”