Module Aims: This module explores the multiple organisational forms in the creative industries and cultural sectors. The purpose is to give students critical and practical tools to organise in the creative sectors of the economies. Rooted in the ethical mission of the School of Business and Management, the organising methods and organisational forms and behaviours common and emergent in the creative industries and cultural sector will be explored through an interdisciplinary understanding of creative ecologies and networks. While the creative and cultural industries continue to grow, students undertaking creative ‘industries’ courses in universities often lack a firm orgnisational knowledge of the industries and sectors that have survived into a postneoliberal era. Given that organisation affects the operation and structure of the businesses in which they hope to be employed, students will engage with practitioners and arts organisers. Courses typically emphasise the practicalities of production, or a more academically focused critique of media theory. Too often, little attention is paid to the organisation of business practice and administration in and as art and culture. This module, seeks to address this gap and to provide you with the relevant organising methods/conceptual tools and factual information necessary to understanding critically the multi-scalar institutional contexts of the creative economies. Specifically, this module aims to give you a multi-faceted examination of the organisational structures of the cultural/creative industries and explore through contemporary examples and case studies the practical and theoretical implications for organising in creative economies. It uses a range of analytical tools from sociology, OB, history, communications theory, political economy, Black radical, decolonial, and queer postcolonial studies, and cultural studies, and draws on teaching, research and professional expertise from QMUL's academics and practitioners working in the field. Some of the questions we aim to answer during the course of the module include the following:
How have creative industries been organised historically and for whose benefit, in whose interests?
What are organisational and social science methods that can inform a critical management studies approach to the history and ethics of the cultural sector and cultural industries?
How did organisational models develop with global capital, and with new media technologies? What can/can't we learn from detailed case studies? How are such business models co-created, devised, implemented, and transformed?
How have creative industry firms developed different organisational capacities through historically specific techno-ecologies?
What are the effects of different policy initiatives on the creation of new, more democractic, just, and equitable organisational forms and practices in the creative industries?
Hence the module is designed to provide students with the academic and practical skills to secure administrative and business orientated roles in creative and cultural organisations through critically analyzing the specific organisational characteristics of those cultural sectors and creative industries. In order to engage with both employability and relevance, real life case studies will be included throughout to ground learning in the practicalities of arts organising and value generation in the creative industries.
