Towards a Critique of Creative Industries Policy and Theory David Hesmondhalgh Open University University of Leeds from April 2007

Outline Adorno and Horkheimer are not the answer Creative industries is not a term I like, but it’s the concept we need to critique Commodification as a basis of critique of creative industries policy and theory Critiquing creative labour Concluding comments

Adorno and Horkheimer are not the answer Origins of term cultural industries: Deliberately plural term, conscious reaction against Adorno and Horkheimer’s singular use of the term. Gets at complexity. Critical and sociological. Saw commodification as ambivalent and as incomplete, contested Far more pragmatic than A&H: analysis of specific conditions of cultural accumulation as basis for policy intervention (infrastructural grassroots support, not artist- centred subsidy)

Creative industries is not a term I like, but it’s the concept we need to critique major claim implicit in UK ‘creative industries’ policy: creative industries key new growth sector of the economy therefore a key source of future employment growth and export earnings Shift from ‘cultural’ to ‘creative’ allowed very broad definition: included dance, visual arts, crafts, computer software

Two policy consequences Alliance for strengthening of IP Public support for training: skills Drift away from democratising GLC vision towards urban regeneration goals, on increasingly neo-liberal terms

Clarification: some use cultural industries for creative industries policy; but the terms are still distinct: those theorists using cultural industries tend to be more sober in their claims, and… while the traditions associated with the terms cultural industries and the creative industries superficially share a rejection of forms of cultural policy grounded on subsidy for the fine arts, the terms tend to denote very different modes of theoretical policy analysis

Commodification as a basis of critique of creative industries policy and theory Creative industries policy represents an attempt by states and businesses to extend and intensify the commodification of culture that has been under way for much of the last two centuries. Long-term context of policy shifts. Response to Long Downturn. Information Society, copyright

All societies draw lines between what can be bought and sold, and what cannot Negative aspects of commodification of culture: [Consumption side] Restrictions on freedom in extension of scope and duration of copyright Privatisation and individualisaton of culture But production too: Corporate forms as models for creativity Hidden work

Critiquing creative labour Bill Ryan, in his book Making Capital from Culture (1992) ‘artistic workers… cannot be made to appear in the labour process as generalised, undifferentiated artists’ (Ryan, 1992: 44). Must be engaged as ‘named, concrete labour’ For Ryan, this fuels the irrationality of the creative process. For capitalists, artists represent an investment that consistently threatens to undermine profitability Response is rationalisation, to produce a more controllable sequence of stars and styles

However, Weberian emphasis on rationalisation leads to limitations what if creative autonomy is itself a significant mechanism of power within certain forms of work – including much creative work in the cultural industries? Ross: the humane workplace as a business asset McRobbie: pleasure in creative work as a disciplinary device

in order to critique creative industries policy and theory, we need to recognise, as Ryan does, the specificity of artistic creative labour as opposed to other forms of work; we need to incorporate historical analysis, as Ryan does, but we also need to recognise, as Ross and McRobbie do, the complex pleasures of work and the dangers of self-exploitation associated with such pleasures ultimately, we need to critique the fate of artistic-cultural expression under contemporary neoliberalism, but in a way that recognises its complex and contradictory nature.

Uncover the distinctive forms of the above in each of the various industries that get labelled ‘creative’, eg television, magazine journalism, music: more empirical specificity needed Ultimately serve to critique artistic-cultural expression under contemporary neoliberalisms, but in a way that recognised its complex and contradictory nature

Closing comments Summary Problems associated with autonomy and Kantian notions of intrinsic value of art Need for pragmatist, ‘instrumentalist’ notion of social value of artistic expression: the enhancement and vitalisation of experience?