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Working together

We invite you to join a movement to help us better understand the role that culture plays in our lives. You might be thinking about how you can better evaluate the impact of your work, or how you can use research insights and critical reflection in your practice. Keep in touch to hear about resources, events and opportunities to shape our research and get involved.

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Video We invite you to join a movement to help us better understand the role that culture plays in our lives. You might be thinking about how you can better evaluate the impact of your work, or how you can use research insights and critical reflection in your practice.

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World Economic Forum future of jobs 2023

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World Economic Forum future of jobs 2023

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The Future of Jobs Report 2023 explores how jobs and skills will evolve over the next five years. This fourth edition of the series continues the analysis of employer expectations to provide new insights on how socio-economic and technology trends will shape the workplace of the future.

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The Future of Jobs Report 2023 explores how jobs and skills will evolve over the next five years. This fourth edition of the series continues the analysis of employer expectations to provide new insights on how socio-economic and technology trends will shape the workplace of the future.

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NESTA future of jobs...

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The UK Creative Industries:

Are set to continue to grow faster than the economy at large...

Contributed £115.9bn in GVA to the UK economy in 2019, which is greater than aerospace, automotive, life sciences and oil and gas sectors combined.

Represented almost 6% of the UK's GVA, and supported a further £62.1 billion across the supply chain, totalling a £178 billion GVA contribution.

Growing at four times the rate of the UK economy as a whole and experienced strong growth in all parts of the UK. Between 2010 and 2019, the sector's GVA grew by 32.6% in the North West and 45.6% in Scotland.

Exported £46bn in goods and services worldwide and accounted for almost 12% UK exports.

...and create jobs in all UK nations and regions

Creating jobs at three times the UK average, employing 2 million people across the UK.

Employment in the sector grew by 21% in Northern Ireland and 30% in the West Midlands between 2010 and 2017.

Supported a further 1.4 million jobs across the supply chain, bringing the total number of jobs supported by the creative industries to 3.5 million.

Almost 1 in 8 UK businesses are creative businesses and 95% of these employ 9 people or fewer.

33% of creative workers are freelancers, double the wider UK economy, and in some sub-sectors the figure is much higher, such as 70% in Music, Performing Arts and Visual Arts.

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The UK Creative Industries: Are set to continue to grow faster than the economy at large... Contributed £115.9bn in GVA to the UK economy in 2019, which is greater than aerospace, automotive, life sciences and oil and gas sectors combined.

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Towards gender equality in the cultural and creative sectors - Publications Office of the EU

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New report recommends how to close gender gaps in the cultural and creative sectors

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The report “Towards gender equality in the cultural and creative sectors” provides recommendations and an overview of over 250 good practices from all over the EU to improve the working conditions of women.

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Perhaps it’s my imagination, but the recent delivery of the IAL’s Diploma in Intellectual Property and Collections seems to have coincided with the emergence of a series of fascinating copyright ca…

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Why Gen Z are right to be worried about money

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Everyone is feeling stress from rising costs and an uncertain economy. For Gen Z, the effects are particularly acute, and impacting how they live now and may be able to in the future.

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Gen X are at a crossroads in their personal lives. Wedged between Baby Boomers and millennials, this generation is in the 'sandwich' phase of life. They're largely responsible for caring for their aging parents while providing for their school-aged children, all while managing their own lives, careers and health.

If organisations are eager to hold onto their Gen X workers, roughly defined as those born between 1965 to 1980, they need to respond to these challenges.

That's why an increasing number of companies across the globe are rolling out benefits that address specific mid-life health and lifestyle concerns. And in a tight labour market, employers who offer customised perks stand out by signalling a level of support that's increasingly sought after in today's workplace.

Cloud-software company Salesforce recently launched an eldercare benefit for employees supporting older family members as well as cancer-related programming for early detection targeted to the 50-plus demographic. Software company Adobe offers services to help employees manage the university-admissions process for their kids as well as access to backup elder care and in-home care consultations. Menopause support is also emerging at many global companies, both big and small.

"The benefits of providing these services go beyond economics," says Peter Bamberger, a professor at the Coller School of Management at Tel Aviv University, and the president elect of the Academy of Management. "We're talking about services that potentially impact one's children and one's parents. Organisations are not only providing financial assistance, they're building a strong emotional connection - they're showing that they care."

Employers aren't offering these new benefits out of pure altruism, however. The programs are relatively cost-effective, and research suggests that benefits tailored to employees' needs can have an impact on retention and performance. A survey by Gartner conducted last year, seen by the BBC, showed a thoughtful benefits strategy can boost employees' intent to stick around by 11%, and raise their output by 12%.

"Employers are aware that having to find your elderly parents a specialist or the right facility to live in is a time consuming and emotional chore," says Bamberger. "Employers know that it takes time out of your workday and if they can help with it, you're going to be more present and focused at work."

Much of Gen X is in the 'sandwich' phase, where they must care for both their children and their aging parents (Credit: Alamy)

Essential mid-life support
With five generations in the workforce, benefits are no longer a one-size-fits-all proposition.

Employers are increasingly trying to adapt to the evolving needs of their employees as they progress through their lives and careers, says Lauren Winans, the chief executive officer of Next Level Benefits, a Pennsylvania, US-based HR consultancy. "Companies are looking at their workforce demographics and they're asking: where is this person in their life? What are they facing? And how can we invest our benefit dollars in purposeful ways?"

Similar to offering student loan assistance and mental-health support to appeal to Gen Z, and fertility and caregiving benefits to draw millennials, mid-life benefits meet Gen X workers where they are. And this is important, right now: "Gen Xers are likely senior leaders in their organisations," says Winans. "If they're not in the executive suite now, they're going to be there soon, and so these are folks that companies really want to attract and retain."

One of the most popular new benefits is menopause support. Menopause is not only a challenge for workers, but also for employers; according to a study published in April by the Mayo Clinic, menopause symptoms result in approximately $1.8bn (£1.42bn) in lost working time each year.

This year, American biotech company Genentech introduced menopause-specific care to its 13,500 workers and their spouses or partners, in response to a request from one of its employee affinity groups. The benefit includes access to on-demand video appointments with clinicians, classes on managing menopause symptoms and referrals to in-person providers.

Genentech's workforce is 54% women, and the average age of employees is 45. "It's likely that many of our employees will experience menopause while working here, and we want them to have easy access to care," says Cori Davis, the company's chief people officer.

Scott Floyd, global benefits leader at Cisco, says the communications company launched a concierge care benefit this year that tackles the administrative and logistical aspects of caring for an elderly parent, supporting a child with special needs or assisting a partner with a new medical diagnosis. The benefit came about after a quarterly pulse survey conducted in June revealed that many of its employees, particularly women with caregiving responsibilities, felt stretched thin. Gen X women were among the most impacted.

"It was clear the folks who were leaders and caregivers - that sandwich generation - needed more support," says Floyd. The company also has an additional benefit that helps employees find and hire an in-home caregiver for an adult family member. "What you often find is that when people are in a crisis, they need a higher touch."
'They allow people to celebrate getting older'
Management researchers often describe employee benefits as having " symbolic" and "signalling" effects, according to Carol Kulik, a professor at University of South Australia, who specialises in human resource management. "Benefits are both a tangible thing, and they're also important psychologically," she says. "They're a signal that your employer cares about you and your skill set and that it values people like you."

Research suggests that this perceived value holds even for benefits that employees don't necessarily use. For example, says Kulik, employees might not need a certain benefit immediately but they realise they might in the near future.

Gen X is particularly likely to be in a reflective mood, she adds. "Around age 50, people very predictably start to exhibit signs of physical decline - it's often not catastrophic, it's manageable - but it serves to prompt people to remember that life is finite."

That's why the rise of benefits like so-called " grand-ternity leave," which allow employees to take off time to support and care for their grandkids; and snowbird programs, like the one offered by CVS, which allow employees to shuttle between two locations seasonally and test-drive retirement typically between warmer climates in the winter and cooler climates in the summer, are likely to resonate with this population.

"These are benefits that workers find positive and affirming," says Kulik. "They allow people to celebrate getting older."

It's not a coincidence that companies are introducing these new perks now. Amid an uncertain economy, companies are under pressure to allocate resources more strategically, says benefits-consultant Winans. "If you need to make cuts in your budget, the fastest way to do that is through your highest cost drivers for employees: insurance and 401k." Instead, companies are supplementing these scaled-back programmes them with more cost-effective options - which enable them to add these new mid-life benefits.

"I've been in corporate benefits administration for two decades and I have to say: menopause benefits - I never thought I'd see that," she says. "It's exciting that no matter where you are in your life, you're going to have a new benefit that you have access to."

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Gen X workers want different benefits. Companies are answering the call.

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Mid-life workers want menopause support, eldercare assistance, health screenings and more. Increasingly, they're getting it - and their employers are benefitting, too.

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Prospects: Overview of the UK Creative Arts Sector

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Prospects: Overview of the UK Creative Arts Sector

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Careers in creative arts are popular as they span a range of disciplines, from arts, culture, design and media. Prepare to enter a thriving sector by learning more about the UKs creative industries

What are the creative industries?

This is actually an umbrella term that covers a range of sub-sectors that all have creativity at their core.

For example, visual and performing arts, advertising, design, fashion, crafts, music, publishing, film, radio and TV are all creative industries and all form what is known as the UKs creative economy.

In fact, the UKs creative industries are vital to our economy - they employ over two million people and grow faster than other industries. According to recent statistics from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) they contributed £109billion to the economy in 2021. This equated to 5.6% of the total for that year.

Its growth over recent years has been driven by a boom in computer services, highlighting the importance of digital creative industries such as video games.

What creative industries can I work in?

Employment opportunities can be grouped into:

advertising and marketing

architecture

crafts

design

fashion

film, TV, video, radio and photography

IT, software and computer services

publishing

museums, galleries and libraries

music, performing and visual arts.

Areas of design include:

Working in the sector, you'll have the opportunity to pursue practical roles such as an artist, actor or interior designer, or administrative or managerial jobs such as an arts administrator or museum curator.

There's an increasing overlap with the media and information technology (IT) sectors in relation to the use of digital technology to produce and deliver creative content. This is noticeable in roles such as web designer, animator and game designer.

You'll also find a crossover between this sector and marketing, advertising and PR, with advertising in particular considered a key component of the creative industries.

For examples of job roles in this sector, see creative jobs.

Who are the main graduate employers?

The creative industries in the UK are mainly made up of small companies and micro-businesses, the majority of which employ fewer than ten people.

While the highest proportion of creative industry jobs are based in London, many opportunities are located elsewhere in the UK. The South East, East of England, North West, South West and Scotland are key regions.

The majority of companies may be small, but the sector also has large well-established organisations that recruit graduates. Examples include:

Advertising - AMV BBDO, Grey UK, Leo Burnett London, McCann.

Cultural heritage - English Heritage, National Trust, National Museum Wales, Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum, National Galleries of Scotland.

Design - Jaguar Land Rover, Harrods, AKQA, Big Active.

Fashion - ASOS, Burberry, John Lewis & Partners, Marks & Spencer, Next.

Film/TV - Ealing Studios, Elstree Studios, Endemol Shine UK, Pinewood Studios, Sony Pictures, ITV, BBC, Channel 4.

Music - Opera North, Sony Music UK, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group.

Publishing - Bloomsbury, HarperCollins UK, Oxford University Press, Penguin Random House.

Video games - Codemasters, Creative Assembly, Rockstar North, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), Sports Interactive.

For jobs in the creative industries, speculative applications can be particularly useful as many graduate positions aren't formally advertised - although one valuable networking resource you can use is Creativepool.

In a sector where competition for jobs and graduate scheme places is high, self-employment is a viable option, as is freelancing.

You'll therefore need to develop skills and experience through work experience and paid internships to build your body of work - see 5 tips for getting media work experience and putting together a creative portfolio.

What's it like working in the sector?

Graduates entering the creative arts and design sector can expect:

the need to demonstrate a practical creative talent or to show a passion for art, design, music or other creative pursuits

to spend time practicing and honing their craft - particularly for actors, dancers and musicians

the need to be independent, proactive and resilient

a higher than average likelihood of being self-employed or freelance, or working on short-term contracts

the majority of work to be project-based and deadline-driven

lower salaries, an unsteady income and a lack of job security when you first start out in the industry - potentially leading to great success

working environments to range from offices and art/design/film/photography studios to theatres, museums and music venues

working hours to vary enormously, from regular office hours to working evenings and weekends, and the flexibility of choosing your hours as a freelancer

to have to keep up to date with industry developments

to travel and work away from home depending on your role, for example touring as an actor or musician, or shooting a TV or movie scene on location as part of the crew.

To find out more about typical salaries and working conditions in your chosen creative career, see our creative arts and design job profiles.

What are the key issues in the creative industries?

In 2023 the government, in partnership with the Creative Industries Council, unveiled its ' sector vision' for the UK creative industries. This outlines the governments ambition that by 2030 the:

creative industries will be worth an extra £50billion in Gross Value Added (GVA)

creative workforce will reflect the dynamism and talent of the UK as a whole and will support a million more jobs - addressing skills gaps and shortages

positive impact that the creative industries have on individuals, communities, the environment and the UKs global standing will be maximised.

Despite the creative sector's rapid growth and these ambitious plans, it certainly has its fair share of challenges.

When looking at employment figures for the sector in its report on DCMS Sectors Economic Estimates: Workforce, January to December 2022, the government revealed that women had filled half of the roles (45.3%). Compared to the UK as a whole, this marks a lower representation of women. It also found that around a seventh (15.8%) of the workforce had a disability. These findings were similar to the UK overall, but it shows there's still work to be done.

In terms of securing work experience, long-term unpaid internships have been an established practice in the industry, but they promote unfair access by shutting out those who cannot afford to subsidise their placements. This significantly narrows the pool of talent available to a sector that needs creativity and diversity to thrive. Improving the diversity of their workforces is now a particular focus of many employers in this field.

The number of students taking creative subjects such as music and performing arts at GCSE level has fallen significantly over recent years, partly because of government policy emphasising traditional subjects including maths and science. This could lead to a shortage of creative talent entering this sector in the coming years, potentially stifling its continued growth.

Find out more

Written by Jemma Smith, Editor

Prospects · November 2023

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Overview of the UK's creative arts sector

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Discover how the creative industries have a lot to offer those with creative ability, a passion for the arts and the drive to succeed.

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Why do we buy into the cult of 'overwork'

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Why do we buy into the cult of 'overwork'

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Why do we buy into the ‘cult’ of overwork?

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Overwork culture is thriving; we think of long hours and constant exhaustion as a marker of success. Given what we know about burnout, why do we do give in?

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BBC What is 'Worklife'?

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Our professional and personal lives are shifting on an unprecedented scale. Now that we're working where we want and rethinking the value of what we do, a rigid nine-to-five office-based job seems like a quaint relic of the past. At the same time, as our work lives bleed into our private worlds, burnout, inequality and post-pandemic uncertainties are challenging us in ways that we far from fully understand.

To move forward, we need to recognise and embrace this reality. BBC Worklife is your essential guide to navigating change - and thriving - in your personal and professional life.

Our mission is to inform, inspire and empower you to live a more fulfilling life within yourself, your relationships and your workplace. BBC Worklife guides readers through the biggest issues of how to work, how to live and how to think today. From the new world of hybrid work, to the implications of inequality, to the forces that both breed and stifle success, we provide the insights needed to thrive as individuals.

We tell focus on human-centric narratives with a global outlook, diving deep beyond the headlines. We've looked at why workers are resigning en masse across the world, and what it means for your future. We've spotlighted changing identities that help explain friends, family and colleagues alike, like why women are increasingly sexually fluid, and why family estrangement is becoming so common. We've dug into how we can grow and improve in unexpected ways, like how to learn effectively at any age. These insights bring both our outer and inner worlds to the surface, explaining how to understand and build on our both our present and future selves.

To bring this to life, BBC Worklife travels the world to find stories that help develop fresh perspectives on what work and life can and should be, and discover new and interesting approaches to shaping ourselves and those around us. Through the eyes of world-leading experts and the people who live each story, we provide the context to understand what each new development means for you, and what to make of it in your own life.

BBC Worklife provides the tools we need to take charge of our own happiness - no matter what the world throws at us next.
- Meredith Turits, Editor
Looking to write for BBC Worklife? Read our author brief.

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Our professional and personal lives are shifting on an unprecedented scale. Now that we're working where we want and rethinking the value of what we do, a rigid nine-to-five office-based job seems like a quaint relic of the past.

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DCMS Sector Vision for Creative Industries

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DCMS Sector Vision for Creative Industries

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This sector vision sets out how the government and industry will work together to unlock the growth potential of the creative industries.

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Details

Our creative industries are a true British success story. They drive economic growth at home - contributing £108 billion in 2021 to the UK economy - and are a brilliant global advert for our creativity and values.

This government is determined to build on their world class excellence and I am today publishing a Creative Industries Sector Vision that will make sure we do that. This Vision is about maximising growth, nurturing young people's talent and delivering on the creative potential that exists right across the country. By 2030 - working with industry - we plan to grow these industries by £50 billion of gross value added and support a million extra jobs with a pipeline of talent and opportunity for young people.

This sector vision sets out our 2030 goals and objectives to deliver on this. It is a vision for the creative industries to become an even greater growth engine and where creative talent from all backgrounds, and creative businesses from all areas in the UK, can thrive.

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This sector vision sets out how the government and industry will work together to unlock the growth potential of the creative industries.

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Video

Working together

We invite you to join a movement to help us better understand the role that culture plays in our lives. You might be thinking about how you can better evaluate the impact of your work, or how you can use research insights and critical reflection in your practice. Keep in touch to hear about resources, events and opportunities to shape our research and get involved.

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Video We invite you to join a movement to help us better understand the role that culture plays in our lives. You might be thinking about how you can better evaluate the impact of your work, or how you can use research insights and critical reflection in your practice.

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Kerry Hawkes (Partnerships Manager Ikon)

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Kerry Hawkes (Partnerships Manager Ikon)

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An exhibition at Parkside gallery, Birmingham City University which showcased the works of Round Lemon co-founders and video works of 10 artists from the West-Midlands.

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Creative UK: Creative Industries report 2021

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Creative UK: Creative Industries report 2021

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UK Creative Industries 2021 - The UK Creative Industries is the first report of its kind, exploring the power and potential of the UK's creative industries to regenerate places, rebuild the economy, drive innovation and create jobs in all parts of the UK.

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Where are the UK creative industries? What has been their evolution? How can we support them more effectively? Creative Nation maps and monitors their evolution with the goal of ensuring that their growth potential is realised for the benefit of more peop

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Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect - Goodhart, David: 9781982128449 - AbeBooks

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Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect by Goodhart, David at AbeBooks.co.uk - ISBN 10: 1982128445 - ISBN 13: 9781982128449 - Free Press - 2020 - Hardcover

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We are crowded by our families, whilst feeling disconnected from our colleagues and clients. As one writer colleague recently remarked, 'every day is a Sunday now'. Unless you are in that small group of 'essential workers' it has also become clear that what you are doing all day actually may not matter that much, not any more. Given how much our self-esteem and social status are dependent on our work identity, how are new ways of working changing the meaning of 'productive' work? Artists, writers, musicians - cultural producers - have long had to negotiate an unstructured existence where work has no boundaries, and the value of their labour is indeterminate.

Coping with extended periods of 'unproductive' work, punctuated by temporary projects and contracts is the everyday reality of much creative work. In this new reality, what might the rest of us learn about the value of work and productivity from the practices of artists and creative workers?

Measuring value

The answer to this question is to some extent one of market economics. The value of creative work is measured not by input but by output. None of us knows how long it took Hilary Mantel to write The Mirror and the Light - its value is measured in critical reviews and sales. For most artists, the pay-off for creative work is much less certain. Between 5% and 10% of published films, games, albums and books actually turn a profit. The market value of cultural content is notoriously unpredictable. But artists must find value and meaning in their work even if the world disagrees.

That might make creative work delusional, self-exploitative and precarious, but it is still necessary for the mental health of the worker to believe that the work has value.

Living with uncertainty

The reality is that artists do know something about the value of their work. A best-selling author once explained to me that his success depends not on coming up with better ideas, but recognising which ideas to pursue, and for how long. Prioritising tasks and knowing when to drop them was the key to his productivity. Creativity theory emphasises the importance of 'intrinsic motivation' in the creative process; creative work is driven by 'task fulfilment' rather than extrinsic rewards. In practice this means that artists have an internal compass which orients them to direct their resources of time, energy and imagination productively rather than answering to external directives. Of course some external boundaries exist in the form of deadlines. But the majority of daily tasks have to be organised based on the artist's own experience and knowledge within a field, as well as a shrewd self-knowledge.

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Productivity in a time of Coronavirus: Lessons from Artists

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We are crowded by our families, whilst feeling disconnected from our colleagues and clients. As one writer colleague recently remarked, 'every day is a Sunday now'. Unless you are in that small group of 'essential workers' it has also become clear that what you are doing all day actually may not matter that much, not any more.

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Warwick Institute for Employment Research

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For nearly two decades self-employment has been an important source of job growth for the UK economy. However the coronavirus crisis has highlighted how risky it is being self-employed. Current UK Government measures to support the self-employed might not be enough to stop a flight from self-employment once the crisis ends.
An engine of job growth
The self-employed are those workers who have the freedom to decide what work they do, how and where they do it, and, being their own boss, they can choose who they want to work for if anyone at all. They aren't paid through pay as you earn (PAYE) and instead sort out their own tax.

Governments of all political hues have hailed self-employment as exemplifying the spirit of entrepreneurialism needed by the UK. Over the years, there has been a series of policy pushes to encourage it.

This faith in self-employment seems justified. Self-employment added jobs to the UK economy in the downturn that followed the global financial crisis. In the past, British-born and now Australia-based academic expert Professor Al Rainnie would have called these workers the conscripts of recession, having to create their own jobs when no others were on offer. However what might have been true in the past, now no longer seems to hold. Self-employment has continued to grow as the UK economy recovered from 2013 onwards.
Figure 1: Cumulative change in employee and self-employed jobs, 2007-16
.
Source: Office for National Statistics
Driven largely by those with university degrees, self-employment has risen to just over 5m workers, accounting for around 16% of the UK labour force, as Figure 2 below shows. This growth in self-employment has occurred for men and women, and in all UK regions and countries. Part-time self-employment in particular has grown. It varies by ethnicity, with self-employment being more common in some ethnic groups than others: Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers for example. There has also been a big boost in younger workers (16-24-year olds) opting for self-employment.
Figure 2: Two decades of increase in self-employment Source: Office for National Statistics
Of course, with the rise of gig working, not all of this rise is to be welcomed. There are debates about bogus self-employment. Many lack the control over work expected of the self-employed and instead are dependent on platforms such as Uber. However the steady rise in self-employment needs to continue in the UK, for as the number of self-employed has risen, the number of workers classed as employees has fallen.
The Government's offer - a Swiss Cheese Plant
However it has come under threat with the coronavirus crisis. As with other workers, the self-employed need protection. With the lockdown, painters, decorators and plumbers can no longer enter our homes to work, for example. Drama actors, camera crew and sound engineers can no longer work on TV and film sets.

The UK Government's response to providing protection for these workers was slow. The self-employed clamoured for certainty from government that it would help them and they wanted assurance that whatever help came would enable their businesses to survive the crisis.

When measures to support the self-employed were finally announced at the end of March, what was offered is a bit like a Swiss Cheese Plant - big shiny leaves but with lots of holes. It seems good but might not be enough to mitigate the risks and address the realities of being self-employed in the UK.

The shiny leaves, and the good news, is that the UK Government will cover 80% of the earnings of the self-employed up to a maximum of £2500 per month. Those earning up to £50,000 are covered. Nicely, the scheme is backdated to March. Usefully, HM Revenue and Customs (HRMC) is to contact those registered as self-employed so there's no hanging around in frustratingly long telephone or chatroom queues, and the money will be paid directly into their bank accounts. Almost all (95%) of the self-employed should receive support, the Government estimates.

The bad news, and which exposes the holes, is that the self-employed will have to wait nearly two months until June for the scheme to be running properly. In addition, support is only provided to those registered with HMRC tax authority as self-employed for three years and, moreover, can show that they are currently trading and intend to continue training as self-employed after the crisis. They will also need to show that the majority of their income comes from self-employment. Furthermore, anyone new to self-employment since the start of the last financial year in early 2019 is ineligible. Receipt of support is therefore likely to be patchier than the Government suggests.

For the self-employed who cannot claim, Universal Credit is still available the Government points out. The trouble is that in the two weeks prior to announcing its support for the self-employed, nearly one million other workers registered for Universal Credit. Officials did well to register this number. However the next step of processing this huge volume of claimants properly is going to be difficult. And as the lockdown continues and the economy shrivels, the number of claimants is still increasing. Universal Credit is already a bureaucratic car crash. Given its now well-publicised dysfunctions, a brave government would have scrapped Universal Credit long ago. It is not an attractive option.
Risky business
No doubt individual self-employed workers will benefit from these measures. The bigger question though is whether the measures are enough to save the long-term future of self-employment. The key problem is that government has difficulty capturing the nature and experience of self-employment through its official data gathering. As the Office for National Statistics admits, it is even difficult for it to measure the income of the self-employed.

The reason is that much of self-employment is unstable: income levels can vary considerably on a monthly basis because the self-employed lack stable work. Not surprisingly, much self-employment is hybrid, mixed with employment. For example two-thirds of the income of female part-time self-employed workers comes from employment. Often it is both sources of income that provides the self-employed with a bearable if not decent standard of living.

This lack of stability is a feature of the wider precariousness of much self-employment. The self-employed typically earn around £800 per month, which is less than employees receive. Indeed, 1m self-employed workers earn only about £2000 per year. Supplemental sources of income are therefore necessary in many cases. Even before the crisis, 1m were in receipt of welfare support. Moreover, unlike employees, the self-employed do not receive statutory sick pay or maternity or paternity leave. They also don't receive redundancy pay. Finally, for most, their pension provision is poor. Far less have a private pension than employees. Not surprisingly, more work past the age of 65 than employees. As a result being self-employed is a risky business both during working life and into old age.
Ensuring the future of self-employment
Self-employment is a policy priority and it has grown strongly in the UK over the past two decades. The hope has to be that self-employment will bounce back, continuing to provide strong job growth. However the crisis has thrown the risks of self-employment into sharp relief and given the mixed support from Government, the opposite might happen - interest in self-employment might bomb. Many workers, particularly the young and those with good qualifications, might think twice about it as an option in the future.

With unemployment rising again, the Government will need self-employment in the UK to thrive when the lockdown eases. Ensuring that the self-employed are adequately protected is vital. The UK Government needs to understand how effective its measures are. To do so, the Government should:

Monitor its policy impact, sampling different self-employed occupations and groups to assess how well the new measures are working.

If gaps and weaknesses in policy come to light from this information, quickly adjust the measures.

Evaluate the immediate impact of the lockdown on the self-employed, recognising that different types of self-employed - e.g. part-time and fulltime, new and long-established - will likely be affected in different ways.

Seek to identify the coping strategies and safety nets that the different groups of self-employed are using to address their fall in income and sources of work.

Prepare now to track the longer-term impact of the crisis on the attractiveness of self-employment for all, but especially young and highly qualified, workers.

Taking these actions now will go a long way to supporting the future of self-employment in the UK. These actions will help assure existing and prospective self-employed workers that the government understands the risks and reality of self-employment and is still on their side.

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warwick institute for employment research

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Do the self-employed have a future in the UK? Blog by Chris Warhurst

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For nearly two decades self-employment has been an important source of job growth for the UK economy. However the coronavirus crisis has highlighted how risky it is being self-employed. Current UK Government measures to support the self-employed might not be enough to stop a flight from self-employment once the crisis ends.

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Trade Union Congress - Insecure work

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Introduction: the impact of insecure work

The TUC brings together more than 5.5 million working people who belong to our 48 member unions. We support trade unions to grow and thrive, and we stand up for everyone who works for a living. Every day, we campaign for more and better jobs, and a more equal, more prosperous country.

Trade unions have led the fight against insecure work but in the face of government inaction the numbers experiencing it remain stubbornly high.

When estimating the number of people in insecure work the TUC includes:

those on zero-hours contracts

agency, casual and seasonal workers (but not those on fixed - term contracts)

the low-paid self-employed who miss out on key rights and protections that come with being an employee and cannot afford to provide a safety net for when they are unable to work.

Insecure work also highlights prevailing structural inequalities. Our research shows that one in six (14.6 per cent) of Black and minority ethnic (BME) workers is likely to be in insecure work. This compares to 11.1 per cent of white workers in this position.

This matters because insecure work has an enormous effect on workers. The prospect of having work offered or cancelled at short notice makes it hard to budget household bills or plan a private life.

It also further distorts power in the workplace. If you are reliant on the whims of a boss for your next shift you are far less likely to complain about conditions, let alone ask for a pay rise.

Previous polling for the TUC has shown that employers are increasingly willing to offer shifts at short notice to workers on zero-hours contracts. In 2021, research for the TUC found that:

84 per cent of these workers have been offered shifts at less than 24 hours notice; and

more than two-thirds of zero hours contracts workers (69 per cent) had had work cancelled at less than 24 hours notice.

most zero hours workers only took on this type of contract because it was the only work available.

Successive Conservative governments have failed to honour promises to improve conditions in insecure occupations which have blighted the labour market, especially since the great financial crisis that began 15 years ago:

The government commissioned the Taylor Review on modern working practices which reported in 2017 - but has failed to implement most of its recommendations.

On dozens of occasions ministers promised an employment bill to help those on zero hours contracts and who can't access flexible work but with no action in the 2022 Queen's Speech, now appear to have abandoned this commitment.

With the economic outlook seeming gloomy, there is a strong risk that, without action, there could be a repeat of past recessions where those in insecure work bear the brunt of job losses and worsening pay.

Unions have led the fight for better conditions for insecure workers. Unions have secured collective agreements at platform operators, such as Uber and Deliveroo, to raise the floor of conditions. And they have fought to bring back in-house public contracts that rely on insecure contracts.

For their part, instead of focusing on tackling insecure work, ministers have launched a succession of attacks on trade unions. This has included imposing an annual levy on trade unions, introducing measures that will enable strikers to be replaced by agency workers and upping the damages employers can claim if unions inadvertently breach complex rules on industrial action.

There needs to be a rebalancing of rights in the workplace so that those in insecure work can secure the decent pay and conditions that they need. As a start this should include:

Ending the abusive use of zero-hours contracts

Allowing unions access to workplaces to discuss the benefits of joining a union, mirroring practice in New Zealand.

Introducing fair pay agreements to raise the floor of pay and conditions in sectors with insecure work.

The extent of insecure work

Who is in insecure work?

TUC analysis of Labour Force Survey data shows that 3.7 million people are in insecure work. This amounts to around one in nine of the workforce.

Occupation

Nevertheless insecure work is widespread many traditional roles.

Due to issues with the data in the family resources survey we were not able to produce analysis of the insecure work data breaking it down by occupation and region this year. However, we have data from the previous year.

Our 2021 analysis showed that nearly one in four (23.1 per cent) of those in elementary occupations including security guards, taxi drivers and shop assistants are in insecure work. It is the same for more than one in five (21.1 per cent) of those who are process, plant and machine operatives. Very large numbers of those in the skilled trades and caring, leisure and other service roles are also in precarious employment. This compares to just one in 20 (5 per cent) of those in professional occupations and a similar proportion (5 per cent) of those who undertake administrative and secretarial work.

Region

Likewise, in every region of England and in Wales and Scotland a significant number of workers are in insecure work.

Our analysis published in 2021 shows that it is particularly prevalent in Wales (13.4 per cent) and in Northern Ireland (12.2 per cent).

Gender

Patterns of insecurity vary significantly between men and women.

Overall, there are two million men in insecure work, more than the 1.7 million women in the same position. This equates to 12.1 per cent of male workers and 10.9 per cent of female workers being in insecure work.

When it comes to employees (so excluding the self-employed), women are more likely to be in insecure arrangements. Some 7.5 per cent of female employees are in insecure work, as opposed to 5.9 per cent of male employees.

However, men are significantly more likely to be in low-paid self-employment. There are 1.2 million men earning less than the minimum wage for their age group compared to 640,000 women.

Ethnicity

TUC analysis of official data shows that BME workers are far more likely than white workers to be in insecure work.

Our analysis found that one in six (14.6 per cent) BME workers is in insecure work. This is far ahead of the 11.1 per cent of white workers in the same position.
Source: TUC analysis of Labour Force Survey 2021 Q4 and Family Resources Survey 2020/21
Black women have long been particularly badly served by the labour market.

Our research shows when looking at employees alone, BME women are more than twice as likely as white men to experience insecure arrangements. One in 9 BME women are insecure employees compared to one in 19 white men.

Our analysis also shows that 2.4 per cent of white men are on zero-hours contracts. This is barely half of the 4.7 per cent of BME women who experience these precarious arrangements.

Conclusion and recommendations

The publication of the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices five years ago could have provided the basis for useful reforms to improve the lives for those in insecure work.

Instead it has been added to the list of missed opportunities that have left workers poorer and less secure.

As our analysis shows, insecure work remains stubbornly high, afflicting the lives of millions of workers and their families.

Throughout the last 15 years, unions have fought hard for workers at the sharp end of the labour market.

But ministers have done their utmost to hobble their efforts. Even in recent weeks as the living standards crisis has spiralled ministers have introduced more anti-union measures designed to hamper their ability to fight for their measures.

To ensure that every worker has a decent job, government should:

Strengthen collective bargaining

Unions should have access to workplaces to tell workers about the benefits of union membership and collective bargaining (following the system in place in New Zealand).

The government should establish new fair pay agreements, where unions and employers negotiate across sectors to set minimum standards, starting with hospitality and social care. New Zealand is currently legislating to introduce this system, widespread across Europe, into its labour market.[7]

We need new rights to make it easier for working people to negotiate collectively with their employer, including simplifying the process that workers must follow to have their union recognised by their employer for collective bargaining and enabling unions to scale up bargaining rights in large, multi-site organisations.

The scope of collective bargaining rights should be expanded to include all pay and conditions, including pay and pensions, working time and holidays, equality issues (including maternity and paternity rights), health and safety, grievance and disciplinary processes, training and development, work organisation, including the introduction of new technologies, and the nature and level of staffing.

Government must also repeal the Trade Union Act 2016, which frustrates workers' efforts to defend their jobs, pay and conditions, and should not proceed with regulations designed to allow agency workers to strike break.

Upgrade rights and protections

In addition to new collective rights to enable workers to deliver decent work through their trade unions, we need a significantly strengthened set of employment protections. These must include:

a ban on zero hours contracts through a right to a normal-hours contract and robust rules governing adequate notice of shifts and compensation for cancelled shifts

an entitlement for all workers, including agency workers, zero-hours contract workers and casual workers, to the same floor of rights currently enjoyed by employees; these rights should be available from day one to all workers.

a statutory presumption that all individuals will qualify for employment rights unless the employer can demonstrate they are genuinely self-employed

penalties for employers who mislead staff about their employment status

A ban on Umbrella companies

Stronger collective consultation rights, including extending these to workers as well as employees and significantly stronger protection against unfair dismissal to protect against fire and rehire

Stronger flexible working rights, as set out in the section above on long-covid.

The introduction of mandatory requirements to report on the pay gaps for Black, disabled and LGBT+ workers.

Maintain the government's commitments to a level playing field with European countries enshrined in the Trade and Co-operation Agreement.

Increase enforcement

For rights to be effective, they require enforcement. To tackle the challenges faced by workers the enforcement system needs further long-term resources, to end the counterproductive relationship with immigration enforcement which scares workers from reporting exploitation, and to make use of more innovative methods of enforcement, which are becoming common in other countries.
Government should:

address the inadequate funding of the state-led enforcement system. The system needs further long-term resources, more inspectors, more proactive investigations and more enforcement actions. We fall well short of the benchmark established by the International Labour Organisation. To hit the ILO benchmark of one inspector per 10,000 workers, the UK would need 3,287 inspectors. There are currently 1,490. Another 1,797 labour market inspectors need to be recruited.

Sever the ties between immigration enforcement and employment rights enforcement. Currently, there are close working relationships between employment rights enforcement agencies and immigration enforcement. Intelligence sharing and joint investigations are commonplace. Joint working should cease and a firewall between immigration enforcement and employment rights enforcement agencies should be established.

Traditional employment relationships have become increasingly fragmented, with business strategies, such as franchising, outsourcing, lengthy supply chains and the use of labour market intermediaries enabling organisations to shirk their employment rights obligations. Large contractors should be liable for breaches of core employment rights in their supply chains.[9]

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Insecure work - Why employment rights need an overhaul

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It is notable that five years after the report of the Taylor Review of modern working practices that most of its flagship measures remain unimplemented. And the employment bill ministers repeatedly committed to appears to have been shelved. We need a new approach that restores power to workers to negotiate better rights.

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DCMS creative industries economic key findings

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1. Employment

The number of jobs in the Creative Industries (including both creative and support jobs), increased by 3.2 per cent between 2014 and 2015 to 1.9 million jobs. This was an increase of 19.5 per cent since 2011.

Total jobs in the Creative Economy across the UK has increased by 5.1 per cent between 2014 and 2015 (2.8 million to 2.9 million jobs) and by 19.6 per cent since 2011.

In 2015 there were 2.0 million jobs in Creative Occupations, a 4.9 per cent increase since 2014 and 19.2 per cent higher than 2011.

These increases compare with a 2.0 per cent increase in the total number of jobs in the wider UK economy between 2014 and 2015, and 6.3 per cent increase since 2011.

Table 1: Employment in the Creative Industries

1.2 Geographic distribution by region and devolved administration

The Creative Industries accounted for 1 in 17 (5.8 per cent) of all jobs in the UK in 2015. It ranged from 1 in 30 jobs (3.2 per cent) in North East to 1 in 8 jobs (11.5 per cent) in London. Almost a third (30.8 per cent) of Creative Industries jobs were based in London.

In 2015, across the whole of the UK, around 1 in 11 jobs (9.0 per cent) were in the Creative Economy. This ranged from 1 in 18 jobs (5.5 per cent) in Northern Ireland to 1 in 6 jobs (16.4 per cent) in London.

These were all similar to last year.

1.3 Qualifications

More than half (59.9 per cent) of jobs in the Creative Industry in 2015 were filled by people with at least a degree or equivalent, compared to 32.7 per cent of all jobs in the UK

In 2015, 1 in 11 jobs in the UK held by graduates was in the Creative Industries.

Between 2014 and 2015, there was an increase of 24,000 (2.2 per cent) in the number of jobs in the Creative Industries held by individuals with at least a degree or equivalent.

Across all industries in 2015, 62.5 per cent of jobs in Creative Occupations were filled by someone who had at least a degree or equivalent.

The Creative Economy and Creative Industries employ a lower proportion of women than the wider UK economy. In 2015:

37.2 percent of jobs in the Creative Industries were filled by women.

36.1 per cent of jobs in the Creative Economy were filled by women.

47.1 per cent of jobs in the UK as a whole were filled by women.

1.5 Ethnicity

In Creative Industries in 2015, 11.4 per cent of jobs were filled by BAME (Black and Minority Ethnic) workers.

The number of BAME workers in the Creative Industries increase by 7.0 per cent between 2014 and 2015 (43.9 per cent since 2011), compared with a 2.8 per cent (17.9 per cent since 2011) increase for White workers in the Creative Industries.

Of all jobs in the Creative Economy in 2015, 10.9 per cent were filled by BAME workers, a similar level to the UK economy (11.3 per cent).

Since 2011, there was a 38.2 per cent increase in the number of BAME group jobs in the Creative Economy. The increase for the White group was 18.5 per cent.

1.6 Socio-Economic Class

In 2015, 91.8 per cent of jobs in the Creative Economy were done by people in more advantaged socio-economic groups (NS-SEC 1-4), compared to 66.0 per cent of jobs in the wider UK economy.

More advantaged groups made up 91.9 per cent of jobs in the Creative Industries.

2. Exports of services

The value of services exported by the UK Creative Industries in 2014 was £19.8bn, an increase of 10.9 per cent from 2013.

Exports of services from the Creative Industries accounted for 9.0 per cent of total exports of services from the UK in 2014.

2.2 By Creative Industries Group

In 2014, exports of services from the 'IT, software and computer services' was responsible for the largest proportion of service exports from the Creative Industries (44.6 per cent).

Exports of services from the 'Film, TV, video, radio and photography' industry were the second largest proportion in 2014 (accounting for 23.8 per cent).

'Publishing' had the greatest percentage increase between 2013 and 2014, increasing by 62.8 per cent to £2.1bn.

Table 2: Total value of exports of services from the UK Creative Industries, 2009-2014

2.3 By continent and market of interest

Europe was the continent in receipt of the majority of exports of services from the UK Creative Industries in 2014, with 57.3 per cent of the total exports of services by UK Creative Industries (£11.4bn).

The USA was the market of interest in receipt of the greatest proportion of exports of services from the UK Creative Industries in 2014, with 25.3 per cent of the total exports of services by UK Creative Industries (£5.0bn).

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High Fliers Graduate Jobs Market 2022

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The relationship between cultural value and economic value lies at the heart of the creative industries and is crucial to the lives and work of every artist and creative practitioner. The value that creative businesses aim to create is not only financial, but also cultural and social and they are often motivated by strong ethics. This has a significant effect on how they function as businesses.

It is however a complex and varied relationship, much contested and, perhaps, often misunderstood. David Throsby attempted a thorough examination of this relationship in Economics and Culture.[1] It is also central to more recent research carried out by NESTA[2] and the AHRC [3] . Such enquiries and analyses have begun to develop a more expansive and richer language and set of concepts for thinking and talking about the connection between cultural and economic value. Our discussion panel 'How Can Creative Businesses be both Ethical and Profitable?' (University of Greenwich, 3/5/17) sought to contribute to this ongoing discussion, with a particular focus on social value, understanding the latter to constitute an important form of cultural value.

The three contributors to the panel each occupy a particular position with regard to cultural and economic value:

Sheeza Ahmed Shah is the co-founder of The Up Effect, a crowd funding platform for social enterprises. Before they accept a business onto their platform, The Up Effect staff scrutinize its business and social impact plans to determine whether they are mutually supportive and add up to a coherent package. They are looking for businesses with a clear social purpose, which also have a viable and scaleable revenue model. Sheeza is clear that social impact is only achievable and sustainable to the extent that a company can make money and grow.

Seva Phillips manages NESTA's Arts Impact Fund, which supports cultural organisations in developing their social aims and making sure that the cultural value that they create has social impact. Seva stressed that, to be successful in this endeavour, organisations need to be clear about motivation - why they want to achieve a social impact in the first place, outcomes - what exactly the change is that they want to achieve, and accountability - how they will evaluate whether they have achieved these outcomes.

Florence Magee is Head of Artist Development at SPACE and Programme Manager of the London Creative Network. Her role is to help individual content creators, such as artists, photographers and crafts people, to strengthen the sustainability and increase the capacity of their businesses. The majority of people she works with do not currently make a living from their creative practice alone, but sustain it financially through income from other work. Sustainability and growth in this context mean helping people to maintain their arts practice and to develop its profile, but not necessarily to derive their main income from it.

Our panel thus represented a broad spectrum with regard to the aims, objectives and context of cultural production with a social purpose and it became clear that certain aspects of business and creative production mean different things in different contexts. While Sheeza's platform helps companies to grow in terms of scaleability and expanding their size and customer reach, for the individual cultural content makers that Florence works with, growth does not so much mean expanding the size of the company (many of her clients are sole traders) as increasing the cultural value of their work - in terms of their profile, the venues in which they exhibit, the publications in which they publish and so on. This increase in cultural value, she points out, is what will increase financial value. Furthermore, while the companies who crowd fund on The Up Effect explicitly define themselves as social enterprises, most of the practitioners who Florence works with would not categorise their practice as having a social purpose, despite the fact that ethics and politics may deeply motivate their work and how they approach it. Their values may be embodied and expressed in their work but they would not generally produce a specific plan for the social impact of their work. Social value is likely to be implicit rather than explicit.

At the same time, Seva pointed out, ethics is becoming something that consumers and audiences want to buy into. Ecological sustainability, fair trade and employment practices and social activism have the potential to translate into financial value and to be advantageous to a company in the marketplace. Large corporations are as aware of this as are social purpose startups. This is why Bank of America Merrill Lynch are investors in NESTA's Social Impact Fund.

Both Seva and Sheeza stressed that social enterprise is in fact becoming a crowded market and it is vital that part of the social impact that a social purpose company achieves is to tell its story effectively and to make this story a central part of its brand. At the same time, this story needs to genuinely reflect the core mission of the company, not be simply a marketing strategy. This is not easy to get right and is something that large corporations often get wrong in social media campaigns, as Colette Henry recounted in a previous Creative Conversation. There are, in general, some obvious pitfalls inherent in the monetization of social value and care must be taken to get the balance right.

Another issue that arose in discussion was the lack of equitable reward structures to encourage the development, sharing and exploitation of original and innovative ideas. Creativity and innovation are buzzwords in contemporary culture, not only in the creative arts, but in government and across all business sectors. However, it is often the case that, while artists and other innovators generate cultural and social value through new ideas and practices, the financial value is realized by other agencies, which have the resources to scale up and monetise these ideas. Sometimes this may be the result of a fruitful and equitable partnership, but, as ideas are not in themselves protectable intellectual property, this is often not the case.
Some Conclusions and Further Questions
As expected, the wide ranging discussion threw up more questions than it answered. Social impact has clearly become a central focus for discussions about the relationship between cultural and economic value. At its most basic level, this is because evidence of social impact has become something that customers will pay for, making it an easily identifiable and measurable signifier of the correlation between economic and cultural value. This is largely a positive development. Adam Arvidsson has written about the way that businesses may become more and more dependent on 'productive consumer publics' for their value in the marketplace, giving such publics the power to 'set the values that are attributed to consumer brands.' [4]

However, if 'economic impact, often defined more narrowly than conventionally understood by economists, has become the principal way for proponents of arts and culture to argue its economic importance,' [5] so too the application of too narrow a definition of social impact and/or an overemphasis on its monetisation or cost effectiveness (an important consideration with regard to the introduction of the Public Services Social Value Act) would be unhelpful. This would have the effect of straitjacketing, rather than developing and encouraging creative and social practice.

At the same time, the prevalence of discussion around community interest, social purpose and social impact could and should encourage creative practitioners and businesses to think more about how relevant this might be to what they do. Many creative practitioners and companies may not immediately think of themselves in these terms, but, on reflection, might find that they do operate according to strong ethics and are creating social value or have the potential to do so. Building this more explicitly into their strategy could help their business and the local and wider communities of which they are part.

Questions that seem particularly pertinent to explore further, with regard to how creative enterprises might practically develop their cultural, social and financial value, include:

Cultural content producers tend to channel creativity and develop original ideas at the level of content, while pursuing traditional business models for their sector, e.g seeking public funding, focusing on increasing the cultural value of their work through existing institutional frameworks. Should they perhaps also be focusing on developing original and creative approaches to their business model itself? If so, what might these be?

What more equitable reward structures might be developed to encourage the development, sharing and exploitation of original and innovative ideas? How might artists and other creative practitioners develop forms of expression for early stage ideas and creative practices that give them a status as cultural assets with a definable and tradable value?

Crowd funding is an example of how digital technologies can be used to catalyze and motivate users to come together to form a customer base that is simultaneously a community. What other ways might there be to achieve a scalable convergence of market place and community ? For example, a multitude of online hosting platforms exist - for websites, video, audio, designs, online stores etc. - to facilitate marketing and distribution of creative work. To what extent are these helping creatives to create viable businesses? Where are the opportunities for increasing cultural and social impact and profit? How might such approaches perhaps address the two questions above?

[1] Throsby, D, Economics and Culture, C.U.P 2001

[2] Bakhshi, H, Measuring Cultural Value, NESTA 2012

[3] Crossick, G & Kaszynska, P, Understanding The Value of Arts and Culture, AHRC 2016

[4] Arvidsson, A, ephemera: theory & politics in organization, Volume 13(2): 367-391, 2013

[5] Crossick, G & Kaszynska, P, Understanding The Value of Arts and Culture, AHRC 2016

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How can creative businesses be both ethical and profitable?

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The relationship between cultural value and economic value lies at the heart of the creative industries and is crucial to the lives and work of every artist and creative practitioner. The value that creative businesses aim to create is not only financial, but also cultural and social and they are often motivated by strong ethics.

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Video

Working together

We invite you to join a movement to help us better understand the role that culture plays in our lives. You might be thinking about how you can better evaluate the impact of your work, or how you can use research insights and critical reflection in your practice. Keep in touch to hear about resources, events and opportunities to shape our research and get involved.

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Video We invite you to join a movement to help us better understand the role that culture plays in our lives. You might be thinking about how you can better evaluate the impact of your work, or how you can use research insights and critical reflection in your practice.

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An interesting talk about the importance and value of social networks...listen right to the end!

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Nicholas Christakis: The hidden influence of social networks | TED Talk

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We’re all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits -- from happiness to obesity -- can spread from person to person, showing how your location in the network might impact your life in ways you don’t even know.

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Leadership in the arts and culture sector

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World Economic Forum skills needed for jobs 2025

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World Economic Forum skills needed for jobs 2025

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Education

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Jonathan Watkins has led Ikon for over 20 years, joining the gallery in 1999. Previously he worked for a number of years in London, as Curator of the Serpentine Gallery (1995-1997) and Director of Chisenhale Gallery (1990-1995).

He has curated a number of large international exhibitions including the Biennale of Sydney (1998), Facts of Life: Contemporary Japanese Art (Hayward Gallery, London 2001), Quotidiana (Castello di Rivoli, Turin 1999, Tate Triennial (2003), Shanghai Biennale (2006), Sharjah Biennial (2007), Negotiations (Today Art Museum, Beijing 2010) and the Guangzhou Triennial (2012). He was on the curatorial team for Europarte (Venice Biennale, 1997), Milano Europa 2000, (Palazzo di Triennale, Milan 2000), and Riwaq (Palestinian Biennial 2007). He curated the Iraqi Pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2013 and Floating World, Bahrain in 2017. In 2019 Watkins was the curator of Small Between the Stars, Large Against the Sky, the 9th Manif d'art Quebec City Biennial.

Jonathan Watkins has written extensively on contemporary art. Essays have focused on the work of Giuseppe Penone, Martin Creed, Semyon Faibisovich, Yang Zhenzhong, Noguchi Rika, Oliver Beer, Beat Streuli and Cornelia Parker. He was the author of the Phaidon monograph on Japanese artist On Kawara.

Jonathan Watkins has served on numerous committees and boards, most recently for the Imperial War Museum (2011 - 2016), Arts Council Collection Acquisitions Committee (2011 - 2013) and 14-18 Now: First World War Centenary Cultural Programme (2013 - 2017). He won the 1992 Prudential Award for the Visual Arts, UK and in 2013 was nominated as one of the top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine. In 2019 he won the Inaugural Ampersand Foundation Award to realise the exhibition of his dreams ( Carlo Crivelli, 2022).

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Jonathan Watkins has led Ikon for over 20 years, joining the gallery in 1999. Previously he worked for a number of years in London, as Curator of the Serpentine Gallery (1995-1997) and Director of Chisenhale Gallery (1990-1995).

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Mike Mounfield - Projects Manager

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Projects

Since the BID's formation in 2009, we have designed, funded and delivered a range of projects for the betterment of the District. From improvements to the public realm, such as new squares and outdoor seating, to the running of Birmingham's largest food festival, Colmore BID is dedicated to improving the area for those that work, live and visit.

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Since the BID's formation in 2009, we have designed, funded and delivered a range of projects for the betterment of the District. From improvements to the public realm, such as new squares and outdoor seating, to the running of Birmingham's largest food festival, Colmore BID is dedicated to improving the area for those that work, live and visit.

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How Shopify powers micro brands and digital boutiques

There is a lingering dismissiveness about SMEs, too often imagined as a collective of dodgy plumbers, hipster brewers and semi-pro bakers. But all the evidence suggests they are an economic powerhouse, driving massive growth, innovation, and job creation. SMEs can also allow people to work and prosper, to some degree, on their terms and if they are lucky, do something they love and are passionate about.

Back in 2006, Tobias Lütke had that kind of passion (and as far, as we know, has it still). Based in Ottawa, he wanted to set up an online snowboard shop and reach a wider audience than a physical store would allow. He found the digital tools available to be complicated, cumbersome and expensive.

Out of that frustration came the online retail platform Shopify, which has revolutionized the sector, making it much easier, and more affordable, to set up direct-to-consumer businesses and for physical retailers to make the move into e-commerce.

Shopify is famously simple and super-intuitive to set up and run and has become the go-to platform for retail entrepreneurs. The company sells itself as a champion of independent business. "Our goal is to not only level the playing field for independent businesses but tilt it in their favor - turning their size and agility into a superpower," Lütke has said. And the consensus is that when it comes to supportive retail partner platforms, Shopify good, Amazon bad.

Shimona Mehta, Shopify's managing director EMEA, describes it as a "mission-driven company", and insists that mission is to "make commerce better for everyone".

"We're here to remove the barriers to people starting and scaling businesses, from 'hello world' all the way to IPO," she says. "We democratize entrepreneurship".

Shopify, now used by millions of retailers around the world, has just released an economic impact study-and it provides startling evidence of SME economic vigor (Shopify defines small businesses as merchants with less than $2.5m in sales).

According to the report, Shopify merchants supported 5 million jobs last year. Collectively, that would constitute the largest workforce in the world. Shopify's partner retailers-digital and physical, mostly both-drive more than $444bn in global economic activity, a 45 percent increase from 2020. Again, collectively speaking, that would make them the second largest company in the world.

Crucially, successful SMEs often contribute to the success of other SMEs. Shopify's "partner ecosystem" which includes everyone from designers, developers, accountants, and marketing experts to logistic providers, supported 656,000 jobs last year and generated $32bn in revenue. Shopify calls that economic ripple the "Shopify Effect".

"That ripple effect means the impact of entrepreneurship extends far beyond individual businesses," says Mehta. "We firmly believe that the UK economy and global economies are stronger with a greater diversity of independent businesses. These businesses are showing resilience and adaptability and they are vital for communities."

It is that knock-on job creation the report identifies which gives Mehta the greatest satisfaction. "If you look at how much difficulty economies have been going through, and will continue to go through for a while-to know that we can fuel small businesses, that they can continue to grow and support jobs in the communities around them, that's by far the thing I'm most proud of," she says.

Of course, like many companies in the e-commerce space, Shopify had a "good pandemic". With physical stores closed, many small retailers had to pivot quickly to establish an online business. And now, like many pandemic winners, it has hit something of sticky patch. Its share price has plummeted as growth has slowed. It posted a net loss of $1.4bn for the first quarter of 2022.

Shopify argues that profitability is not a priority right now, and it is continuing to invest in developing the tools that level or tilt the playing field for smaller retailers. "The last couple of years have just reinforced that sense of mission and allowed us to really think intentionally about where we invest to ensure that we are there for merchants," says Mehta.

The share price drop is, one suspects, largely down to short sighted investors who simply expected the pandemic-driven exponential growth of e-commerce to continue at the same pace. E-commerce is still growing and Shopify is still growing, just at a slower rate than it has been. And the fundamentals are sound.

The reality is that physical retail has rebounded as it was inevitable it would. And Shopify is not just an e-commerce enabler, but is increasingly dedicated to helping integrate physical and digital retail in ways that make sense for retailers and for their customers, developing services such buy-online, pick-up-in-store (BOPIS).

"We need to ensure that people are taking advantage of the physical world and are set up for success in brick and mortar," says Mehta. "That they're creating the right physical experiences and the right, connected, omni-channel experience for their customers. We need to be able to empower merchants to understand deeply where their customers are, how they want to interact with you, and then to be able to build the best possible experiences in those places."

As Accenture's Andrew Carlisle says, as e-commerce does more and more of the heavy lifting in sales terms, the role of a brand's physical store is as much about establishing brand identity as shifting product. "Retailers have been adapting physical space for alternative uses as consumers migrate to digital, and one of these models is the store as a marketing platform." he says. At the same time, more and more digital-only, direct-to-consumer brands are realising the importance of a bricks-and-mortar space, temporary or permanent, in forging brand loyalty. "This change has also allowed digital-first brands to migrate into physical, creating pop-up and experiential concepts that amplify their digital presence," says Carlisle, managing director - commerce lead for UK and Ireland, Accenture Song. "It is these digitally native brands, targeted at a particular niche or customer problem, that Shopify is doing such a good job of powering."

Carlisle argues that these entrepreneurial SMEs are "Re-shaping both the retail and consumer goods sectors, adapting at pace to the needs of the customers and thinking differently about the linkage between digital and physical experiences."

The new prize retail space, he argues, is social media and, again, Shopify is investing in helping new and existing customers develop "social commerce" while expanding the burgeoning "creator economy".

"We're empowering people to own their brands and their influence," says Mehta. "We want to support creators who have got a passionate following they inspire, inform and entertain. That could be musicians creating their own fashion labels, or launching bespoke online stores, or beauty lovers starting their own beauty brands. We want people to be able to extend their brands and monetize them through social commerce."

Earlier this year, Shopify launched Linkpop to support just that kind of social media-based entrepreneurship, essentially letting creators and influencers sell directly from their "link in bio" page. "Creators and merchants can not only host all of their important brand-building links in one place, but they can also start to launch social storefronts to sell directly on the platforms that they're in," says Mehta. "They create conversion through the social media app, rather than having to drag people away."

Nor is Shopify standing still when it comes to moving things around. It has just spent $2.1bn on the US logistics company Deliverr, its largest acquisition to date. The pandemic has only sharpened consumer demands for quick, reliable delivery and easy returns-while making clear what a fragile business logistics can be.

The deal will help Shopify merchants rationalize physical and online inventories and make for smarter, quicker and more local fulfilment, which is good for the customer and, in reducing delivery distances, good for the environment. And on that note, Shopify has made a serious commitment to reducing or removing the emissions created by all that movement of merchandise.

The Shopify Sustainability Fund has invested $32m in startups and scale-ups pioneering new ways to permanently remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Crucially, it is the key, and sometimes only customer to these emerging companies, providing revenue as they invest in new carbon-eating tech and processes. The fund's spending makes Shopify one of the largest corporate purchasers of long-term carbon removal globally.

Shopify is a democratizing enabler for business, a platform for the skills, passions and insight of others. It encourages people with a good idea to run with it, removing much of the friction that might slow them down or stop them in their tracks. And it is proving, in business terms, that small is mighty.

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How Shopify powers micro brands and digital boutiques There is a lingering dismissiveness about SMEs, too often imagined as a collective of dodgy plumbers, hipster brewers and semi-pro bakers. But all the evidence suggests they are an economic powerhouse, driving massive growth, innovation, and job creation.

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But at an experimental level, changes can happen on a smaller scale. Trialling technologies tactically, in parts of the business to assess their effectiveness, can be a crucial step to a more iterative transformation which mitigates risk while delivering a pace of change that may chime more comfortably with the business.

Andrew Cameron, risk analytics leader at PwC UK, says: "With this more experimental approach, we're talking about point solutions, and adopting a particular application or technology. Being more data-led, for example. It's a different order of magnitude to existential reinvention."

This approach is more accessible: You can play it like a venture capitalist, making enough safe bets to chart a more iterative path to innovation. Testing and experimentation are encouraged across the board, but remember that famed "fail fast" mantra while you do it. "In Silicon Valley, they have a culture of failing fast and embracing failure," says Cameron. "But that is a challenge for most organizations, even if you're not a tech company."

Twenty years ago, it might have been unfathomable to try out new tech on the fly-both in terms of cost and reputation-but now it's much more realistic. "That's one of the beautiful things about technology: Its flexibility has made it much easier to try things out, see how it goes and see what it can do in a way where risk is mitigated and managed," says Cameron. "And if it's not working out, you've still got the resources to adapt and try again."

This experimentation cannot be for its own sake.

"It all has to have a purpose," says PwC's Cameron. "And ultimately, that purpose has to be about creating a very simple, satisfying and productive interaction between you and your customers or your people. That's actually an incredibly hard thing to get right, so experimentation and adaptability is key"

The answer to many of these challenges is about so much more than understanding technology.

"Overcoming emotional and rational risk aversion is about how you quantify and communicate the strategy and rationale for change, before delivering it," says Cameron. "It's about building trust, delivering resilience and sustained outcomes, and creating a culture that understands risk but knows how to anticipate, mitigate and manage it."

Balancing act: Why Tech Will Always Need the Human Touch

You can read more about tech risk

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Balancing Act: Why Risks are Worth Taking

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But at an experimental level, changes can happen on a smaller scale. Trialling technologies tactically, in parts of the business to assess their effectiveness, can be a crucial step to a more iterative transformation which mitigates risk while delivering a pace of change that may chime more comfortably with the business.

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The ethics of 'charity' on tiktok

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An influencer approaches a homeless man and asks him for a dollar. “Sorry to bother you,” he says, explaining that he needs the money to catch a train home. The homeless man, bearded, pushing his possessions down the street, reaches into his sock and pulls out a ten dollar bill. Then: His mouth falls open in shock. The influencer has revealed that, actually, he doesn’t need a dollar at all. Instead, he wants to give the man $500. He hands over a stack of cash. The men hug.

This encounter was captured in a Tik Tok video uploaded in February by Zachery Dereniowski, known to 9.3 million followers as @mdmotivator. On his channel, Dereniowski regularly approaches strangers, pretends to be in need, and asks them for a small sum. If people are kind and willing to help him, he returns their money and rewards them with hundreds of dollars crowdfunded from his followers. After adding a schmaltzy soundtrack, Dereniowski shares the resulting clips with millions who find them moving and motivating.

Dereniowski’s videos are part of a larger genre in which TikTokkers “test” members of the public with money and reward those who are deemed to be “good.” The hashtag #honestytest has 51.5 million views on the platform—among other tests, creators drop bundles of cash in front of people as a “social experiment,” filming them to see if they’ll pocket the money (some of these people are experiencing homelessness; many of these videos are clearly staged). Ultimately, “dishonest” people are embarrassed in front of millions of viewers, while “honest” people are rewarded financially.

Unlike other TikTokkers, Dereniowski isn’t big on shaming—his channel mostly focuses on the people who help him and are rewarded as a result. Consequently, his videos are hugely popular: 38.6 million people watched the encounter with the bearded homeless man, while 69.9 million watched him give $500 to a man in a wheelchair asking for help with his rent money (despite being in need, the man gave Dereniowski a quarter when asked).

Other creators have had comparable success with similar clips: @steven_schapiro earned 26.2 million views on a May TikTok entitled “Asking Strangers for Gas Money, Then Giving Them 100x Back!!,” while on YouTube, “BigDawsTv” earned 1.5 million views in March when he posed as a homeless man, asked strangers for money, and gave them back 100 times whatever they donated.

For many, it can be hard to see the downside of rewarding strangers for their generosity; during a cost-of-living crisis, it is warming to see people gifted significant sums of cash. But these videos raise questions about the nature of modern charitable giving.

If the bearded man had been unwilling to give Dereniowski any money, would he have been undeserving of the $500? If a child watches these videos, will they come to believe that any time they give to a stranger, the stranger should give to them in turn? We are now so used to viewing the world through our screens that many of us forget to question the fact that a camera is rolling at all. If someone approaches you on the street, filming you, and asks for money, are you pressured into sharing? Should vulnerable people have to perform for viewers before they’re deemed worthy of help?

“I think these videos can create narratives about how we should help the deserving poor,” says Yale professor Michael Kraus, a social psychologist who specializes in the study of inequality. “But actually all are deserving, and individual acts of charity are not a solution for poverty.” The “deserving poor” is an archaic concept, codified in England’s Elizabethan poor laws, that was designed to distinguish between people in poverty who were to “blame” for their situation, and those who weren’t, and therefore were entitled to help. TikTokkers that reward helpful homeless people arguably entrench the idea that certain people are more worthy of welfare than others.

Kraus is troubled by these TikToks. “They strike me as deeply dehumanizing. Do the people in the videos consent to being used this way? For that amount of money can they consent?,” he asks. “If they would have said no, would they be any less deserving of compassion? I think the answers to these questions are troubling.”

Still, other academics note that these videos could have a positive effect on the viewer. Pat Barclay is an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Guelph who studies “competitive altruism” and the ways it can be harnessed to promote generosity. Barclay says TikToks like Dereniowski’s can show children that “it pays to help others,” and it is also “safe” to do so. He adds that these videos could encourage viewers to give to strangers in need.

“If we see someone be helpful and then get acknowledged for it, then we’re more likely to be helpful in turn,” he says. “This raises the standard of what’s expected from us: We can’t just sit back and be selfish curmudgeons if others are so helpful—we look stingy by comparison. So this makes observers need to ‘up their game.’”

Arguably, though, influencers themselves benefit the most from these videos—earning fame and fortune for their deeds. Deborah Small is a psychology professor at Wharton who studies charity, morality, and prosocial behavior. Small has researched the ways in which we judge others’ motives for charitable giving—ultimately, we are cynical of people with seemingly selfish motives. But, she notes, when people donate money online and tell others about it on social media, “it’s good for the charity,” as it promotes other donations.

“We’re trying to encourage people to tell other people about their generous deeds, when people are reluctant to do that because it seems boastful and inauthentic,” Small says. “Is it right or wrong to share your charity? If you’re thinking about what it means in terms of your motive, it seems wrong—but if you think about it in terms of the impact it can have, it seems like the morally right thing to do.”

Videos like Dereniowski’s, then, could arguably have a positive impact, inspiring viewers to give to those in need. From a purely consequentialist standpoint, those who receive the money have had their lives changed regardless of an influencer’s motives (and the complex questions about charity raised by the encounter). Yet as these videos become even more popular—in late May, Dereniowski was interviewed on the chat show Piers Morgan Uncensored—we should be wary of their potential impact. At their worst, such videos could lead viewers to “test” homeless people before offering them money, entrenching archaic ideas about the deserving poor. At their best, they promote individual charitable acts over larger structural and political change.

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Charity TikTok Videos Put an Uncomfortable Spin on Morality

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HonestyTest videos, which reward people for being “good,” show a skewed view of who deserves kindness.

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In places that are not major arts hubs, sustaining an art career can be difficult, which is why artists in these places often move to other cities where it's easier to make a living. Some cities, however, are finding ways to retain those local artists by cultivating the conditions that allow them to support themselves by making art. But how does it work?

The World Cities Culture Report 2018 cited some of the ways culture is currently fostered, like mobile arts venues in Hong Kong and refugee artist residencies in Paris. In a vacuum, however, none of these efforts give rise to a self-sustaining arts scene. That requires a network of interconnected and interdependent actors and entities. Artists, funders, collectors, institutions and communities must achieve a symbiosis. There is no single way to do it (it's more art than science) but there appear to be conditions that give rise to a creative ecology.

Fellowships that retain artists

You can't have a sustainable art scene without artists. But before emerging artists can make a living off of their art, they need time to develop-and the financial security to do so. To this end, several fellowship programs are designed to retain new and lesser-known artists who may otherwise be forced to move to bigger art hubs in search of funding or other creative jobs.

The decade-old Kresge Artist Fellowship offered by the Kresge Foundation awards fellowships to artists from metro Detroit. Each fellow receives a $25,000 "no strings attached" grant along with a full year of professional practice support that includes workshops, networking opportunities and seminars. The "no strings" component is key. By letting the artists themselves decide how to best spend the money, the grants allow them to use the funds to pay bills and other expenses so they have room to work. As Detroit recovers from economic devastation, rising rents are displacing some artists -many of whom were pivotal in revitalizing derelict areas of the city. The fellowships help ensure they can stay there.

It appears to work. The Kresge Foundation released an impact study of the model, which found that "over 75 percent of these artists reported that fellowship funds were used to support critical life and art making expenses-from paying for burial expenses of a family member to replacing a roof on a house; from creation of an outdoor sculpture garden to travel to broaden horizons and make new contacts."

"We are dedicated to solving systemic challenges that have historically impacted artists and arts workers," says Tulsa Artist Fellowship Director Carolyn Sickles, adding that the fellowship positions fellows for homeownership and offers education in business practices for the arts. "Tulsa is becoming a place where arts practitioners-many for the first time-are living healthy and sustainable lives."

At the same time these fellowship programs allow local artists to stay local, these creative professionals contribute to a more sustainable and diverse economy at home. In its 2015 findings on the economic impact of the nonprofit arts and culture industry, Americans for the Arts found that the sector generated $166.3 billion in economic activity and supported millions of jobs. The $27.5 billion in revenue to local, state, and federal governments from this industry exceeded the $5 billion in arts allocation. "This study puts to rest a misconception that communities support arts and culture at the expense of local economic development," the report concluded.

Grassroots arts infrastructure

Making sure artists can afford to live in their home cities is one part of the equation. Cultural institutions to help make their work better known are another. But not every institution needs to be the Bilbao-sometimes smaller works just fine.
Guatemala City
"Operating from a context where there is hardly any support for the arts, be it private or public, one of the things we have been most focused on is supporting and empowering our artists' visions so as to develop their work in the best possible way, whilst simultaneously participating in international art fairs to promote their work and generate a favorable economy for them and for the space," says Benchoam.

Community-oriented galleries and unconventional exhibition spaces allow artists to create art that reflects their culture. Proyectos Ultravioleta, for instance, provides more than just a gallery for artists. It shares space with Creatorio Artístico Pedagógico (CAP), which offers weekly programs on art history, art making and critical thinking for teens so that they can pursue artistic careers in Guatemala City, too.

While the influence of grassroots arts organizations on communities can be hard to quantify, there is evidence that thriving culture is important in connecting people to the place where they live. Over three years, concluding in 2010, Gallup and the Knight Foundation interviewed a random sample of 400 adults in 26 U.S. communities. They found that the availability of arts and cultural opportunities was rated higher than other social offerings in influencing their attachment to their communities. In 2012, the Third Sector Research Centre at the University of Birmingham released its own study on grassroots arts activity in the U.K., and found that arts groups "played a key role in sustaining and promoting community identity."
Lagos
Lagos, Nigeria, has also met the challenge of a lack of major arts institutions with a network of galleries and grassroots arts spaces, propelled by the 2017 launching of the Lagos Biennial and the 2016 founding of , the first international art fair in West Africa. As in a 2019 article, artist-run spaces in Lagos have been pivotal in keeping artists there, too. The first Lagos Biennial took over a disused railway yard, and the Revolving Art Incubator, tucked into the back stairwell of a shopping mall, has hosted installations and artist talks with visitors hanging out on the stairs. Tushar Hathiramani, the founder of the 16/16 and H-Factor arts spaces, , "The absence of art infrastructure means that artists are going around finding rogue ways to show their art, sometimes in very random places."
Tehran
"It's important to have an annual art fair in Tehran because of the same reason it's important to have art fairs in many other cities," says Maryam Majd, director of Teer Art Fair. "The Iranian art scene is very vibrant and it needs an art fair for a more focused and extensive exposure." It's also vital for networking with foreign collectors, gallerists and art enthusiasts who travel internationally or locally to the fair. "This way they can see many galleries gathered under one roof," Majd added. "This also improves the infrastructure for establishing other art events such as biennials."

Loans for collectors

A sustainable creative ecology supports not just artists, but buyers, too. This September, Belgium's Kunst Aan Zet is launching in Flanders and Brussels . The government program offers collectors interest-free loans for works costing between €500 to €7,000 (USD$560 to $7,800). These loans are only for pieces created by local artists, making them a critical stimulus for artists early in their careers. A recent study by the Flanders Arts Institute revealed that visual artists in the first 10 to 15 years of their careers have some of the lowest incomes in the Flemish cultural sector. "Buying a work of art should be possible for everyone, even if you're not an expert and don't have a big budget," Sven Gatz, Flemish minister for culture, said in a release .

Kunst Aan Zet replicates the proven success of similar long-running loan initiatives, namely Collectorplan in the U.K. and in the Netherlands. Collectorplan, operated by the Arts Council of Wales, offers interest-free loans for the purchase of work by Wales-based artists. One collector told Wales Online that he had purchased over 50 pieces through Collectorplan and had "paid less per month for my paintings than the cost of a meal for two but still have them to inspire and cheer my spirit." The 2018 report on Collectorplan stated that the scheme had generated over £1 million of sales in artists' work over the past year, with 1,181 loans used to purchase art (up from 1,177 in the previous year). KunstKoop, run by the publicly financed Mondriaan Fund, offers Dutch collectors a service to pay for works by living artists in installments as small as €22.50 (USD$25) a month without interest. It currently involves around 125 galleries and continues to expand in supporting the Dutch art market and encouraging a connected system of collectors and artists.

Creative placemaking

A sustainable creative network comes full circle to contribute to the community that originally supported it. This can occur when creative placemaking centers arts and culture within local planning and development.

The California Endowment's "Building Healthy Communities" initiative , for example, has included community engagement with arts and culture in its strategies for transforming 14 of the state's communities now challenged by health inequities. Its 2017 report on "Approaching Community Health Through Heritage and Culture in Boyle Heights," created with the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, examined how a pilot project in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights revealed the importance of cultural assets, including ones that might not be immediately recognized, like street vendors contributing to a sense of identity and home. Considering what is meaningful for the neighborhood is especially relevant as there have been recent anti-gentrification protests over art galleries being established in the predominantly Latino area.

In 2011, ArtPlace America launched as a 10-year collaboration to bring together a diverse network of foundations, federal agencies and financial institutions. With $104 million invested so far, it is focused on growing creative placemaking by involving the arts and culture sector in community planning, not necessarily solely to support art projects, but to employ creative skill sets in solving current issues.

"From 2018-2020, with the goal of building a stronger creative placemaking field, we are building on this work in three ways," says Adam Erickson, Director of Communications at ArtPlace America. These three initiatives are supporting local practice by transferring the oversight of funds to local leaders, sharing knowledge and resources within local networks like higher education and community development practitioners, and bringing together creative placemaking individuals so they can work together to share ideas. "Each of these areas will require partnerships with organizations that share our values and goals of creating healthy, equitable, and sustainable communities and to help strengthen the field of creative placemaking," says Erickson.

This story is part of a collection called Art is Everywhere: Stories of artists making a living in unexpected places. Read more here.

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In places that are not major arts hubs, sustaining an art career can be difficult, which is why artists in these places often move to other cities where it's easier to make a living. Some cities, however, are finding ways to retain those local artists by cultivating the conditions that...

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Richard Florida - economics & creativity

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Why Creativity is the New Economy - Richard Florida

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Bourdieu - Social Capital

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Castells 1996

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social capital

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Strong and weak ties

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As we head into 2021, Worklife is running our best, most insightful and most essential stories from 2020. Read our full list of the year's top stories here.
For nearly 10 years, I have spent my Monday evenings attending rehearsals for my amateur choir. Mondays are not my favourite day, and I often arrive in a bad mood, but by the end of the rehearsal, I usually feel energised. The singing does me good. So do the people. With a few exceptions, I wouldn't describe my fellow choir members as close friends; most of them, I barely know at all. We exchange brief chats, smiles and the odd joke - but that's enough for me to come away feeling a little better about the world.

There is no choir practice now, and won't be for a long time. I miss it. In lockdown, I don't feel short on affection or emotional support, but I do feel short of friendly faces and casual conversations. Another way of putting this is that I miss my weak ties.

In 1973, Mark Granovetter, a sociology professor at Stanford University, published a paper entitled The Strength of Weak Ties. It went on to become one of the most influential sociology papers of all time. Until then scholars had assumed that an individual's well-being depended mainly on the quality of relationships with close friends and family. Granovetter showed that quantity matters, too.

One way to think about any person's social world is that you have an inner circle of people whom you often talk to and feel close with, and an outer circle of acquaintances whom you see infrequently or fleetingly. Granovetter named these categories "strong ties" and "weak ties". His central insight was that for new information and ideas, weak ties are more important to us than strong ones.

Granovetter surveyed 282 Boston-based workers and found that most of them got their jobs through someone they knew. But only a minority got the job through a close friend; 84% got their job through those weak-tie relationships - meaning casual contacts whom they saw only occasionally. As Granovetter pointed out, the people whom you spend a lot of time with swim in the same pool of information as you do. We depend on friendly outsiders to bring us news of opportunities from beyond our immediate circles - and so the more of those acquaintances we have, the better.

As the coronavirus changes our routines to interact with fewer people on a daily basis, we shrink our network of important weak-tie relationships (Credit: Alamy)

The coronavirus pandemic may have a direct impact on people's weak ties, and the benefits they reap from them. Companies that have been forced to change working practices by the crisis may end up making a permanent shift toward home-working and virtual workspaces. Although workers stand to benefit in many ways, including increased flexibility, one possible downside of this change is that it shrinks our social networks.

Physical offices enable not only formal face-to-face meetings, but they also function as spaces for chance encounters with our professional weak ties - in other words, people with whom we do not work closely but whose work has an impact on our own.

Some companies specifically design their offices in order to generate serendipitous meetings among employees from different departments. This was the idea behind the Pixar building, the design of which was overseen by Steve Jobs. The building has a large central hall through which all employees have to pass several times a day. Jobs wanted colleagues to bump into each other, grab coffee and shoot the breeze. He believed in the power of these seemingly random conversations to fire up creativity.

Encounters with weak ties can be good for our mental wellbeing, too. When Gillian Sandstrom was living in Toronto as a graduate student in psychology, she often had to walk between two university buildings, passing a hotdog stand on the way. "I'd always smile and say hi to the hotdog lady," she says. "We never even had a conversation, but I felt recognised, I felt connected - and that made me feel good."

That episode inspired Sandstrom, now a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Essex, to investigate the extent to which people derive happiness from weak-tie relationships. She asked a group of respondents to keep a record of all their social interactions over the course of several different days. She found that participants with larger networks of weak ties tended to be happier overall, and that on days when a participant had a greater number of casual interactions with weak ties - say, a local barista, a neighbour, a member of yoga class - they experienced more happiness and a greater sense of belonging.

Even seemingly unimportant encounters, like buying lunch from the same familiar face each day, can buoy you (Credit: Alamy)

Lockdown is making such encounters rarer for all of us. Weak-tie interactions happen when we are out and about, particularly when we're taking part in an activity of some kind, like singing or cycling. A 2016 study, for which psychologists recruited respondents from Italy and Scotland, showed that regardless of nationality or age, people who were members of groups such as sports teams or church communities enjoyed an increased sense of meaning and security. And the more groups of which they were members, the better.

Right now, most clubs and communal groups are banned from holding events, and may not be able to resume for a while. We're not regularly strolling down busy streets or bumping into people in cafés and bars. That means we're missing out on low-cost, low-stakes conversations. "Sometimes it's harder to talk to people we know well because those conversations come with an emotional burden," says Sandstrom. "Weak-tie conversations are lighter and less demanding."

They are also a source of novelty, at a time when the days can all feel the same. Sandstrom shared a story about a colleague who has a weekly video chat with her family. "She says they're running out of things to say, because nobody's doing anything right now."

As Granovetter's work showed, we get much of our new information from weak ties. That provides stimulation but also, in a time of uncertainty, guidance on how to behave. For instance, by engaging in a wide variety of conversations with weak ties, people can learn about how to cope with the various difficulties of life under lockdown.

As we spend more time interacting with only strong-tie relationships, we begin to miss out on lighter conversations that can be less demanding and burdensome (Credit: Alamy)

For all these reasons, we should continue to try and find ways to cultivate weak-tie relationships, in lockdown and beyond. Even under conditions of social distancing, our more distant friends are important to us. "We're all curious to see how others are coping, what they're doing, to help us figure out how to behave," says Sandstrom.

Social media, she points out, is a useful substitute for weak-tie conversations. We can use it to reach out to people we don't know well for light, but meaningful interactions. She adds that we can also engage in more weak-tie-style interactions with our strong ties, checking to see how people are without engaging them in a full conversation. The goal, says Sandstrom, is to let others know you are thinking of them without asking for a great deal of time, energy or attention.

After this pandemic has passed we should take care to rebuild our networks of casual acquaintances. We can learn a lot from talking to people we barely know.

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Why your 'weak-tie' friendships may mean more than you think

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As we head into 2021, Worklife is running our best, most insightful and most essential stories from 2020. Read our full list of the year's top stories here. For nearly 10 years, I have spent my Monday evenings attending rehearsals for my amateur choir.

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Granovetter's 'strong and weak ties'

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Economic and Cultural Capital...through lunch

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Brilliant key text...

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