Ramsey, P. & White, A. (2015) Art for art's sake? A critique of the instrumentalist turn in the teaching of media and communications in UK universities. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 21 (1), pp. 78-96 (original) (raw)
Related papers
International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2015
This paper charts the turn in the UK New Labour government’s (1997–2010) creative industries policy from an early focus on encouraging wider access to the arts to an increasingly instrumentalist emphasis on self-funding and the generation of wealth from intellectual property. The paper demonstrates the effect of this policy primarily through the case of the teaching of media and communications in UK universities. Focusing on the Skillset Media Academy Network, the authors ask whether this is both the best approach to teaching media and communications in UK universities and appropriate that many of these courses appear to be solely geared towards preparing graduates for jobs in the creative industries.
This article explores the provision in the UK of pre-vocational and vocational media courses targeted at academic under-achievers. Such courses typically claim to offer routes into employment for socially disadvantaged young people; and these assertions have gathered force in recent years with the advent of digital media, and associated claims about their potential for promoting democratic participation and creativity. The article begins with a brief look at the history of provision in this sector since the 1980s, and the critical debates that have surrounded it. It then moves on to look at claims about the ‘empowering’ possibilities of digital media technologies; and at the changing nature of employment in the media and creative industries. The article then focuses on the most recent initiative in this field, the ill-fated Creative and Media Diploma. Drawing on interviews with teachers and some limited classroom observation, it points to some significant gaps between the rhetoric that surrounded the introduction of this new course and the difficult realities encountered by teachers who adopted it. It points to several reasons for the ultimate demise of the qualification, not least to do with the fundamental incoherence of its aims.
Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 2019
This article examines the nature and role of courses designed to train creative workers, policy-makers and related actors, in the skills necessary for cultural management, enterprise or intermediation and their relationship in apprehending the sector. The article takes a case study approach, engaging with university policy, student research, reflections from graduates and staff who have participated in a suite of integrated MA awards at a UK university. We find that the programme created environments in which practitioners and intermediaries were positioned in reflexive relation to their experiences and roles. We outline the insights and understandings that have emerged as students explored their own orbits in relation to both critical and instrumental research on the cultural sector, and in relation to perceptions of the transformations in sector and how it is conceived. The case study sets out an agenda for exploring the relationship of research, pedagogy and practice after the cr...
Learning to work in the creative and cultural sector: new spaces, pedagogies and expertise
Journal of Education Policy, 2010
The paper questions the link that policymakers assume exists between qualifications and access to employment in the creative and cultural (C&C) sector. It (i) identifies how labour market conditions in the C&C sector undermine this assumption and how the UK"s policy formation process inhibits education and training (E&T) actors from countering these labour market conditions, and (ii) demonstrates how non-government agencies-"intermediary organisations"-are creating new spaces to assist aspiring entrants to develop the requisite forms of "vocational practice", "social capital" and ""moebius-strip" (ie entrepreneurial) expertise to enter and succeed in the sector. It concludes by identifying a number of (i) new principles for the governance of the national E&T sector (ii) pedagogic strategies to facilitate "horizontal" transitions into and within the C&C sector, and (iii) skill formation issues for all E&T stakeholders to address.
Contributing to the creative economy imaginary: universities and the creative sector
Cultural Trends, 2018
This paper explores the relationship between the creative economy and universities. As funders, educators and research bodies, universities have a complicated relationship with the creative economy. They propagate its practice, 'buying-in' to the rhetoric and models of creative value, particularly in teaching, research and knowledge exchange. Third mission activities also play a role, seeking to affect change in the world 'outside' academia through collaboration, partnerships, commercialisation and social action. For arts and humanities disciplines, these practices have focused almost exclusively on the creative sector in recent years. This paper asks how the third mission has been a site where universities have modified their function in relation to the creative economy. It considers the mechanisms by which universities have been complicit in propagating the notion of the creative economy, strengthening particular constructions of the idea at the level of policy and everyday practice. It also briefly asks how a focus on alternative academic practice and institutional forms might offer possibilities for developing a more critical creative economy. The argument made is that the university sector is an important agent in the shaping and performance of the creative economy, and that we should take action if we wish to produce a more diverse, equitable space for learning, researching, and being under the auspices of 'creativity'.
The politics of media and cultural policy
2009
This paper considers the role of academics in current debates on media and cultural policy in the UK. Although theories of the intellectuals differ widely as to what such a role might be, they point to a more general issue: the struggle for social recognition by contending forms of expertise. The policy field is one arena in which such contention occurs. Although the digital revolution is beginning to erode distinct policy regimes, broadcasting policy debate still conserves some long-standing features. Dominated by a few protagonists occupying positions of institutional power and critical, academic influence is at best marginal. For its part, cultural policy is being increasingly displaced by creative economy policy. This has been a New Labour project, initiated and from time to time sustained by a policy generation rooted in think tanks, consultancy and advising, with its academic critics largely unheard. Despite its shaky foundations, creativity policy has achieved a hegemonic pos...