Preparing students for life in a dynamic set of global media industries is no easy task. The brave new world they will enter has been shaped by a perfect storm of digitisation, globalisation and neoliberalism . In the face of these seemingly all-encompassing forces, our students need to be not only resilient, entrepreneurial and locally-focused and globally aware, but also, just as importantly, they must have a thorough understanding of the creative processes and practices they employ as they try to keep pace with worldwide trends. In the preface to the book Creativity in Education (2001) Ken Robinson declared that âthroughout the world, national governments are reorganizing their education systems to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. One of the priorities is promoting creativity and innovationâ (2001, p. ii). Robinson goes on to suggest how important the ability to generate and implement new ideas is for the new global economies. But he also rightly insists on qualifying this tendency to valorise creativity in economic terms alone by adding that âeducation has more than economic purposesâ (ibid.). In humanising and enlightening people in this mode, he suggests that we, as educators, must also âenable people to adapt positively to rapid social change and to have lives with meaning and purpose at a time when established cultural values are being challenged on many frontsâ (ibid.). With Robinsonâs assertions clearly in mind, we argue here that our students must come to realise that the things they produce have wide and far reaching sociocultural consequences. They will need to be adaptable and creative in their own lives as they face the challenges of the seemingly ever-changing dynamic of the industries they hope to work in. Those industries will expect them to be creative on a daily basis.
If our students are attempting to become creative professionals in a world that is rapidly reconstructing itself, it must be a given that there are still constants to be kept in mind. For example, understanding context remains all important, as it always has. The practical lesson from this declaration is that, in order to understand the evolving local situations they face, it is wise to also know the global contexts they will be creating in. All across the world, as Tom Schulz states, âthe technological advances made in the last decade have been breathtaking, but it is likely still just the beginning ⌠It is the kind of sea change that can only be compared with 19th century industrialization, but it is happening much faster this timeâ (2015, online). As Towse and Handke explain in their book Handbook on the Digital Creative Economy, âdigitization transforms the way creative works are generated, disseminated and used. Digitization has also enabled the development of new types of creative goods and servicesâ (2013, p. 1). These developments have helped a multitude of businesses capitalise on emerging markets and also experiment with new business models, commercial products and types of employment.
Davies and Sigthorsson point out that as new markets emerge,
the creative industries regularly generate job descriptions that previously did not existâterms like âapp developerâ or âcommunity managerâ crop up suddenly and become ubiquitous. Graduates will apply to jobs that donât exist yet, in businesses yet to be established. (2013, p. 229)
With the increasing dominance in the economic sphere of neo-liberal ideology (Harvey 2007; Davies and Sigthorsson 2013, p. 50), there has been a concerted move away from full-time employment toward freelancing and casualisation in creative industries workforces. If our students are not prepared at the basic level to be resilient and adaptive professionals and to act as critical and, most importantly, creative thinkers, they will be left behind in the rush to exploit the many revenue earning opportunities they will encounter. This situation is pragmatically obvious no matter how much we wish it was not so (Lovink and Rossiter 2007) but there are cautions to be aware of. For example, Daniel Ashton points out that while âefficiency in serving workplace and business needs is connected with the voluntary identification and management of personal development and skills needsâ (2010, p. 43), he suggests that a critical exploration of this process is necessary since there are multiple and, at times, negative forces at play. As we educate for what could be called self-improvement we also need to be aware of âwhat is marginalized with the stress on skills and employabilityâ (ibid.). Nonetheless, it is a fact that, as studies such as Frey and Osborneâs (2013) demonstrate , many of what were once stable industries are now reforming themselves, particularly in the face of computerisation or what is more commonly called automation (Dunlop 2016).
In the report âTomorrowâs Digitally Enabled Workforce: Megatrends and Scenarios for Jobs and Employmentâ, Hajkowicz and his co-authors point out that âthe rise of platform economics in a globalized labour market characterized by entrepreneurial activity is likely to change traditional employment modelsâ (2016, p. 7). In anticipation of these changes, Mark Deuze has pragmatically pointed out that âpeople in all sectors of the economy have to come to terms with the challenges and opportunities of contingent employment, precarious labor, and an overall sense of real or perceived job insecurityâ (2007, p. 2). In addition, Hesmondhalgh and Baker found in their empirical investigations into creative labour that, given the high levels of casualisation found in the media industries, and more broadly in what he calls the cultural industries, creative workers felt more and more trapped by their circumstances. For example, âthe great army of freelancers sustaining the cultural industries have little access to the financial and psychological benefits accruing from strong union representationâ (2011, p. 137). On the other hand, they also indicated that numerous creative freelancers reported:
pleasure in autonomy and freedom, that their work was complex, challenging interesting and varied. It may be demanding, but it offers considerable opportunity for a sense of completion, and of having done a job well. There was widespread appreciation of the fact that this is work socially recognised as interesting, even glamourous. (ibid., p. 138)
In the light of this revelation, Dawson and Holmes argue in their book Working in the Global Film and Television Industries: Creativity, Systems, Space , Patronage (2012), that while the rewards are primarily non-material and the media industries continue to attract freelancers willing to undercut each other for these non-material rewards, this increasing casualisation, sub-contract and freelance work may, in one sense, be detrimental to creativity and innovation.
In an effort to please their clients, many of these professionals have moved toward risk averse behaviour in their creative lives in order to maintain network contacts and regular contracts (Dawson and Holmes 2012, pp. 6â7). These clients are, of course, those who have increasingly outsourced their content production, design capability and IT support and they will continue to pursue these activities so long as they see a financial advantage in them. Most often they engage in a process of what David Weil (2017) calls âfissuringâ. In his book The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It, Weil portrays a world of work where many corporations, and one could also argue government institutions and a myriad of small to medium enterprises (SMEs), now distribute their risk across a complex network of franchises, contracts and other forms of outsourcing. This situation means, in total, that many creative workers are not likely to be employed directly by these businesses. Those who are paid to do the work may have, at best, contact with various middlepersons, a situation that allows the businesses, government institutions and SMEs that engage in this practice to eschew their responsibilities to their workers. In this case we can see that workers are rapidly losing access, by the means of fissuring and other tactics, to the rights and privileges that had accrued to them over at least the last 200 years. This situation also means their ability to access finance is also hampered by their status as casuals.
In a recent study, Media Work and the Creative Industries : Identity Work, Professionalism and Employability (2011), which was completed on higher education students taking part in a university-based, industry-oriented media production course in the UKâstudents who wanted to move into this precarious professional worldâDaniel Ashton, as mentioned above, revealed there was a certain anxiety they felt as they tried to make sense of what constituted employability in industry and career context-specific ways. The students in Ashtonâs study revealed a nuanced understanding of what constituted employability for themselves. They saw all of this in terms of the concepts the media industry used themselves such as creativity and professionalism. On the basis of this, Ashton argued for an approach that makes a place in their higher education for specifically examining employment conditions in terms of the way this relates to their own personal concerns (Ashton 2011, pp. 546â560). These anxieties are hard to resolve but like it or not âgetting a jobâ is a precari...