Future Casting at the Creative Jobs Survival Fair
Along x y axis in which
x= Stability to Flexibility
y= Poverty to Luxury
20 cultural workers have charted their perception of the present (light blue), three years in the past (purple) and plotted their aspirations and desires for the near future (bright yellow).
A Cultural Workers Survival Fair
9 May, 2009
1-5PM
Open to anyone.
Free of charge
Christie’s Education 153 Great Tichfield Street (Oxford Circus nearest tube)
It is a well known but little discussed fact that the so-called ‘creative industries’ are supported by a cadre of free and precariously employed labourers. As the sector becomes increasingly engrained in for-profit endeavors, workers continue to be strung along by old myths and false promises. Including but also expanding on the notion of worker’s rights, The Carrot Worker’s Collective offers a performative investigation into the inter-connections between free labour, precarity in the cultural sector and new policies developing around the creative industries. Staged as a ‘Cultural Workers Survival Fair’, research will be presented and developed through a series of interactive booths, including opportunity to make your own, ‘Tell It Like it Is’ anonymous video testimonials, have your fortune read in relation to the future of creative industries policies in the UK, listen to hourly motivational speeches, and construct your own ‘Ideal Type’ for creative employment.
You may like your internship, but this doesn’t mean that others aren’t being exploited. Nor does it mean that everyone is lucky enough to be living under conditions that will allow them to work for free. Good internship experiences shouldn’t just be for isolated individuals, nor should it only be the lucky few who are able to find paid employment in the field. That said, if you do in fact like your internship, then we welcome you to share your experiences with us to help us to develop a model of good practice.
This is perhaps the most over-used phrase in the internship world. During those three months, which are often extended, some of the adverts claim the successful candidate will carry out duties in either a single department or across the board, gaining an array of different skills. Read More »
SMASH THE CARROT
INTERNS UNITE!
Join the Carrot Bloc at the G20 on Saturday March 28th 2009
Dress for Success – Bring your pashmina and large sunglasses (Carrots and sticks will be provided)
Meet 11.45am under Waterloo Bridge South Bank (by the book market and BFI café) or call 0778 2339529 or 0794 6281841 if lost.
The Carrot Workers Collective is an open group based in London that is concerned with the issue of free labour in the cultural and creative sectors . Many of us work or study in this field, and are preoccupied with the growing phenomenon of unpaid or under-paid labour that is happening under the headings of internship schemes, volunteering, job placements and trainee positions. We are currently working on a participatory action research around voluntary work, internship, job placements and compulsory free work in order to understand their impact on material conditions of existence, life expectations and sense of self, together with their implications in relation to education, debt, life long training, exploitation, and class interest. The carrot that is held out as the incentive, the motivation and the horizon of our present strings us along, pimps our desire and covers over the internship without end. Reclaim your Future! Smash the Carrot!
carrotworkers@gmail.com
The Residencies Intern will assist the Residencies Coordinator on all aspects of XXX’ International Residency Programme. In this role the intern will gain valuable experience of working directly on international artists’ projects, as well as an insight into the administration and organisation of an artistic programme.
- Helping to organise residencies before the artists’ arrivals: communicating with the artists, booking flights, organising accommodation etc.
- Putting together welcome packs
- Acting as artist assistant on resident artists’ projects
- Acting as first point of contact for artist’s queries
- Drafting texts for XXX’ website
- Helping to organise events such as artists’ talks and open studios
- General practical, pastoral and administrative work (repainting studios, filing, developing reports etc.)
This role is two days per week, with an ideal commitment of six months or more.
We regret there is no pay for this role, however interns are offered paid work such as invigilating, bar work, extra artists’ assistance when possible.
Please send a cover letter and CV by email ONLY
Starting date: As soon as possible
Article questioning the importance placed on work by the Left.
[in French]
from: http://www.mouvements.info/spip.php?article157
Par Robert Castel
QUESTIONS QUI FACHENT.
Le travail doit-il être au centre de tout projet de gauche ? Face à l’exaltation du travail par la droite, la gauche doit imaginer un nouveau compromis social dans lequel les droits des travailleurs conserveraient une place centrale. 27 septembre 2007 La droite développe depuis quelques années une apologie du travail qui doit nous interroger. Elle s’est affirmée à travers les critiques des lois sur la réduction du temps de travail, qui ont parfois frôlé l’hystérie. « La France ne doit pas être un parc de loisirs », déclarait Jean-Pierre Raffarin, alors Premier ministre, durant l’été 2003. La France est en déclin, elle est en passe de devenir la lanterne rouge de l’Europe parce que les Français ne travaillent pas assez, ont répété les représentants de la majorité gouvernementale. Pendant la campagne présidentielle, l’exaltation de « la France qui se lève tôt » par Nicolas Sarkozy et son slogan « Travailler plus pour gagner plus » ont été des éléments déterminants du succès du candidat de la droite.
Cette situation est paradoxale, parce que le travail a d’abord été une valeur célébrée par la gauche. Outre Marx, qui lui a donné sa formulation la plus radicale, tous les courants du syndicalisme et du socialisme ont fait du travail le fondement de la dignité de l’homme en société. Le travailleur est le principal producteur de la richesse sociale, il doit être reconnu dans la plénitude de ses droits sur la base de son travail, et son statut est supérieur à celui des représentants des « classes de loisir », qui tirent leurs privilèges de l’exploitation de la force de travail.
Que ce double discours puisse être tenu en fonction d’orientations politiques opposées signifie qu’il repose sur deux conceptions non seulement différentes mais antagonistes de la valeur travail. Un point doit être souligné : c’est la droite qui développe une conception inconditionnelle et illimitée de la valeur travail. Travailler est un
impératif catégorique car, outre qu’il est nécessaire pour produire les richesses, le travail accomplit l’exigence morale de ne pas devenir ou rester un assisté.
Cette célébration du travail va de pair avec la stigmatisation des « chômeurs volontaires », RMIstes et autres bénéficiaires de prestations sociales, qui sont des « parasites sociaux », figures actualisées de ces « mauvais pauvres » condamnés pour être réfractaires au travail, même si le travail manque. Dès lors, il faut travailler pour travailler, sans être trop regardant sur les conditions et la rémunération, quitte à devenir un travailleur pauvre, dont la condition n’est guère reluisante, sans doute, mais qui a le mérite d’obéir à l’obligation de travailler, à la différence du mauvais pauvre.
De fait, on voit se développer depuis quelques années, parallèlement à cette exaltation inconditionnelle du travail, cette catégorie de travailleurs pauvres pour lesquels le travail n’assure plus les conditions de base de l’indépendance économique et sociale (à la limite, on peut travailler et coucher dans sa voiture, ou même dans la rue).
C’est aussi l’institutionnalisation de formes dégradées d’emplois, l’installation dans un précariat, en deçà du salariat classique. Cette orientation peut conduire à une société de pleine activité (c’est aussi un mot d’ordre de l’OCDE) dans laquelle tout le monde ou presque travaillerait parce que tout le monde serait obligé de travailler. Pour parvenir à la pleine activité, peut-être suffit-il d’abaisser suffisamment les exigences en termes de droit du travail et de protection sociale tout en maintenant l’impératif du travail. Le chômage de masse lui-même disparaîtrait si tout le monde était contraint de travailler à n’importe quelles conditions. La philosophie sous-jacente à la conception de droite de la valeur travail, c’est la promotion d’une société de pleine activité qui n’aurait pas à être une société de plein emploi, si on entend par emploi un statut garanti par le droit.
À l’opposé, la pensée de gauche a toujours défendu une conception du travail qui associe sa valorisation maximale, en en faisant le fondement de l’utilité sociale et de la dignité de l’individu, et la limitation de son emprise totalitaire sur la vie des hommes, en encadrant le travail par les régulations du droit. La limitation du temps de travail a été la grande revendication de toutes les orientations syndicales, révolutionnaires et réformistes confondues.
Dans l’histoire du mouvement ouvrier, la réduction du temps de travail (la journée de 10 heures, la semaine de 40 heures) a été un objectif de lutte au moins aussi constant et résolu que les revendications pour l’augmentation des salaires. L’idée qui anime ces luttes, c’est que, si le travail est essentiel, le travailleur ne doit pas pour autant perdre sa vie à la gagner. L’espace du travail doit être circonscrit par le droit : droit du travail qui limite le temps de travail et l’arbitraire patronal, et assure un salaire décent ; droit à la protection sociale qui garantit la sécurité des travailleurs y compris hors travail (maladie, accident, retraite).
Ce n’est donc pas la pensée de gauche qui prône une conception inflationniste du travail. Elle a toujours affirmé, et doit continuer d’affirmer, une centralité du travail parce qu’on n’a pas encore trouvé d’alternative pour assurer l’indépendance économique et sociale des sujets sociaux. Mais cette indépendance gagnée par le travail est la condition de l’indépendance dans le hors-travail. La question du temps libre ne doit pas se penser contre, ni même indépendamment de la question du travail. Le travail, s’il est structuré par le droit, est plus que le travail, en ce sens qu’il libère de l’impérialisme du travail. Il libère un temps libre où peut effectivement se déployer la liberté de l’individu, affranchi des contraintes du travail par les ressources et les protections tirées de son labeur.
L’affirmation que l’importance du travail doit demeurer centrale pour la pensée de gauche doit ainsi être assortie de la prise de conscience qu’il y a travail et travail. Entre la conception actuellement mise en œuvre par la droite et celle que doit défendre un projet de gauche, il existe une franche coupure. Le statut de l’emploi élaboré dans la société salariale avait réalisé un compromis relativement satisfaisant entre les exigences de productivité du travail propres au capitalisme industriel et les protections dont bénéficiaient les travailleurs dans le travail et le hors-travail.
Cet équilibre est remis en question par le nouveau régime du capitalisme qui se déploie depuis une trentaine d’années. Il appartient à un projet de gauche d’élaborer un nouveau compromis qui prendrait en compte les exigences actuelles de productivité et de mobilité du travail en leur associant de nouvelles protections pour les travailleurs. Un projet de gauche qui repenserait aussi la question de la réduction du temps de travail. Celle-ci n’est pas une idée périmée, compte tenu des possibles gains en productivité que permettrait une véritable politique de formation des travailleurs.
Un authentique plein emploi ne se mesure pas à l’allongement du temps de travail, qui conduit à la dégradation de l’emploi, mais au contraire à sa réduction. Face à la formule sarkozyste « Travailler plus pour gagner plus », il faudrait rendre crédible une formule du type « Moins tu travailleras et mieux cela vaudra si tu n’as pas envie de travailler plus, pourvu que ton travail t’assure les conditions de ton indépendance économique et sociale ».
from: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/09/408402.html
by Robert Stevens | 09.09.2008 15:33
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The Labour government in Britain has escalated its attack on the unemployed, the disabled and other vulnerable people with an announcement in a green paper to introduce a work for benefits scheme.
The Green Paper—“No one written off: reforming welfare to reward responsibility”—follows the Welfare Reform Act 2007 which will phase out Incapacity Benefit and replace it with Employment Support Allowance. The Act is a wide-ranging attack on millions of the poorest and most vulnerable people who rely on Incapacity Benefit (IB) as their primary social security payment. Currently recipients of the benefit are deemed unable to work due to poor physical or mental health. The government plans to reduce the number of people claiming Incapacity Benefit by one million by 2015.
Among many other changes, the green paper proposes that people who have been on benefit payments for 12 months or more will be required to do four weeks’ work in their neighbourhood, or lose the right to benefit.
Anyone who has claimed Job Seekers Allowance for more than two years will be made to take full-time community jobs in return for their benefit payment and will be required to “sign in” each day. This would mean claimants working a full 35-hour week to earn a £60.50 Job Seekers Allowance payment. This equates to £1.70 an hour, less than a third of the minimum wage.
In a move aimed at the further privatisation of welfare provision, firms in the private sector and voluntary organisations are to be awarded contracts and bonus incentives to find work for those on benefit.
Incapacity Benefit and Income Support are to be ended by 2013 and replaced with the new Employment Support Allowance, which comes into operation in October. All 2.7 million recipients of Incapacity benefit will be forced to undergo stringent tests by doctors other than their own to determine whether they can work.
Under the new proposals lone parents with children aged seven or more will be expected to seek work.
Announcing the Green Paper to Parliament in July before its annual recess, Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell said, “The longer people claim, the more we will expect in return. At three months and six months, claimants will intensify their job search and have to comply with a back-to-work action plan. Work works and it’s only fair that we can ensure that a life on benefits is not an option.”
The measures were immediately supported by the Conservative Party opposition. Leader David Cameron said, “Great—the government has taken up our ideas. I am absolutely thrilled at that. What (Mr. Purnell) has done is very much taken the ideas we came up with in January, that are very clearly thought through and involve tough choices.”
So right-wing and authoritarian are the proposals that Conservative work and pension’s spokesman Chris Grayling told Parliament, “Since these are Conservative proposals we will certainly support them. I know you will have some difficulties getting them through your own party. Can I assure you we will help you get them through this House even if you have a backbench rebellion to contend with.”
The measures lay the basis for a final break with any welfare-state consensus that existed in the postwar period. Remarking on the importance to any future Conservative government, Grayling added, “It’s particularly helpful that they’re bringing them forward now because we always expected the reforms to take a couple of years to prepare before being ready to yield results.
“So in reality what this announcement means is that the next government will inherit a set of proposals that have been turned into action and are ready to bring about real change to our welfare state.”
The Liberal Democrats merely criticised the already “complex benefit system” and called for more “careful thought.” They were most concerned about the effect the measures would have on the private sector.
Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman Jenny Willott said, “James Purnell may think that privatising all back to work support marks out his modernising credentials but it lacks foresight.
“If recession takes hold it may not be profitable for companies to bid for welfare contracts, yet the public infrastructure will have been completely eroded. There needs to be more careful thought about how the market would operate in a severe downturn with rising unemployment.”
The paper is presently going through a “consultation period” to last until October. A legislative paper will then be drawn up by January, with the measures expected to become law in the Spring of 2009.
One of the central priorities of Labour when it was elected in 1997 was to make drastic cuts in state spending on the unemployed and benefits as a whole and that they sought to implement the measures to do so. The report states, “In 1997, we inherited a largely inactive welfare state. For the last 11 years, the Government has gone about transforming it into an active one.”
Lauding its “New Deal” programme the paper boasts, “In return for extra support, young people were expected to take up jobs and training or see their benefits cut. It was the beginning of the end for the idea that people could sit at home and claim benefits if they were able to work and had the offer of a job.”
The paper boasts, “Together with a growing economy, these reforms moved a million people off key out-of-work benefits, including almost halving claimant unemployment. As a result, we are spending over £5 billion less on benefits for unemployed people”.
Whilst lambasting the unemployed for “sitting at home,” the paper makes no mention of why swathes of people were unemployed in the first place and forced to live on a pittance. This was wholly due to the economic and social policies of the previous 18 years of Conservative Party government, which saw tens of thousands of jobs destroyed as part of smashing up nationalised industries in order to facilitate privatisation and drive up profitability.
Upon assuming office Labour continued in the same vein, with the stated aim of creating a “flexible labour market” for Britain’s service sector and a low wage economy for the corporations. The New Deal programme was aimed at forcing the unemployed—especially the young—off welfare benefits into low paid jobs at the newly set minimum wage level.
With its green paper the Labour government is stating that these policies did not go far enough and that further attacks on what remains of the welfare state are required if the British economy is to remain competitive internationally. The document frames the attack on the unemployed as being bound up with “the need for people to get the skills to progress in an increasingly competitive and globalised society.”
“Work for your benefit”
The paper states: “Our objective is a social revolution: an 80 percent employment rate—the highest ever.” This drive to reduce the unemployment rolls is to be based on the creation of a massive pool of cheap labour. Essentially the unemployed and most vulnerable members of society are to be used as a battering ram by employers to cut pay and conditions in general.
There are already 2 million more people employed in Britain than in 1997. Britain has the highest work participation rate of any of the world’s richest nations.
Under the section “an obligation to work,” the paper states, “Throughout the course of their claim their responsibilities will increase. The longer people claim benefits, the more they will be expected to do.”
Anyone who has been unemployed for 12 months or more “will be transferred to a private, public or voluntary sector provider who will be paid by results. No one who completes 12 months with a provider without moving into work could do so without having undertaken at least four weeks of full-time activity.”
Labour outlines the punitive measures to be implemented against the unemployed. In the section “Work for your benefit,” the document states, “We want to send out a clear message that people capable of work but who have not found a job by this stage will be required to work full-time or undertake full-time, work-related activity in return for their benefits.”
Under the section “A stronger sanctions regime,” the paper proposes the loss of up to two weeks’ benefit for those who don’t attend appointments and interviews or to sign on in time.
Those benefit claimants currently receiving Incapacity Benefit will face being coerced into “work-related activity” or have their benefit cut. Up to 40 percent of those claiming Incapacity Benefit are mentally ill or physically disabled.
The paper states, “We will enact powers in the Welfare Reform Act 2007 to require new customers in the Work Related Activity Group to undertake general work-related activity. Customers who do not meet these requirements will have their benefit reduced. We will also extend throughout the first two years of a claim, the period during which new customers are required to engage with us by introducing Work Focused Interviews.”
Those deemed fit enough by a doctor will be moved from Incapacity Benefit to the new £82-a-week Employment and Support Allowance and will be expected to look for work.
Private sector to bid for contracts
The paper outlines the further privatisation of welfare under a new “Right To Bid” scheme. Private companies will be able to bid for lucrative contacts and be paid for the number of people they dragoon into employment, whatever form that takes.
Companies that currently deal with the mentally ill provision will, for example, be allowed to run schemes aimed at finding them work. They will then be paid a bonus for each person who finds employment.
These measures were first proposed in March 2007 by David Freud, an investment banker hired by the government to advise on welfare policy. He authored the report “Reducing dependency, increasing opportunity: options for the future of welfare to work.”
The previous month Freud had claimed that “up to two thirds of people claiming Incapacity Benefit are not entitled to the state handout.” This included some 1.9 million people who Freud claimed were perfectly able to work, despite being assessed by a doctor and certified unfit for work.
Freud’s comments, which were roundly condemned by organisations representing the mentally ill and disabled, were a deliberate attempt to whip up the media-led campaign denouncing Incapacity Benefit claimants as “fraudsters” and “cheats.”
The Disability Alliance pointed out that Freud’s figures were vastly exaggerated and that the “most recent official figure for incapacity benefit fraud suggests it is below half a percent.”
In his report to the government Freud proposed a “greater use of private and voluntary sector resources and expertise so harder-to-help benefit claimants receive more employment support, particularly existing customers who have been trapped on benefit for long periods of time.” His report recommended “the use of private contractors because no one else could raise sufficient capital. It is proposed that there will be eleven regions, one contractor for each region. Voluntary sector organisations may be subcontracted for certain services.”
The new work for your benefit measures are to be implemented in six pilot areas before being introduced nationwide. These include Greater Manchester and Lambeth, Southwark and Wandsworth in London, inner city areas which have been blighted for generations by poverty, unemployment, an increase in mental illness, low mortality rates and other social ills.
Earlier this year statistics released by the Conservative Party, based on Department of Work and Pensions’ Neighbourhood Statistics, found that 820 out of 1,074 working-age adults in Falinge and College Bank, two districts of Rochdale in Greater Manchester, were claiming out-of-work benefits. The figure of 76.4 percent was the highest in the country.
According to the figures there are 60 wards (local districts) of Britain in which more than half of all adults are unemployed and on benefits. The statistics were seized on by the national press and highlighted as an example of “welfare culture.” The Sun described Rochdale as the “the scrounge capital of the UK.”
Following the release of the figures, Paul Rowen, the Liberal Democrat MP for the town, commented on the widespread poverty and social misery, “You cannot destroy British manufacturing and expect it will not also destroy some of our working-class communities.” “Falinge scores highly in all the wrong ways—deprivation, joblessness and ill health. The large-scale shutdown of factories in the ’80s and ’90s has decimated the area.”
Even while posing the question as to whether the residents of Falinge were “feckless scroungers,” the right-wing tabloid newspaper the Daily Express had to acknowledge that a council estate visited by its reporter in Falinge was “a depressing warren of poverty.”
Rochdale, as with most of the towns in south Lancashire, once employed tens of thousands of workers, mainly in textile manufacturing and other industries. Over the past 30 years these have closed, leaving a legacy of unemployment, poverty and ill-health. According to figures by Rochdale Borough Council, “life expectancy for men and women in the Borough is less than the national average and in some wards is ten years less than in other parts of the Borough.”
A Global Citizen Year (GCY)
San Francisco, CA
GCY aims to institutionalize a global service “gap year” for young Americans between high school and college “ fundamentally transforming how they understand and act on their responsibilities as global citizens. In partnership with universities and NGOs, GCY will train, support, and engage a diverse nationwide corps before, during and after their service term. The programme ultimate goal is to create a pipeline of leaders prepared to combat global poverty and injustice throughout their lives.
This is a paper I wrote based on some research done between 2005-07. Big attempt at understanding how CI function, still ongoing… M
What are the Creative industries?
A brief analysis of organization, epistemology, policy and discourse
from the UK mid- 2007
0. Introduction
Key points+ methodology
Background
1. Culture and Industry
The Culture Industry
“Culture”
Cultural Industries and Creative Industries
2. Creative Industries
Definition and Organization
Who are Creative Industries workers and what difference do they make?
The “Creative Class”
3. Creative Industries policy
Intellectual Property
Cultural Policy
Cultural Policy and Open Source
Cultural Policy and Subsidy
Public- Private Partnerships in Art and Education
4. Discourse
Creativity
Innovation
Talent
5. Conclusion: responding and relating
