Access Inequalities in the Artistic Labour Market in the UK: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Precariousness, Entrepreneurialism and Voluntarism

• Author: Marios Samdanis,Soo Hee Lee
• Date: 01 December 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12154
• Published date: 01 December 2019

Access Inequalities in the Artistic Labour

Market in the UK: A Critical Discourse

Analysis of Precariousness,

Entrepreneurialism and Voluntarism

MARIOS SAMDANIS

1

and SOO HEE LEE

2

1

Brunel Business School, Brunel UniversityLondon, Uxbridge, UK

2

Kent Business School,University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

This paper investigates the rolesplayed by social enterpriseand social activism in mitigatingaccess inequalitiesin

the artistic labour market in the UK. Our analysis focuses on underpaid internships as a primary form of access

inequalities. By employing critical discourse analysis, this study contrasts the discourses of entrepreneurialism and

voluntarism advocated by the government and social enterprises, with the counter-discourse of precarity advanced

by social activists. The central argument is that precarity is not simply an innate characteristic of artistic labour,

but is also a socialconstruct and discoursewhich is directly linkedto social class and the experienceof less privileged

creative workers.

Keywords: access inequalities; precarity; social activism; social enterprise; voluntarism

Introduction

This paper investigates the role of social enterprise and

social activism in the UK as responses to precarity in the

artistic labour market since the beginning of the financial

crisis in 2008.It focuses on the precarity of creative work,

as creative employment is ‘uncertain, unpredictable, and

risky from the point of view of the worker’(Kalleberg,

2009: 2). This refers to ‘all forms of insecure, contingent,

flexible work –from illegalised, casualised andtemporary

employment, to homeworking, piecework and

freelancing’(Gill and Pratt, 2008: 3). Scrutinising the

artistic labour market is important because it represents

an exemplar social space in which to study flexible

employment in the era of the global financial crisis,

revealing the ways in which creative workers react to

austerity by generating jobs through entrepreneurship,

and new forms of social organisation that respond to

precarity (Throsby, 2012; Morgan et al., 2013).

This research aims to contribute to the literature on the

precariousness of artistic labour (Menger, 2014;

McRobbie, 2016) by determining the conditions under

which social enterprises are presented as a solution to

precarity. Previous research has described social

enterprises as hybrid organisations that balance financial

sustainabilitywith an embedded social purpose, including

not-for-profit, charity and business organisations

operating in public welfare fields (Teasdale, 2011;

Doherty et al., 2014). Since the emergence of the creative

industries framework in 1997 in the UK, social

entrepreneurship has been promoted by government,

initially by New Labour (1997–2010) as a trigger for

socio-economic development, and then by the

Conservative Coalition governments (2010–2017) in

terms of voluntarism and entrepreneurship.

The role of social enterprise is contested, especially in

terms of tackling inequalities, as critical voices claim that

they often do ‘too little, too late’, describing in particular

government-driven initiatives that support

entrepreneurship (McRobbie, 2011, 2016). In contrast,

social activism, a voice reinforced during the recent

financial crisis,exposes the impact of social organisations

on firms to ‘make decisions in new ways, factoring in

variables that once could be ignored’by applying activist

pressure (Spar and La Mure, 2003: 97). Activism as a

form of resistanceto inequalities provides ‘a fertileground

Correspondence: Soo Hee Lee,Kent Business School, Universityof Kent,

Canterbury,UK. E-mail s.h.lee@kent.ac.uk

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12154

©2017 European Academy of Management

European Management Review, Vol. 16, 887–, (2019)

907

for distributed agency because the heterogeneous actors

within a social movement are collectively interested in

addressing some social problem’(Akemu et al., 2016:

871). While existing research connects social activism

with the creationof socialenterprises, this paper questions

‘how social enterprises and social activists respond to

precariousness in the artistic labour market’.

Critical discourse analysis is employed as a method of

analysing the discourses associated with social enterprise

(entrepreneurship and voluntarism) and social activism

(precariousness), as responses to unemployment and

inequality in the artistic labour market (Chouliaraki and

Fairclough, 1999; Grant and Hardy, 2004; Fairclough,

2010). When the discourses associated with social

enterprise and social activism are placed in chronological

order, three overlapping periods can be identified. In the

first period (1997–2010), the meaningof social enterprise

has been dominated bythe discourse of entrepreneurship,

as cultural policies appropriated social enterprise

instrumentally as a vehicle for economic growth,

employment, community enhancement and urban

regeneration (Garnham, 2005; Gray, 2007; Hesmondhalgh

et al., 2015). However, this version of social enterprise

was instigated by the government in a top-down

perspective which increased precariousness especially

during the financial crisis (McRobbie, 2011, 2016;

McQuilten and White, 2016). In the second period

(2008–2017), social activists have developed the discourse

of precariousness during the financial crisis. They were the

first to expose and criticise access inequalities thatexist in

the artistic labour market, especially for young

professionals coming from less privileged socio-economic

backgrounds (O’Brien and Oakley, 2015). In the third

period (2010–2017), social enterprises have internalised

the discourse of voluntarism which was initiated in 2010

by the newly elected Coalition government, giving rise

to arts employment charities drawing on support from

various stakeholders, such as artists, entrepreneurs,

policy-makers and philanthropists.

This paper contrasts discourses of precarity as

expressed by social activists with voluntarism and

entrepreneurialism as developed by the government and

social enterprises. More specifically, social activists

interpret voluntarism and entrepreneurialism as sources

of precarity, criticising social enterprise as a means of

reducing unemployment. Although social enterprises

mitigate the conditions of precariousness, they cannot

fully tackle inequalities or control the artistic labour

market, as they lack the authority to enforce policies and

rules. Arts employment charities emerged within a new

political climate, in which the third sector took the

concerns of activistsinto account in a neoliberal way.This

paper introduces a conceptual framework which supports

the view that new ways of collective organising initiated

by social activists, in tandem with an enhanced role for

government in regulating the artistic labour market, can

ultimatelytackle access inequalities.The central argument

of this paper is that precarity is not simply an innate

characteristicof artistic labour (Menger, 2014), butis also

a social constructand discourse which is directly linkedto

social class and the experience of less privileged creative

workers.

Precariousness in the artistic labour

market in the UK

The discourse and policy framework of the ‘creative

industries’

The new era for cultural policy in the UK inaugurated in

the 1980s by the Conservative government of Margaret

Thatcher has been largely characterised by ‘the shift from

state to marketacross the whole range of publicprovision’

(Garnham, 2005: 16), which has resulted in a drastic

reduction of public spending on the arts (Pooke, 2011).

Within an environment of increasing privatisation of the

cultural domain, the Labour government elected in 1997

created the Department of Culture, Media and Sports

(DCMS), which introduced the ‘creative industries’as a

policy-making framework (Garnham, 2005). The term

‘creative industries’, as defined by the DCMS included

thirteen industries, such as the visual arts, music, fashion,

architecture, advertising and sport, among others

(Galloway and Dunlop, 2007).

The ‘creative industries’constitute a policy framework

for economic growth, urban regeneration and innovation

in the arts. In the late 1990s, they represented a New

Labour political discourse which contributed to the

rebranding of the UK as a ‘creative nation’(Dinnie,

2015). At that time, the discourse of ‘Cool Britannia’

symbolised a period of optimism and ubiquitous

creativity, in which British cultural products gained

international attention and acclaim (While, 2003). Social

enterprise was the backbone of ‘instrumentalism’in the

creative industries, integratingentrepreneurial endeavours

in the arts with public support in order to achieve

economic, socialand political goals (Gray, 2007; Oakley,

2009b). With regard to the artistic labour market, the

creative industries ensure a continuoussupply of ‘creative

workers’which enhances the UK’s international

competitiveness in cultural sectors (Garnham, 2005).

The ‘creative industries’was initiated as an anti-elitist

discourse, with the aim of controlling the production of

culture, but its implementation was largely influenced by

the vested interests of political and local business elites,

which invested in certain art forms (i.e., contemporary

art) and artists (i.e., Young British Artists) in order to

promote the image of the country abroad (Garnham,

2005; Stallabrass, 2006). This version of social enterprise

M. Samdanis and S.H. Lee

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