Taks 4: Part 2, Mapping your place in the Creative an Cultural Industries

What is my Identity as a Creative?

So creating a mind map of my Idrntity as a creative highlights the primary areas I work in – Art, Design and Crafts. But this is also with a large part in Media in terms of photography and digital promotion and documentation, for aesthetics and as a business tool. But also with elements of all the other areas within the Creative and Cultural Industries. These are also influenced by and backed up with societal factors that may push or pull my work in different directions and limit or enhance my success, such as a need to embrace technology to launch my work into the digital field.

This has been a great exercise in demonstrating the inter connectivity of disciplines and also highlights areas that are possible collaborative projects – particularly, photography, media, marketing, gallery curation and live events, perhaps an immersive visual display?

Task 4 part two

Using the examples from ‘Cultural Ecology and Cultural Critique, reflect on the different contexts/user groups and identities of the arts/cultural/design practitioner in the creative and cultural industries.

My perception of the three examples is that these examples of Cultural Ecology and Cultural Critique, is the difference in how these events came to be. The MACAO project was  a cultural Intervention, a creative event that had anarchic roots of illegal occupation as a statement of ant-capitalism and born out of a need to create Culture rather than commerce. Yet this bottom up approach by this artist collective would serve to generate economy through its high value of production and social significance.

The second example of ‘Forest Law’ is a more academic research funded project that served to impart knowledge and highlight environmental concerns through the ethos of eco-aesthetic and resulted in a book that accumulated interdisciplinary creative projects of Anazonia. Necessarily  highlighting the co-existence and co dependency of human and non- human within the forest as its own cultural eco-system. It appears to me that this example shows a top-down cultural critique, just as valid but possibly less far -reaching with a smaller User group. Both of these projects were a conscious cultural development within the creative industries.

The third example ‘Everybody in the place, an incomplete history of Britain, 1988 – 1994 is an example of un unconscious cultural phenomenon within the Creative industries. Born of societal shifts and happenings such as the Miners strike and mass unem, there developed a revolutionary shift in cultural experience. As an escape from the tedium of menial work, unemployment and the fracturing influence on community from the Thatcher era, the technological advances in music production led to the birth of electronic music and the rave scene. Sweeping through the country, the initial emergence wasn’t a desire to make culture , it was through entertainment, parties, dancing and escapism through drug abuse – the use of ecstasy. This critique showed that this was a huge change within society that shaped the creatice and cultural industries in a massive way and had major influence that is still felt today in our social world.

So the ‘Temporay contemporary, example appears to be a reflection of these three examples. A ‘placemaking project with no end goal but valuing the importance of creativity within society. A creative cuktural ecology for people to create and experience culture alongside promoting urban regeneration through experience. This is an interesting concept that appears to me an open ended project where the cultural value is simply its existence. This should be an example that should be a constant directive within cities all over the country with no end in sight once a city is ,regenerated, It would have greater value if this was a constant shifting development making use of all unoccupied venues through a city or town.

M.A.C.A.O and the Gadla Tower in Milan, Italy

This artist led movement was a reclamation of a disused building in the centre of Milan, the Gafla Tower in, to go against mass consumerism and invest in ‘placemaking’ – a revolutionary and anarchic occupation to try and promote art and culture within Urban regeneration. The artists occupied the space illegally, squatters reclaiming a space in the city, creating culture out of dissonance. Although the tower was only Ocuupied for a few days before it was evicted, it was possibly a good way to highlight the cause, may have caused a media stir with it’s illegality. They then went on to occupy another disused building, an Art Nouveau slaughterhouse. Even though an illegal occupation , the inhabitants regenerated and refurbished the place to be used as a creative space.

The initiative to create a space for cultural projects wasn’t just a place to make but also a skills sharing exercise too. This would be a great way to get a project off the ground. Quite often as Creative individual, one of the inhibitors of developing your work further is the lack of resources, technical ability in other disciplines and the need for a skilled taskforce to achieve the end goal. For example in my own practice, some of the limits of self promotion to the desired level of High end Fashion with an artistic prevalence rather than commercial production, the key to promotiuon is having photographic content of exceptional quality that can equate to other competitors, they beauty of the internet is that if your images are of the same quality as say Dior then that can elevate the esteem of your work. So to have a space and technically skilled practitioners this would be possible. This could benefit many small scale practitioners with their projects. One of my rasons for studying for the MA is to be in the creative environment where we all bounce ideas off each other, have access to other dsciplines and practical workshops with technology and equipment that is unavailable elsewhere. Also having the scope to collaborate with others that are expersts in this field, which would save so much time and energy to achieve the desired goal. If there was a creative environment to be able to achieve this outside of the University, this would be a massive aid to cultural and creative development. Also to take over unsudes building ‘fills in the urban cultural voids’ that hinder the wellbeing of a community. Even if you aren’t directly involved in the creative process to see buildings and spaces regenerated with these projects creates a sense of wellbeing and future cultural development. This activist movement is needed across many cities in the country after the social phenomenon of the pandemic. In particular the city centre of Sheffield, where I live is in decay. The main street and shopping are have lost approximately 70 percent of its retail stores. Having the shopping Centre Meadowhall means that all the commercial retail spaces are there rather than in the city centre. This stae in the pandemic recovery is prime opportunity to regenerate this city centre. Occupying the now empty department stores of Debenhams and John Lewis, these kind of @creative crucibles’ would re engage communities, help lift creative projects off the ground and change the dynamic of the city centre to independent creative culture, an opportunity to re inhabit the retail stores with independent reatailers, rather than the chain stores that inhabit Meadow hall. City councils need to seize this opportunity and invest in these spaces, allow such occupations to occur and give the city the foundations to regenerate and therefore boost the social, cultural and economic recovery of cities.

T J demos