Creative Work: Conditions, Contexts and Practices

Andersson Cederholm, Erika (Ed.); Lindqvist, Katja (Ed.); de Wit Sandström, Ida (Ed.); Warkander, Philip (Ed.) Book Creative Work: Conditions, Contexts and Practices Routledge Research in the Creative and Cultural Industries Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: Andersson Cederholm, Erika (Ed.); Lindqvist, Katja (Ed.); de Wit Sandström, Ida (Ed.); Warkander, Philip (Ed.) (2024) : Creative Work: Conditions, Contexts and Practices, Routledge Research in the Creative and Cultural Industries, ISBN 978-1-003-85553-8, Routledge, London, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003402688 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/290431 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ CREATIVE WORK CONDITIONS, CONTEXTS AND PRACTICES Edited by Erika Andersson Cederholm, Katja Lindqvist, Ida de Wit Sandström and Philip Warkander Routledge Research in the Creative and Cultural Industries Creative Work How do creative workers work? This book brings together insights from a range of relevant disciplines to help answer this significant research question. Featuring case studies from the European context, contributors tap into the experiences and practices from creative workers, demonstrating their attempts to navigate a changing environment which affects spaces, identities, and professional roles. As cross-disciplinary re-thinking of work, labour processes and management practices in the creative and cultural industries, the book offers perspectives on the importance of highlighting creative work as a phenomenon and practice beyond a particular industry, market, or public sector. Providing an opportunity to expand our conception of what creative work is, the book draws on studies of a range of activities, practices and sectors that are usually included in the cultural and creative industries as well as ones that are more untraditional. The result is a volume that will interest students, practictioners, and scholars with an interest in the creative industries. Erika Andersson Cederholm is Professor of Service Studies at Lund University, Sweden. Katja Lindqvist is Associate Professor at the Department of Service Studies, Lund University, Sweden. Ida de Wit Sandström holds a PhD and is researcher at the Department of History at Lund University, Sweden. Philip Warkander is Assistant Professor in Textile Management at University of Borås, Sweden. Routledge Research in the Creative and Cultural Industries Series editor: Ruth Rentschler This series brings together book-length original research in cultural and creative industries from a range of perspectives. Charting developments in contemporary cultural and creative industries thinking around the world, the series aims to shape the research agenda to reflect the expanding significance of the creative sector in a globalised world. Advertising as a Creative Industry Regime of Paradoxes Izabela Derda Professionalization in the Creative Sector Policy, Collective Action, and Institutionalization Edited by Margaret J. Wyszomirski and WoongJo Chang Digital Transformation and Cultural Policies in Europe Edited by Ole Marius Hylland and Jaka Primorac Digital Transformation in the Recording Industry Evolution of Power: From The Turntable To Blockchain Anna Anetta Janowska Diversity and Inclusion: Are We Nearly There Yet? Target Setting in the Screen Industries Doris Ruth Eikhof Creative Work Conditions, Contexts and Practices Edited by Erika Andersson Cederholm, Katja Lindqvist, Ida de Wit Sandström and Philip Warkander For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Research-in-the-Creative-and-Cultural-Industries/book-series/ RRCCI Creative Work Conditions, Contexts and Practices Edited by Erika Andersson Cederholm, Katja Lindqvist, Ida de Wit Sandström and Philip Warkander First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Erika Andersson Cederholm, Katja Lindqvist, Ida de Wit Sandström and Philip Warkander; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Erika Andersson Cederholm, Katja Lindqvist, Ida de Wit Sandström and Philip Warkander to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. Funded by Lund University. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Names: Andersson Cederholm, Erika, 1965editor. | Lindqvist, Katja, editor. | Wit Sandstrom, Ida de, editor. | Warkander, Philip, editor. Title: Creative work : conditions, contexts and practices / edited by Erika Andersson Cederholm, Katja Lindqvist, Ida de Wit Sandstrom and Philip Warkander. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Routledge research in the creative and cultural industries | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023044420 (print) | LCCN 2023044421 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032509792 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032515243 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003402688 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Cultural industries. | Creative ability. Classification: LCC HD9999.C9472 C75 2024 (print) | LCC HD9999.C9472 (ebook) | DDC 338.477--dc23/eng/20230928 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023044420 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023044421 ISBN: 978-1-032-50979-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-51524-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-40268-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003402688 Typeset in Sabon by MPS Limited, Dehradun Contents List of Contributors viii Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 ERIKA ANDERSSON CEDERHOLM, KATJA LINDQVIST, IDA DE WIT SANDSTRÖM, AND PHILIP WARKANDER PART I Governing, Organising and Enabling 13 1 Creative Work and Public Policy 15 KATJA LINDQVIST 2 Creative Work in Performing Arts in Sweden: Dreaming of a Joint Performing Arts Lab 32 ANNA LYREVIK 3 Creative Work and Social Innovation: The Case of Innovating in an Open-Air Museum 46 MALIN ANDERSSON 4 Creative Work and Working Space 62 MARTHE NEHL 5 Strategies for Creative Agency in Performing Arts 78 JÖRGEN DAHLQVIST AND KENT OLOFSSON 6 Creative Work and Business Support: Entrepreneuring in a Liminal Space 92 SARA MALOU STRANDVAD, MARIJE MIEDEMA, AND NATHALIE SCHRAM 7 Platforms for Creative Work 107 IDA DE WIT SANDSTRÖM AND MARIE LEDENDAL PART II Sites, Spaces and Performances 123 8 Social Media and the Documentation of Creative Work: New Sites and Insights 125 NADA ENDRISSAT, VIVIANE SERGI, AND CLAUDINE BONNEAU 9 Crime Writing and Social Marketing as Creative Work 142 SARA KÄRRHOLM AND CARINA SJÖHOLM 10 Creative Work and Children’s Books 157 CAROLYN HUNTER AND NINA KIVINEN 11 Performing Creative Work in Public 172 CHARLOTTE ØSTERGAARD 12 Urban Creativity as Site-Specific Creative Production and Career Work 190 SVENJA TAMS AND BRIGITTE BIEHL PART III Relational Work, Enterprising and Precarity 209 13 Creative Work in the Fashion Industry 211 PHILIP WARKANDER 14 Creative Work in the Digital Games Industry 225 MALIN ESPERSSON, MIKAEL BERGMASTH, AND ERIKA ANDERSSON CEDERHOLM 15 Creative Work, Precarity and COVID-19 241 JESSICA TANGHETTI AND FEDERICA VIGANÒ 16 Creative Work and Entrepreneurial Creativity 255 MONICA CALCAGNO AND RACHELE CAVARA 17 Creative Work, Ecopreneurship and Sustainable Lifestyles 272 CECILIA FREDRIKSSON AND FILIPPA SÄWE vi Contents 18 Creative Work and Mental Health 288 SIMA N. WOLGAST AND EVA V. HOFF Epilogue 306 ERIKA ANDERSSON CEDERHOLM, KATJA LINDQVIST, IDA DE WIT SANDSTRÖM, AND PHILIP WARKANDER Index 310 Contents vii Fineman (2012) states that on one hand, what counts as work is personal and idiosyncratic, while on the other hand, this construction is culturally conditioned. Work is inherently social, and at the same time it is a necessity for putting food on the table, as Fineman points out. Pietrykowski (2019) clarifies that the boundaries of work and non-work changed radically with industrialisation and labour markets, and the subsequent changes to the lives of humans and structures of modern society. Evidently, “work” can mean a lot of things, but usually the word denotes some effort. Suzman (2021) points to the many social aspects of work that impact individuals as well as society, and to the important economic forces that work constitutes in contemporary society. “Work” is closely related to words such as “labour” and “job”, and is usually seen as the opposite of leisure. Both these terms indicate efforts in exchange for pay (as in the term “wage labour”). Research into labour has traditionally taken a critical/emancipatory approach to relationships in work contexts structured as markets (Abfalter and Reitsamer 2022). However, the practices and understandings of creative work extend beyond wage labour. One of the foundational ideas of this volume is to explore the fuzzy domain of work in the specific context of creative work. We will shed light on the notion of creative work as unconstrained to a particular industry, market, or public sector. The ambiguity embedded in the concept of creative work serves as both background and subject of this volume. The various chapters set out to explore and analyse conditions, contexts, and practices of creative work, ranging from arts and literature to fashion, the digital games industry, ecological entrepreneurship, and wellbeing. The volume embraces different dimensions of creative work, such as performing creative work, working in creative industries, being creative at work, the creation of artistic work, or the framing of certain professions, groups, and places as “creative”. The different contributions explore and analyse practices and experiences, conditions, and contexts of creative work using various perspectives stretching from artistic research and humanities to social sciences. Established professions and fields of creative work as well as more contested or unrecognised ones are represented in this volume and challenge our understanding of the concept, its boundaries, and its status. Some of the questions raised include: What are the central concerns and considerations among actors engaging in creative work? How do ideas and narratives of creativity play out in the everyday working life of these actors? How is creative work organised, negotiated, and presented? How do dimensions of place and space play a role in the everyday practices of creative work? Creative work as a research field The creative field is an increasingly popular subject for academic research. Beginning with early publications in art history on individual artistic work and oeuvres, today there are numerous titles offering multidisciplinary 2 Erika Andersson Cederholm et al. approaches to cultural and creative work, creativity in work, creative economy, the geography of creativity, and many other themes. Since new disciplines and increasingly cross-disciplinary publications have made overviews of research trends related to creative work difficult, we will only indicate some areas of recent development that relate to the multidisciplinary approach in this book. Both historical, geographical, sociological, and economic studies have looked at creative work now and in earlier times. Sociologists and economists, for example, have studied the production and consumption of arts. In studies of the production of art and related works as well as goods, individual as well as collective creative work is central. Research on how creative work practices change over time has been mapped by, for example, Barrett (2014) and Abbing (2019). These publications have broad disciplinary perspectives on creative work as it is embedded in specific historical contexts. The societal focus is central to many recent publications on contemporary creative work, linking topical challenges such as racism and marginalisation and how these are reflected in contemporary creative work contexts (Campbell 2021; Morrow 2018; White 2017). Geographers have for several decades shown interest in the creative economy and its spatial manifestations and patterns (Cameron 2019; Courage and McKeown 2019; Fernandez-Pol and Harvie 2020; Fusco Girard, Baycan, and Nijkamp 2016; Komorowski and Picone 2020; Landry 2008). There is an increasing number of titles published on innovation, management, and entrepreneurship in the creative field (Beckman 2021; Burnard and Loughrey 2021; Campbell 2021; Faltin 2019; Foster 2018; PellegrinBoucher and Roy 2019; Piber 2020; Wagner et al. 2016). Many of these revolve around antecedents of creativity or are written as handbooks on leadership of creative organisations and creative professionals in cooperation (Cashman and Garrido 2020; Foster 2018; Hewison and Holden 2011; Kolb 2016; Ratten 2022; Varbanova 2017). Collaborative relationships in creative work have also been explored in ways that link organisational and managerial aspects of work (CzarnotaJedrzej 2018) with broader societal trends that have generated interest among urban planners who try to stimulate the creative economy as a regenerative force in metropolitan development (Leorke and Owens 2021; Price and Hawkins 2018). In such publications creative and cultural industries are often described as tools for economic development and societal regeneration (Breitbart 2016; Chapain and Strykjakiewicz 2017; Jelinčić 2017). Studies of creative labour often depart from a critical Marxist analysis, whereas studies adopting the concept of “creative work” can be included in a broader theoretical span. This stream of research builds on an understanding of creative work as a heterogeneous practice characterised by aspirational work and precarity, as well as self-fulfilment and subversive potential (Hesmondhalgh and Baker 2011). Several titles also discuss creative work Introduction 3 indirectly, through discussions of the change in the cultural, creative, or art markets overall. Some of these overviews have a policy perspective (AtecaAmestoy et al. 2017; Bonham-Carter and Mann 2017; Beauregard 2018), others address the role of technological and media innovation (Bouquillion and Moreau 2019; Casey 2016; Halegoua and Aslinger 2016). Departing from the multifaceted concept of creative work, this volume links individual practices and experiences of creative work with the rapidly changing conditions and contexts of this work. The various contributions offer a number of different theoretical perspectives on individuals engaged in creative work; in particular the relationships and embeddedness of creative work in relational networks and how these are experienced by individuals. Several of the chapters in this volume explore the phenomenological aspects of creative work rather than offer causal explanations for individual experiences. This focus is in line with several recent publications (Wagner et al. 2016; Belli 2019; Carr 2019; Deamer 2020; Burnard and Loughrey 2021; Campbell 2021). Creative Work: Conditions, Contexts and Practices offers insights from creative professionals in their attempts to navigate this changing environment which affects spaces, identities, and professional roles. Rather than seeking to explore a specific domain of creative work, this volume offers varying perspectives on a diverse field, linking macro-level changes in technology, economy, and work markets to the individual perspectives, emotions, and strategies of creative professionals. In this way, macro-level studies of the creative economy complement studies of specific creative fields. The agency and contexts of creative work In a society where creativity is a new zeitgeist (Hawkins 2017) or imperative (Reckwitz 2017), this edited volume explores and explains the relationships, structures, and contexts of professional creative activity—of creative work. As we have depicted above, publications on creative industries and more generally the creative economy have grown substantially in the last decade, but analyses of individual or collective creative work have not been studied to any significant extent through case studies in a range of contexts, using a range of perspectives. The volume is published in the Routledge Research in the Creative and Cultural Industries series and contributes to this growing multidisciplinary research field by addressing some of the same cultural and creative industries—such as film, music, and cultural festivals—that have already been explored in previous titles in this series. Important themes within the series have been the focus on cultural management, art markets, and coleadership in culture, which links contributions in this volume with existing volumes in the series (Henze and Escribal 2021; Lazzaro, Moureau and Turpin 2021; Reid and Fjellvær 2023). What separates this volume from previous titles is the wider scope in terms of cultural and creative industries, 4 Erika Andersson Cederholm et al. including case studies ranging from Swedish crime literature to seaweed farming, as well as the multidisciplinary approach to creative work, apparent both in the wide scope of represented research perspectives and the variety of the academic affiliations of the volume’s contributors. The different local and national cases that are discussed throughout the book provide a well-needed complement to a body of literature that usually takes its point of departure from an Anglo-Saxon context. Taking an actor-centred view on practices and experiences in creative work but also contextualising individual experiences, this volume complements the wide range of titles on the creative economy and on creative work on macro (society) and meso (industry) levels. The volume combines studies of creative work processes from participating professionals with analyses of the conditions of creative work in the creative economy, where precarity and project-based work seem simultaneously essential and limiting for professional careers. The volume offers insights into several occupations and fields in the creative and cultural industries, but also into areas that generally are not considered part of this industry, but increasingly position themselves as creative and/or cultural, as these industries have gained increasing interest. The subtitle—Conditions, Contexts and Practice—and the keywords for the three parts of the volume describe the theoretical and analytical ambitions and contributions of the volume. The volume’s three thematic parts differ in scope, and also in what level of creative work they engage with. The first part investigates structures and policies, the second the social and geographical context of creative work, and the third looks at individual practices and interpersonal relationships. In this way, the volume begins by unpacking the general conditions and terms of creative work (as stipulated on a macro-level) and ends by exploring the boundaries of creative work in regard to different industries, as well as the psychological wellbeing of creative workers and cultural agents. PART I: Governing, organising and enabling The first theme addresses issues related to how creative work is managed, organised, and facilitated on different levels of society, by different types of actors. For example, Katja Lindqvist’s contribution analyses how policymakers work to facilitate creative work across non-profit and for-profit activities in Sweden (Chapter 1), while Anna Lyrevik’s case study discusses the dynamic relationships between policy, artistic research, and development work within performing arts institutions (Chapter 2). While studies of public management of creative work often focus on governing and policy perspectives, it is less common to focus on public authorities as performers of creative work. Malin Andersson addresses this issue in her study of an innovation project when a Swedish municipality was creating and launching outdoor offices as a new form of green working Introduction 5 space (Chapter 3). The role of municipalities and local cultural policies in sustaining spaces and places for creative work is further discussed in Marthe Nehl’s study of a self-organised artist-driven studio collective called REHAB Kultur in the city of Malmö, Sweden (Chapter 4). Nehl explores how creative space is co-constituted by different types of actors with both overlapping and differing interests. This is an example of how creative space and creative work can be seen as a contested yet collaborative space. The contested character may challenge how creative work can be managed and organised, which is further explored in Jörgen Dahlqvist and Kent Olofsson’s study of the collaborative theatre production process (Chapter 5). The chapter highlights the issue of who is considered the main creative performer in a creative production team. The authors use three case studies of Swedish theatre production to understand the different phases of artistic processes, showing that these allow for both hierarchical and flat structures, and that democratising creative agency adds aesthetic value for the audience. While the aforementioned chapters discuss the roles of policy on various levels, or collaborative management of creative work, the next two chapters highlight the role of intermediaries or enablers of creative work. Using ethnographic materials from the Netherlands, Sara Malou Strandvad, Marije Miedema, and Nathalie Schram focus on the functions of a business support programme for self-employed workers in the creative and cultural industry (Chapter 6). The authors demonstrate how the business support program functions as a cultural intermediary that assists participants in navigating the in-between space of entrepreneurial expectations and a cultural landscape. Ida de Wit Sandström and Marie Ledendal address another type of intermediary—platforms for creative and cultural work—such as creative hubs or maker’s spaces (Chapter 7). By focusing on the enabling role and everyday work performed by the managers of such platforms in Sweden, the chapter illustrates how creativity and creative work are encouraged and facilitated. PART II: Sites, spaces and performances The second theme addresses issues related to the emotional, embodied, and physical environments of creative work and how creative work is performed and negotiated in various affective–material contexts. Choosing to turn their attention to social media as a specific form of creative space, Nada Endrissat, Claudine Bonneau, and Viviane Sergi analysed how social media can operate as a new kind of workplace for artists, as a place to “work out loud”, while at the same time demystifying the creative work process (Chapter 8). In a similar vein, Sara Kärrholm and Carina Sjöholm study the role of social media in the Swedish crime fiction market, presenting a more commercialised context (Chapter 9). Their chapter demonstrates how Swedish crime 6 Erika Andersson Cederholm et al. writers appear to be at the forefront of crime fiction, not only when it comes to the issue of how to reach international audiences, how to promote books and author’s brands through events, but also how to act as role models in the creation of a successful life as a writer. The different types of workspaces that constitute creative work are further explored by Carolyn Hunter and Nina Kivinen, in their study of authors of children’s books (Chapter 10). They explore how this category of writers experience their profession and their work practices, and the affective components constituting different types of everyday workspaces, such as writing spaces, talking spaces, and publishing spaces. Charlotte Østergaard is also considering the relational and human–material dimension in creating spaces of creativity in a study of how particular costumes, in specific situations, can become vehicles for relational encounters between humans and other forms of materiality (Chapter 11). This is illustrated with the project Community Walk, which was a part of the festival Walking Copenhagen—a festival concept that was developed as a response to the pandemic lockdown in Denmark. This chapter also illustrates a context that is often associated with creative work—the city. Indeed, the creative milieu and cultural vibrancy of cities form important aspects of policy making. However, the creative space of the city needs to be performed and enacted, which Svenja Tams and Brigitte Biehl demonstrate in their chapter on Berlin´s electronic music scene (Chapter 12). This chapter shows how creative production and career work is performed in practice, through site-specific and embodied performances of the creative city. PART III: Relational work, enterprising and precarity This third theme covers the working conditions and the inherent ambiguities of creative work, in both employment and self-employment. Previous research has highlighted the passion and intrinsic value of creative work, as well as the value of social capital for workers in cultural and creative industries, while simultaneously pointing at precarious working conditions. Short-term contracts, the insecurities of freelancing, long work hours, and blurred boundaries between work and personal life are some of the conditions that have been raised in the literature. Continuing this line of research, this theme addresses these issues from various perspectives. Philip Warkander has carried out an ethnographic study of the Swedish fashion industry to analyse the role of social capital in this relational and creative industry (Chapter 13). Malin Espersson, Mikael Bergmasth, and Erika Andersson Cederholm investigate working conditions in the digital games industry and show how game workers navigate between different value spheres (Chapter 14). The chapter sheds light on how the notion of passionate work blurs the distinctions between work and life when it comes to work tasks as well as personal relationships, sustaining loyalty and Introduction 7 friendship at work. It also shows how the passion for creative work obscures an individualised responsibility for precarious working conditions. As previous studies have shown, creative workers often resist unionising or show little engagement in work associations, despite precarious conditions. Jessica Tanghetti and Federica Viganò’s study of performing art workers in Italy confirm this tendency (Chapter 15). However, they also show how this pattern has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Italian culture as a basis for their study, they examine the situation of performing arts workers and how the pandemic broke the tacitly-accepted rules of noncollectivism that had hitherto characterised the sector. Also departing from an Italian context, Monica Calcagno and Rachel Cavara studied small and micro-entrepreneurs in Italy, with particular focus on the single case of a small Italian bookshop (Chapter 16). The chapter demonstrates how the entrepreneurial process, illustrated through the journey of one entrepreneur, moves through a sequence of complex changes and critical turning points, constituting financial and relational challenges as well as opportunities. In this process, the self-identification of the informant as a cultural agent (rather than merely as an entrepreneur) in the local community is shown to be of particular importance. Another form of entrepreneurial endeavour is illustrated in Filippa Säwe and Cecilia Fredriksson’s study of the growing seaweed industry in Sweden, often labelled a sustainable and local type of product, thus interlaced with current and emerging social norms and ideals of working creatively as a green entrepreneur (Chapter 17). The final chapter in this third theme sheds light on the health issues involved in creative work. Eva Hoff and Sima Wolgast focus on the vulnerability entailed by working creatively, such as increasingly blurred lines between work and free time, performance anxiety, and a general lack of support for creative workers (Chapter 18). The terms and conditions of creative work are interconnected with an overarching narrative, where stories of passion for one’s work, sustainable lifestyles, and creative fulfilment are placed in front of financial stability and remuneration. These preconceived notions of creative work, as an expression of a complex and ongoing process, are continuously negotiated, often leading to a blurred line between work and free time. The two sides of this coin may lead to positive as well as negative consequences for the individual worker. This leads back to the core question of what creative work is, exactly: does it need to be carried out in traditional cultural contexts, or can the concept of creative work also be applied to an industry such as seaweed harvesting? What are the driving forces behind working creatively, if the work is not always paid? How can creative work be understood on different levels and from different perspectives, from the policy level to the perspective of the individual worker? The volume contributes to multidisciplinary new knowledge on the conditions and settings for creative work in Europe. This becomes evident not only in the variety of theoretical underpinnings that are used in different 8 Erika Andersson Cederholm et al. chapters, but also in how the chapters are structured. Different academic disciplines have different writing traditions, and so this volume, which contains texts by scholars from different research fields, reflects a wide academic scope in the framing of creative work, both theoretically and textually. References Abbing, Hans. 2019. The Changing Social Economy of Art: Are the Arts Becoming Less Exclusive? Cham: Palgrave McMillan. 10.1007/978-3-030-21668-9. Abfalter, Dagmar and Rosa Reitsamer, eds. 2022. Music as Labour: Inequalities and Activism in the Past and Present. 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Scharff, Christina 2016. The Psychic Life of Neoliberalism: Mapping the Contours of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity. Theory, Culture & Society, 33, 107–122. Suzman, James. 2021. Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots. New York: Penguin Press. Varbanova, Lidia. 2017. International Entrepreneurship in the Arts. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Wagner, Marcus, Jaume Valls-Pasola and Thierry Burger-Helmchen, eds. 2016. The Global Management of Creativity. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. White, Joy. 2017. Urban Music and Entrepreneurship: Beats, Rhymes and Young People’s Enterprise. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Introduction 11 Cultural policy Formal cultural policy in Sweden was established in 1974 as a voluntary extension of the welfare state extending beyond economic security (Lindqvist 2022). Creative work, accordingly, is not at the centre of Swedish cultural policy. At the centre is democratic access to cultural experiences and participation, including individual practice. In Swedish cultural policy, creative work is considered to be work undertaken by trained artists and creative professionals, and there is a specific area of cultural policy dedicated to professionals in this field. This policy subfield addresses issues related to the conditions of producing culture in Sweden, as policymakers have recognised that without professional artists and creatives, there is no guarantee of supply of diverse and high-quality culture to offer inhabitants in Sweden. In other words, creative work is, from the point of view of policymakers in this field, related to activities undertaken within the realm of publicly supported cultural activities. This means that individuals and organisations in the cultural field are considered relevant subjects of cultural policy to the extent that they are engaged in activities that are targets of cultural policy programmes or activities. Such activities take place either in institutions or projects supported by cultural policy grants and allocations, or in similar ways are results of cultural policy initiatives. Consequently, creative work is relevant for cultural policy action only to the extent that it fulfils cultural policy goals and prerequisites. The objectives of Swedish cultural policy are stipulated by Swedish parliament. The current objectives are as follows (from the Swedish Arts Council’s website, see reference list): Culture is to be a dynamic, challenging, and independent force based on the freedom of expression. Everyone is to have the opportunity to participate in cultural life. Creativity, diversity, and artistic quality are to be integral parts of society’s development. To achieve the objectives, Swedish cultural policy is to promote: • Opportunities for everyone to experience culture and education. and develop their creative abilities • Quality and artistic renewal • A dynamic cultural heritage that is preserved, used and developed • International and intercultural exchange and cooperation in the cultural sphere • Equal access to arts and culture for children and youth Swedish cultural policy contains a range of commissions and other programmes that facilitate access to and the production of artistic and creative work, such as commissions for public art and national education in various 18 Katja Lindqvist arts and cultural expressions, based on the above goals. In this sense, policy programmes securing democratic access to culture to a certain extent also offer work opportunities for professionals in artistic and creative fields. These work opportunities, including artist grants, are few in number compared to the totality of income for artists, and are therefore highly competitive. Individual grants, in addition, may not comprise contributions to pension funds, and may therefore not be acknowledged as work income for individual artists. The larger individual national artist grants, however, such as those distributed by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, currently include such contributions. Enterprise 1 policy, including regional development Enterprise policy is what governments do to systematically support the development of business opportunities, including support for innovation, and is therefore linked to several other policy domains such as infrastructure, employment, and regional development (Warwick 2013). Within enterprise policy, the creative field is seen as one industry among many. Where cultural policy in Sweden supports arts, culture, and creativity beyond the market, Swedish enterprise policy aims to support entry into national and international markets and to foster the best possible conditions for pursuing creative (or other) enterprises. In other words, enterprise policy aims to help businesses develop and thrive. The Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation is responsible for government “matters relating to state-owned enterprises, enterprise and industrial policy, rural affairs, and regional development”. Common enterprise policy tools include support for startups including incubators and accelerators; vouchers for innovation or internationalisation work; export facilitation; and venture capital support (Bakhshi, Cunningham and MateosGarcia 2015). Support for cluster development and innovation hubs in collaboration with universities and cluster agents has been another significant element in enterprise policy, much of which has occurred on the regional level (Solvell 2015). Regional development is a policy domain that was previously separate from enterprise policy (or “industry policy”. as it used to be called) in Sweden. Regional development as a policy domain links national governments to regional (subnational) governments in that it has become more and more a task delegated to regions and not the state. Since Sweden joined the EU in 1995, regional development policy has focused on supporting bottomup regional development, shifting the emphasis of this policy domain from redistribution to development based on each region’s own assets and conditions (Niklasson 2015). The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, Tillväxtverket, is the main partner for regions in implementing regional development plans including innovation and enterprises. On its website, the agency describes its role as “promot[ing] sustainable growth and competitive companies in all parts of Sweden … by supporting and Creative Work and Public Policy 19 strengthening companies and regions”. In recent years, regional development plans have increasingly defined culture and creative activities as important elements in regional development, alongside economic growth, a skilled workforce, and attractive living environments. Employment policy Employment policy in Sweden concerns issues relating to the labour market and labour law, including issues of gender equality and non-discrimination. The Ministry is also responsible for the work of advancing gender equality and human rights at the national level. The largest organisation of the employment policy domain is the Swedish Public Employment Office, which implements employment policy on an everyday basis; working with individuals who would like to enter the workplace, either through employment, self-employment, studies, or some other activity offered within general employment policy programmes. Closely linked to employment policy are the social security systems linked to unemployment, unemployment insurance in particular. The threshold to enter the creative work market is relatively low, as there is no need for specific or large investments. At the same time, creative professionals have a high general level of education. This results in a work market that is highly competitive and fragmented, and professionals willing to accept poor and precarious work conditions. In contrast to industries characterised by large companies, the creative field consists of a large number of microbusinesses and self-employed individuals, and a very small number of large organisations, whether they be public or private. Altogether, this means that it is difficult to negotiate work conditions, and many individuals are willing to work part-time or for low income just in order to be able to work in the field (Lindström 2016; Van Assche and Laermans 2022). This characteristic of the creative work market makes it difficult to align with employment policy, since employment policy aims to match individuals with the needs of the labour market. This is probably the reason for the emphasis in policy on enterprise development and market access when it comes to the creative sector. From a policymaking perspective, developing business support for creative professionals and businesses is a way of strengthening the potential of creative professionals to access (labour) markets, as this allows creative professionals more tools to develop their own competence and their own business and work models. Developing employment policy, and in particular social security systems, is a much more complicated matter, and cultural policy cannot be expanded in order to support creative professionals without being criticised. Developing better conditions for creative work at national and subnational level CCI policy was introduced in Sweden in 2010 as a way of integrating cultural and enterprise policy through programmes and incentives facilitating 20 Katja Lindqvist creative work as market venture. The first government action plan for CCI was signed by both the Minister of Culture and the Minister of Enterprise. In its implementation, however, Swedish CCI policy followed traditional forms regarding the division of commissions between agencies in either cultural or enterprise policy domains. Most commissions were coordinated by national agencies within the enterprise field (Lindqvist 2023). Since the 2000 Lisbon Agenda of the European Union, the agency of regions in European countries has been strengthened in relation to the state, since regions have access to EU monetary support for development policy programmes. In Sweden, regions and municipalities have a high level of independence both in relation to each other and in relation to the national government, and all levy their own taxes. There are fewer policy domains at regional level than at national or municipal levels. Besides responsibility for healthcare and regional transport services, regions work in regional development including culture and business, aiming at enabling attractive living and activity conditions for tax subjects (individuals and companies). Just as on national and local levels, regional policy tends to be decided upon in functionally specialised committees and policy programmes tend to be implemented in functionally separated administrative departments. This means that creative work can be part of integrated regional development policy, but will probably be implemented by individual departments receiving specific commissions implemented by regional administrations. Regional development policy implementation is also challenged because it is fragmented and distributed across national and regional levels due to what is called “big” and “small” regional policy (including quotation marks, such as in Dir 1999:2), respectively. As stated in the 1999 committee directive on regional policy (Dir 1999:2): “Small” regional policies are allocated funds within expense area 19 Regional equalisation (utjämning) and development in the state budget. “Big” regional policy refers to activities within other expense areas significant for regional equalisation. Examples of important areas include the communication sector, the educational sector, and the state. Examples of important areas are national subsidy and equalisation systems across municipalities. (Dir 1999:2, unnumbered pages. Translated by the author; quotation marks original.) Even though the concept of equalisation has been replaced by the concept of development in later policy documents, the division of “big” and “small” regional policymaking points to the fact that many elements determining regional economic (and other) conditions and development fall outside of regional and local government control. Regional development is dependent on national policy priorities in a range of domains from infrastructure to education, which means that the regional effects of “big” regional policy are larger than those of “small” regional policies, although subnational Creative Work and Public Policy 21 governments cannot greatly impact the former (Norberg 1999:16). “Small” regional policy tends to consist of business support using regional resources. As a result, when it comes to planning for creativity, governments at the national and subnational levels can make sure that hygiene factors are in place that facilitate the establishment of creative work, from cheap accommodation and digital as well as physical infrastructure to cultural and creative outlets in the form of cultural education for children and adults, whereas direct business development support can be developed more handson to the extent that creative work is prioritised as an industry. Accordingly, what regions and municipalities can do to support creative work is to a large extent dictated by national and municipal cultural, enterprise, and municipal planning policies; but on the margins, tailored support for business development can broaden the road to market engagement for individual creative professionals. This, however, largely builds on voluntary engagement from creative professionals as well as from municipalities and regions. Limits of policymaking, crisis support, and new interest in integrated policymaking for the creative field The COVID-19 pandemic had a massive impact on international cultural and creative sectors (OECD 2020; UNESCO 2021; Khlystova, Kalyuzhnova and Belitski 2022). With it, the income and working conditions of creative professionals became a topic of policy discussion worldwide. The inability of the Swedish welfare system (unemployment and sickness support) to secure a decent level of income for creative professionals also became apparent. Employment policy in Sweden aims to match individuals with the needs of the labour market. The Swedish welfare system was developed during a period of growth of Swedish exports in heavy industry, and bears clear signs of this history. Welfare insurance is based on an individual’s income from employment or their income as self-employed individuals—but not both. This means that it is ill-suited to the way many creative professionals earn their living, often resulting in substantial income fluctuations over periods of time. Substantial amounts of public support were distributed to organisations and individuals in Sweden in order to secure the survival of the field in the period 2020–2022. The drastic reduction in income for creative professionals in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic made policymakers realise the fragility of the creative economy. Besides substantial support to creative businesses and professionals, the Minister of Culture in Sweden commissioned several government investigations so as to have a better basis for future policymaking relating to conditions of creative work. The first government investigation commissioned in 2021 presented a number of policy measures to enable a restart of culture after lockdowns (SOU 2021:77). One of the proposals in the report of this investigation was to develop a ten-year national strategy for CCI. This was something that had been called for by public as well as private stakeholders since the 22 Katja Lindqvist national government action plan for CCI in 2010–2012. A commission for such a national strategy was presented by the Minister of Culture in late 2021 (Dir 2021:100). In a press release on 5 November 2021, the Minister of Culture was quoted as stating that: [t]he cultural and creative industries employ many artists and creative professionals in a range of areas. CCI is a sector that will have a significant impact on the development of society; for example within regional development, export and innovation, as broadly understood. We need a coherent and long-term strategy to promote a sustainable development of these industries in the coming years. With this decision, we take one of the suggestions from the government’s official investigation on the restart of culture towards concretisation. (Translation from Swedish by the author) In the recognition of the complexity of professional careers and business models in the creative field, this ambition for a national CCI strategy comes close to the 2010 action plan for CCI, but goes further in that it indicates a need for more substantial horizontal coordination across policy domains; or, in other words, policy integration. This was perhaps the first time that policymakers explicitly pointed to the limitations of the current welfare system in relation to a professional group that does not fit within the taken-for-granted categories of actors subject to that welfare system. In the investigation report (SOU 2022:44) published in late summer 2022, CCI is described as a matter for cultural policy, enterprise, regional development policy, rural policy, education policy, as well as for trade and promotion policy. Another proposal in the restart investigation following the COVID-19 outbreak was for a second government investigation into solutions for a more integrated social security system for creative professionals in Sweden. This investigation was presented in spring 2023 (SOU 2023:30). As the parliamentary majority changed after the elections in Sweden in September 2022, it is still in 2023 unclear what the new government’s view on the policy proposals will be. A policy or strategy initiated by one government may, due to ideological or other reasons, be downplayed by an ensuing government, and elections therefore represent a risk for any policy proposal (Lindqvist 2023). Is an integrated policy approach to creative work possible? The fact that a strategy is proposed by an investigation committee does not mean that there will soon be a policy in place along recommended lines. This depends both on political priorities and characteristics of the policymaking system and process. For one, the challenges of designing and implementing integrated policy are significant and demand a substantial effort on the part of government across several policy domains (Peters 2006; Skelley 2008). It is not enough that there is a proposed solution to a policy problem for a policy to be designed and decided (Kingdon 1984). There should not simultaneously be Creative Work and Public Policy 23 other significant problems calling for decisionmakers’ attention, since this might lead to the issue at hand becoming down-prioritised. From the perspective of creative professionals, and others who are concerned about the prosperity of CCI, what remains is the option of continuing to lobby for the importance of renewed policy initiatives to facilitate development of CCI. The investigation into a future integrated CCI strategy lists well-known challenges of integrated policy domains, such as silos in government administration. It has also identified important elements to address within a national strategy; in particular copyright legislation and remuneration regulations within the EU, the network structure of the creative field with flexible (precarious) employment and labour market, and the different conditions for CCI work in rural and urban areas. The development of an enterprise-oriented CCI policy—which has until now been the main focus of policymakers in Sweden since 2010—will strengthen support for business development and self-employed individuals working in the creative field. But it does not remedy the gap between welfare systems for employed and self-employed individuals. The first challenge of policy integration or cross-sectoral policy coordination is that horizontal integration and coordination is difficult in structures with strong vertical chains of command and accountability (Bouckaert, Peters and Verhoest 2010; Tosun and Lang 2017; Baulenas and Sotirov 2020). It is much easier to argue for an integrated policy than to implement such a policy. Strong vertical chains of command secure efficient implementation of specific decisions in public administration but hampers horizontal coordination that involves more than one such chain of command (Greve, Lægreid and Rykkja 2018). Another challenge integrated policy support poses to development of creative work and creative enterprises is that policy needs to be general, and the creative field is characterised by a broad range of activities and areas with exceedingly different dynamics and conditions (Potts 2011; Hearn 2020). It has proved difficult to find general policy solutions to the many challenges faced by creative professionals making a living through non-profit as well as for-profit work (Tafel-Viia 2014; Lindner 2018; Lee 2020). Countries like Finland (MEAEF 2020; Baujard et al. 2021), Germany (IKKB 2022), and the UK (HM Government 2018) have developed long-term strategies and policy frameworks for support that stimulate bottom-up innovation and collaboration in both cultural and industrial creative areas instead of general, top-down support schemes implemented across the country. These are, however, in practice limited to the business (for-profit) sector. These strategies are designed as industryspecific enterprise policies, where CCI is divided into a number of sub-areas for which specific policies are developed. Conclusion So, to what extent is it possible to plan for creativity, in the sense of making policy to support development in cultural and creative fields across non-profit 24 Katja Lindqvist and for-profit activities? From EU and Swedish policymaking, we have learned that providing support for either non-profit or for-profit creative work is easier than trying to support creative professionals who are simultaneously or interchangeably engaged in both. This is because of the general character of Swedish policymaking on one hand, and because of the lack of EU competence in the field of culture on the other. Designing an integrated CCI policy (which has been called for by many actors) where the individual creative professional is at the centre, is much more difficult than supporting either businesses or non-profit creative endeavours. This becomes visible when creative professionals become ill or unemployed or when their business fails: they suffer economically from their portfolio careers. A new CCI policy recognising this character of much creative work (Nijzink, Hoogen and Gielen 2017) would need to be transversal itself. An integrated CCI policy should also recognise the spillover effects of creative work in the form of tourist attractions, social cohesion, and cross-industry innovation. Even though separating policy into different domains is understandable, a coherent understanding of the close links between the multiple dimensions of creative work (that often end up in different policy domains, resulting in unnecessary hampering of creative work) would be valuable in the next generation of CCI policy. Acknowledgements The research on which this chapter is based was conducted during the author’s tenure as a Flexit researcher at the culture department of Region Skåne 2018–2020, and at Lund University in 2021. The research period was financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond grant no. RMP18-0232:1. I participated as an expert in the government’s official inquiry Kreativa Sverige (SOU 2022:44) from February to June 2022. The engagement coincided in part with the period during which this chapter was written but was unrelated in terms of content and perspectives to those engaged with in this text. Note 1 There are several terms for this policy domain. Industrial policy is used in some UK publications, and economic policy has sometimes been used in titles of published research. The term used by the Swedish government for the specific domain of policy programmes, including support for competitiveness and development of businesses in Sweden, is enterprise policy. References Alacovska, Ana. 2019. “‘Keep hoping, keep going’: Towards a hopeful sociology of creative work.” The Sociological Review 67 (5): 1118–1136. 10.1177/003802611 8779014. Bain, Alison. 2005. “Constructing an artistic identity.” Work, Employment and Society 19 (1): 25–46. 10.1177/0950017005051280. Creative Work and Public Policy 25 Bakhshi, Hasan and Stuart Cunningham. 2016. Cultural Policy in the Time of the Creative Industries. 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Hausmann, Andrea. 2010. “German artists between Bohemian idealism and entrepreneurial dynamics: Reflections on cultural entrepreneurship and the need for start-up management.” International Journal of Arts Management 12 (2): 17–29. Hawkins, Harriet. 2017. Creativity. London and New York: Routledge. Head, Brian W. and John Alford. 2015. “Wicked problems: Implications for public policy and management.” Administration and Society 47 (6): 711–739. 10.1177/ 0095399713481601. Hearn, Greg, ed. 2020. The Future of Creative Work: Creativity and Digital Disruption. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Creative Work and Public Policy 27 funded than, e.g., the fine arts sector, the working conditions have become increasingly short-term and insecure over the last few decades (Swedish Government 2018). Both institutions and independent groups have testified that opportunities for experimental work or more risk-taking productions have decreased. The complexity of Swedish cultural policy has, as in many other countries, grown through more horizontal goals and efforts to integrate cultural policy into, for example, urban planning and sustainable development (Kulturanalys Norden 2018). This development has, among other things, resulted in reduced focus on, and room for, artistic development and indepth work for performing arts actors. Perceived or expressed expectations of big audiences and more broadly-composed target groups from Swedish granting authorities on national, regional, and local levels, have also increased (Johannisson 2010). Representatives from regional performing arts institutions (among others) claim this has led to the mainstreaming of artistic content, through a focus on well-known and already-established names (e.g., artists, authors) and well-known works and other productions that already have broad public appeal (Lyrevik 2013, 2014). This change in production focus has resulted in less time for in-depth experimental work within performing arts institutions (Lyrevik 2012; Swedish Government 2018). A survey carried out in connection to the so-called “Artist Policy Review” (Swedish Government 2018), also confirms that many artists and artist organisations experience that funders’ requirements for results, reporting, and follow-up have increased, while at the same time there is less openness for exploratory artistic processes (Swedish Government 2018). The development resulting in less time for experimental work in the performing arts sector seems, to some extent, to also be the case in other Western countries, but for a diverse range of reasons depending on local, regional, and national policies (e.g., Schneider 2017; Opara et al. 2019). Developing digital tools skills The technological digital shift has had a great impact in the performing arts, creating new artistic opportunities, but has also increased competition for competence and for people’s time (Swedish Government 2021). Digital tools, with their performative possibilities that significantly simplify the integration of light, video, and multi-channel sound, develop rapidly. These tools facilitate where and how to project video on stage and so on, and are artistic means of expression that can both deepen the narrative and create richer experiences for the audience. Digital tools that enable the performing arts to move out from the traditional stage and create new audience encounters and new performance formats, like audio walks and artistic experiences using augmented or virtual reality are also in development. Through transmedia storytelling, where the artistic experience moves between different media (including live performances), new artistic experiences can be created 34 Anna Lyrevik alongside the traditional visit to the opera or theatre building. In the field of communicative opportunities, digitalisation is seen as a game changer in all areas of society, and brings with it increased accessibility, but also competition for people’s attention and time. Additionally, the digital shift has been immensely accelerated and in focus for the performing arts during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2022). For many cultural actors, the pandemic was a forced jump-start to make their activities available via digital channels, and find new formats to reach their audiences, leading to operational and competence development. The main obstacles were a lack of business models that enabled digitally-mediated cultural offers to meet their financial ends, and challenges related to expanding participation in online content (Swedish Government 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for performing arts institutions to get into the digital arena to explore and develop new formats, methods, and concepts for audiences of the (near) future. In many cases, as in Skåne (the southernmost region in Sweden where Malmö is located), cultural policy has incorporated digital possibilities into its objectives, not least regarding the distribution and reach of culture to more people, and increased participation. Integrating artistic research In Sweden, the artistic doctorate was written into the Higher Education Ordinance 4 in 2009, as part of the procedure to fulfil the European Bologna process requirements. 5 The introduction of artistic research at universities is a development in the opposite direction of cultural policy when it comes to opportunities for artistic development work, as its purpose is to provide more space for in-depth artistic exploration. So, while the policy demands placed on performing arts institutions grew and resulted in less time for and focus on artistic development work, a new artistic development space was created within higher arts education. Since 2009, funding for artistic research from (especially) the Swedish Research Council has come to include not only research projects, but also preand postdoctoral positions. Today, the doctoral positions that are advertised in the artistic field, generally attract a great deal of interest from active artists in various fields. In the development of artistic research within higher education institutions in Sweden, one recurring problem has been funding the artistic productions in which and through which doctoral students conduct their research. In performing arts, most artistic work is made through, and depends on, the collective effort of different professionals (e.g., light, sound, or costume designers; actors; dancers; singers; musicians; directors; choreographers; and/or scenographers). This is costly, but deemed necessary, to carry out one’s own part of the artistic research. So, even though artistic research opened new opportunities in theory, there were still problems in practice: production costs are hard to finance fully through ordinary Creative Work in Performing Arts in Sweden 35 government funding available to the higher education system. At the same time, general funding for artistic productions, on national, regional, or municipal level, cannot be used while employed full time at a university. If a doctoral student applies for and receives art funding, they must request a leave of absence from their studies to do the artistic production. The same applies to employed teachers/researchers. The planned collaboration platform was a way to start developing more long-term collaborations that could be part of solving this problem for the university. Dreaming of a joint performing arts lab The idea of the performing arts lab emanated from three perspectives coming together. First, decades of recurring conversations in the cultural sector revolved around the fact that, over time, production conditions for the performing arts have changed towards shorter production processes and an increased focus on big/broad audiences, resulting in less time for experimental work. 6 Secondly, this perception of less time for experimental work within the performing arts sector coincided with the development of formal artistic research in Swedish higher education (from 2009 onwards), which in turn opened a path for a new type of in-depth work for artists within institutions of higher education. The third perspective was the impact that the technological digitalisation shift has had, and will continue to have, on the performing arts, creating both new challenges and opportunities (e.g., EMCC 2006; Swedish Agency for Cultural Analysis 2015). Exposing the dream of a performing arts lab in print, through the newspaper article series, triggered further discussion at MTA in the Spring of 2017. Eventually, this led us to approach the Office for Culture at Region Skåne for funding of a preparatory study to examine the prerequisites needed to make this dream of a performing arts lab come true. Designing the collaboration After some initial discussions at MTA, we decided to develop the idea of the performing arts lab. We contacted the regional Office for Culture for funding of a preparatory study to explore how and with whom a lab could be set up. It turned out that the Region had already developed a work procedure with formal collaboration agreements with universities on both research and other collaborative projects (Region Skåne 2022), so this was the form in which a preparatory study could be conducted. The Office for Culture recommended we focus on four performing art institutions that are funded and/ or owned by Region Skåne: Skåne’s Dance Theatre, Malmö and Helsingborg city theatres, and Malmö Opera, which were contacted and were all willing to be part of the study if the application was granted. 36 Anna Lyrevik Starting points Both Region Skåne and the participating performing arts institutions wanted to better understand the work that takes place within the universities after the so-called academisation of higher arts education, but also how they can take part in the knowledge production that takes place in these educational institutions. Therefore, one central interest in the preparatory study concerned the experiences and methods that MTA has developed through artistic research, such as methods of thinking through practice (relating to, e.g., Schön 1983) and methods for documenting artistic practice. Another interest was deepening the knowledge about the concepts of embodied, artistic, and discursive knowledge, concepts widely used in artistic research (e.g., Borgdorff 2012). The preparatory study was therefore an attempt to find ways to integrate the artistic knowledge production that takes place within universities, with the artistic development work of cultural institutions. The project aimed to strengthen the development of regional performing arts in terms of sharing knowledge, networks, formats, methods, and learning for performing artists beyond the project owners, like independent groups and artists. In the project description to Region Skåne, the outset of the preparatory study was described as follows: Today’s heterogeneous, fast-moving, and digital world challenges and stimulates. The performing arts and educational institutions that are to constitute long-term, stable platforms for performers and the performing arts, and at the same time are expected to be involved in shaping the performing arts and the performing artists of the future, all struggle with these challenges. What will the performing arts of the future be from the perspective of an increasingly digitalised humanity? / … / In a world where migration, demographic, and climate change evoke images of completely different living conditions in the future? What arenas for public debate, visions and reflection can the performing arts offer in the future? (Theatre Academy 2017, 1) The four performing arts institutions in the preparatory study all work, in accordance with their political assignments, with these questions and suggest artistic (or other) answers. MTA’s task is to train professional performing artists (actors and playwrights) and thus also to develop artistic strategies, methods, and learning that will constitute possible answers to the challenges performing arts and performing artists face today and in the future. The participating institutions (MTA included) have broad assignments, and artistic exploration or more creative investigatory activities that do not directly lead to public or educational results are only possible to a limited extent. The preparatory study partners expressed three main aims when they agreed to join the study: to have time and resources for artistic development Creative Work in Performing Arts in Sweden 37 work to be able to better fulfil their respective assignments, to get more out of development work by integrating the artistic knowledge production and research that happens within universities with the development work of the performing arts institutions for their mutual benefit, and to explore digital tools for artistic development. The goal of the preparatory study was therefore to create a long-term platform for collaboration that expands the exploratory space and the opportunity for professional feedback and sharing in a way that is not usually possible in production-oriented performing arts institutions or in artistic research. In August 2017, a collaboration agreement was signed between Region Skåne’s Office for Culture and MTA (Region Skåne, 2022 ). SEK 200,000 was allocated for the preparatory study “Performing arts in a heterogeneous, fast-moving and digital world: format, methods and learning”. The preparatory study MTA was responsible for the study structure, coordination, and implementation. The expected result of the study was a co-created plan and application for a long-term collaboration platform, enhancing possibilities for artistic development work and joint learning for all partners. A project coordinator was hired part-time to manage the planning, documentation, and idea content. During the preparatory study, a total of about fifteen meetings were held. Initially, MTA had individual meetings with the four institutions; thereafter, they held joint meetings with representatives from all four institutions. The meetings were attended by artistic directors, producers, a planning director, a dramaturge, technicians, pedagogues, an ensemble director, and communicators from the performing arts institutions. From MTA, the rector (later dean), several lecturers, a producer, and a project manager all participated. A few feedback meetings were conducted with the Region along the way. The process and results of the preparatory study were also presented in a seminar at the performing arts biennial “Bibu” in Helsingborg in May 2018. To begin a joint discussion around complex matters, a relevant reference point is needed that all parties can agree on. For the preparatory study, a report by the Swedish Agency for Cultural Analysis (2015) was used: “Societal trends and cultural habits—an analysis of the surrounding world”. The report focused on five societal trends and cultural habits that particularly affect the cultural sector, and whose conclusions reflected and confirmed many of the starting points defined in the application. The first trend was a more heterogeneous society that provides different conditions for cultural habits. The second trend was a shift towards a more participantcontrolled culture where it is easier for citizens to themselves create, be involved in, and shape culture. The third trend was a society of images where the ability to interpret images has become a part of the skills necessary to be able to participate in democratic processes. Fourth, large amounts of data on 38 Anna Lyrevik people’s cultural habits are being used to adapt (at present a commercial) culture to demand, which could lead to uniformity and a lack of innovative culture. And finally, the fifth trend; the cultural offering on the internet is increasingly adapted to the individual with the help of algorithms, posing a risk of people getting caught in so-called “filter bubbles” (Swedish Agency for Cultural Analysis 2015, 8–9). In the first individual conversations each performing arts institution talked about its activities based on these societal trends, with emphasis on factors that were important for the institution’s artistic development. Issues that came up in the conversations included: How can the performing arts act artistically in relation to the cultural changes brought by globalisation, digitalisation, mobility, demography, and climate threats? What will the performing arts of the future be based on in an increasingly digitalised world? Early on it was clear that there were several common challenges that would be meaningful to address together. One of the prioritised challenges or opportunities was working with digital and interactive technology. How can this technology and these tools be used artistically? How can new technology develop narration in the performing arts? Each of the included genres (theatre, dance, opera) also had some challenges of their own, but the focus was to find relevant common topics, themes, and challenges, that were worth exploring together. The study was conducted in 2017–2018 with the aim of exploring how the performing arts’ unique live experiences could be combined and expanded with existing and upcoming digital and technical possibilities. The main question of the study was: How can the institutions artistically strengthen and develop the performing arts for the benefit of a more diversified and digitallyoriented audience? (Malmö Theatre Academy 2017, 2018). One of the biggest practical challenges of the study was to get all the participants to meet often enough to not lose momentum when it came to ideas. As the group had several managers, all of whom had little spare time, this was not an easy task. The ability to share thoughts, analyses, and experiences in crucial survival matters with neighbouring performing arts professionals was expressed as greatly rewarding by participants. Genre crossing collaborations like this one were, according to the participants, not very common in the Swedish context. The preparatory study was an exploratory process that gathered a collective analysis of the situation of the performing arts sector in Sweden, from people who have lived these changes. The total number of years of embeddedness and lived experience of how conditions have changed and what needs to be done to counteract those changes, was extensive in the partner group. The performing arts lab—final project proposal The result of the preparatory study was a proposal for a three-year project with the title “Connected stories: A development platform for the creation of Creative Work in Performing Arts in Sweden 39 new stories and other audience experiences” (Theatre Academy 2018). The core of the project was to develop knowledge and understanding by exploring the performative properties of digital technology, and to develop dramaturgical and compositional models for a more complex and richer narration for the stage by using artistic knowledge and artistic research methodology. The project focused on three themes, “new audience encounters”, “dynamics of difference” and “expanded stage narration”, and was based on a view of knowledge that is practical, artistic, and transferable to others. The theme new audience encounters dealt with the question: “How do we ensure that the performing arts are relevant in a globalised and digitalised world? The audience encounter is central to all performing arts. Based on the broad experiences of the participating institutions, the lab will investigate how to work in new audience encounters where different media collaborate in creating the artistic experience. Who is “the audience”? Viewers? Participants? Co-creators?” (Malmö Theatre Academy 2018, 3). The theme dynamics of difference focused on “how performing arts today are intercultural in nature, which means negotiating between different cultural and artistic value systems. Due to the special nature of the performing arts, in which different forms of expression, art, and professional roles have traditionally collaborated, the performing arts are perhaps particularly suited for working interculturally. How can the performing arts use experiences from artists from different traditions in collaboration with diverse artistic expressions and new digital tools to create vital performing arts, where differences become a dynamic force for development through new encounters?” (Malmö Theatre Academy 2018, 3). The theme expanded stage narration dealt with “the international discussion of new forms of storytelling, audience encounters, non-hierarchical working models, and new aesthetic expressions and investigates new media tools stemming from stage composition where the integration of text, acting, song, dance, choreography, music, video, light, space, and so on happens.” (Malmö Theatre Academy 2018, 3). The proposed performing arts lab platform was composed of several flexible but recurring collaboration modules consisting of workshops, digital labs, seminars, invited guests, openly accessible documentation, methods for joint reflection, and more (Theatre Academy 2018). Modules were directed at different professions within the performing arts, and the focus was on narration in “new” media like transmedia storytelling, integration of audial and visual narration, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR). The preparatory study clearly pointed out that a flexible model was necessary to cater to all institutions taking part in several parts of the project, and to be able to adjust the content along the way from what is learned during the early phases, since no one can predict the outcome in advance. The flexible model also increases the openness to invite more parties in different parts of the collaboration and creates conditions for joint learning based on methods from the artistic research conducted at MTA. 40 Anna Lyrevik When the final application was sent to the Region in September 2018, four out of five partners were still part of it (Skåne’s Dance Theatre decided not to take part due to a change of leadership). The applied-for sum was quite high for a development project, but the cultural officers strongly supported it, since it involved the main part of the regional performing arts institutions and contained untested collaborative approaches. However, after the 2018 election, severe cuts were made in the regional culture budget, and funding from the Region for the three-year project was not granted. Keeping the dream alive—alternative ways forward In the summer of 2021, the Region reconnected to discuss the possibilities of furthering the ideas from the preparatory study. They were planning new calls for funding, due to some new arguments in their latest regional cultural plan for the 2021–2024 period (Region Skåne 2021) which were in line with the proposed lab. In the cultural plan, a new objective had been added: “Stimulate new models, methods and collaborations for artistic experiments”, which was concretised as follows: Experimental exploration contributes to renewing and developing art and culture. Constantly testing the artistic content and challenging people’s notions of what art and culture are and can be a means of testing new ideas, models, methods, and collaborations. It presupposes an openness to innovation, new ways of working, and partnerships.” (Region Skåne 2021, 12) In the plan, the degree of concreteness in several of the action points had increased in relation to its predecessor, the regional culture plan for the period 2016–2020 (Region Skåne 2015). This applied, for example, to digitalisation, where the focus on content was clarified: Digital development provides new conditions for creating and taking part in art and culture. More cultural actors will be stimulated to explore how they can work innovatively with new designs and narrative forms through various digital solutions and moving images. (Region Skåne 2021, 20) In early 2022, Region Skåne announced two new calls for project funding in line with the development at which the Performing Arts Lab was aiming: “Digital opportunities for new artistic methods, techniques and expression” and “Residencies for cross-disciplinary collaboration” (Region Skåne 2022). The granted projects in the digitalisation call were disseminated in a conference at the Inter Arts Centre in Malmö on December 9, 2022: “Artistic creation through digital tools” (Inter Arts Centre 2022), in which the Creative Work in Performing Arts in Sweden 41 projects had realised some of the work envisioned in the lab application. One of the partners from the preparatory study, Malmö City Theatre, was one of the presenting project owners. Effects of collaboration between artistic research, performing arts institutions, and regional policy The prevalence of collaborations between artistic research and both artistic and other organisations seems to be growing in number in Sweden (Nyberg and Östlind 2021). As artistic research is making its way and finding its methods in different parts of the world, interest in the research and the impact of the research are growing (Prior 2018). Developments in artistic research and knowledge production have, as the preparatory study is an example of, aroused curiosity among cultural institutions and cultural policy actors in Skåne, which has paved the way for new types of collaborations. Since the culture officers at the regional level closely follow what happens ‘on the ground’, influences are sometimes, as this case indicates, acted upon more swiftly. The ambitions in the preparatory study are intertwined in time and content with the fact that Region Skåne has tried new ways of achieving the complex goals that have been developed over time in cultural policy. One example is the renewed regional approach with collaboration agreements with universities on research and other collaborative projects. The Region has also (to date) introduced two new funding schemes connected to the suggestions from the preparatory study: “Digital opportunities for new artistic methods, techniques and expression” and “Residencies for crossdisciplinary collaboration”. The increasingly complex objectives of cultural policy and the enhanced demand for the artistic knowledge production that takes place within universities can be seen as part of the same tendency: a growing demand for collaboration between universities, policy actors and cultural institutions. Collaborations in new forms and in new organisational and thematic constellations—of which the preparatory study was an example—are likely to be something we will see more of in the future. As we have seen, higher arts education, including artistic research, is part of national education policy, and performing arts institutions are part of cultural policy on the national, regional, and local levels. Since education policy and cultural policy to a great extent are two separate policy areas in Sweden, this chapter indicates that the overlap between education policy and cultural policy will be interesting to study. How might education policy and cultural policy in Sweden affect each other in coming years? The preparatory study shows that artistic research questions and methods (education policy) seem to have an impact on both cultural policy and artistic practice, which indicates that the overlap between education and 42 Anna Lyrevik cultural policy will be more interesting to study in the future. One complication is that, at government level, Swedish cultural policy was separated from education policy in 1991. 7 This means that the two policy areas, since then, are not generally coordinated at the national level. The case of the described project shows the slow evolution of discourses and contexts, sometimes leading to paradigm shifts. In this case (the preparatory study), at least as an indication at the regional level, where changes in policy and calls were made in line with the findings and suggestions in the preparatory study the Region had funded some years earlier, and where education policy and cultural policy interact. The preparatory study had a special focus on digital technologies and performing arts. This chapter highlights the digital shift, which will continue to influence performing arts in the future. To what extent will new technological innovations change the perception of what performing arts can be in the future? Interesting work is being done in different parts of the performing arts sector, but we are still awaiting the shift toward mainstreaming the digitally-integrated transmedia experiences dreamt of in the proposed performing arts lab. Notes 1 E-mail of 2016-12-02 from journalist Jonas Gillberg at the regional newspaper Sydsvenskan. 2 http://www.sydsvenskan.se/2016-12-28/malmos-scenkonstliv-drommer-omdramalabb-mff-musikal-och-twitter-opera, accessed 28 December 2016. 3 For a complete list of participants in the preparatory study, see https://portal. research.lu.se/sv/projects/f%C3%B6rstudie-scenkonst-i-en-heterogen-snabbr %C3%B6rlig-och-digital-v%C3%A4rld-, accessed 26 October 2022. Kathrine Winkelhorn, project coordinator, and Jörgen Dahlqvist, senior lecturer at MTA, deserve special mentions for their contributions to the study. 4 Chapter 6, Section 5. 5 See the European Higher Education Area and Bologna process, accessed 11 December 2022. http://ehea.info/index.php 6 I have been involved in these conversations through my roles in granting authorities, cultural institutions, municipal and regional cultural administration, and as part of the Swedish dance community. 7 With the formation of a Ministry of Culture from the former Ministry of Education. References Borgdorff, Henk. 2012. The Conflict of the Faculties: Perspectives on Artistic Research and Academia. Leiden: Leiden University Press. European Monitoring Centre on Change. 2006. “The performing arts sector - policy issues and challenges for the future”. Accessed October 28, 2022. https://www. eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/emcc/articles/the-performing-arts-sector-policy-issues-and-challenges-for-the-future Fjelkestam, Kristina, ed. 2009. Reflektionens gestalt. Huddinge: Södertörn University. Creative Work in Performing Arts in Sweden 43 that emerge out of complex socio-cultural processes (Aasen and Amundsen 2013, 273–291). This puts the practice of doing innovation in focus. Innovation is a term that is often used in everyday talk about new products and services, but also in talk about renewal processes and social change. This discursive practice, people’s actions, and speech acts, convey certain terms, meanings, and views about the world (Hall 2001). Methods To study processes of realising an idea in real-time and on-site, the author collected qualitative empirical material from texts, observations, and interviews. This fieldwork took place during 2021, in communication and meetings with the museum project leader. The texts were collected from the municipality’s webpage, while observations were conducted in the outdoor office prototypes in the museum. Seven officials at different levels in the municipality were interviewed for 30–45 minutes. Their respective roles were as follows: the head of the city, the head of the cultural division, the leader of the city’s innovation network, the head of the open-air museum, two museum developers/culture pedagogues, and one prototype-tester/museum visitor. All participants were introduced to the research context and offered anonymity. All of them gave consent and were also informed about access to and the storage of the material. The interviews were partially transcribed, and the quotations used in the analysis have been translated by the author. The analysis of the data followed a two-step process of initially identifying empirical themes and reoccurring patterns. In the second step these categories were related to previous studies and to Rosa’s thoughts on social acceleration and innovation. The case of outdoor offices and conferences In 2020, the city in question had been awarded second place in a prestigious international innovation award. By the early summer of 2022, a month-long international city expo took place, and the theme of that whole occasion was to demonstrate a capacity for urban innovation. Several innovation processes had been financially supported and promoted during months of planning and large meetings. In spectacular events and exhibitions all over the city, most of the municipality’s divisions presented their innovations at the expo. The case study presented in this chapter is one of these innovation processes. The open-air museum is located in the city and the history goes back to 1798 when the area was acquired by a local governor, who built a country house and a park on the property. Generations later, in 1918, the area was given to the city as a gift from the owner, on the premise that it should be open to the public as an open-air museum. Entire city blocks of the old city centre were moved to the museum centre. Today, the museum has been developed into 50 Malin Andersson an open-air museum with a large botanical garden, several meadows for cattle and old farm buildings, including a restaurant and an open-air theatre. The museum hosts several events and conferences annually and co-operates with many local entrepreneurs. During the pandemic the museum experienced a large increase in visitor numbers. Their outdoor conferences became increasingly popular due to the indoor meetings restrictions. In April 2020, the museum received funding to develop the idea of outdoor conferences and offices. By the spring of 2021, the preparations for the city expo had started, and the museum was in full swing of testing all new innovations. The why of municipal innovation The municipality hosts a homepage that is dedicated to the theme of innovation across all municipality divisions. An explicit aim, regularly stated by the public officials, is to “respond to big challenges” and to improve the city for the citizens. The intention is to share information about all the innovations that are funded, including the idea in question, discursively framed as “solutions to challenges”. The webpage informs about the status of each idea, a potential “innovation”, and how the innovation can solve problems. For instance, the webpage states that: … [this is] one of Europe’s most innovative cities and one of the reasons is that we believe in collaborating with the world around us to solve our challenges. / … / Maybe you have ideas or suggestions that can help us solve them? / … / We work for a slightly smarter, more sustainable, and caring city – one challenge at a time. (City webpage) Around 15 challenges are addressed. One of the tabs on the homepage groups all the ideas together, a total of 298 activities. Each of the initiatives is represented by an image and a short description. A three-grade scale indicates the project’s status, for instance the mode of “being explored”. Others are categorised as being “under sharp testing”, meaning that the idea is in the process of being tried out as a “pilot” or a “prototype”, on a small scale. The state of being “under realisation” means that the innovation is fully developed and implemented in practice. For instance, the division of social work presents an idea of how to create more attractive living conditions for the elderly in the municipality, by mitigating loneliness. Another idea, coming from the cultural division, is to make the municipality’s music teaching more individual and a third idea, expressed by the health division, is to promote psychological wellbeing among young people. This chapter focuses on one of these innovations, which is really comprising two interrelated ideas: the outdoor office and outdoor conferences at a time of distancing. This is motivated by a need for space to do office work “side by side with entrepreneurs, students and researchers”, among citizens, Creative Work and Social Innovation 51 public-sector employees, and local business communities. What is considered new here, is thus both an offer to do office work in the outdoors and a venue for people who normally do not work together: … the museum is evaluating and testing an idea for an outdoor office in the open-air museum’s green cultural-historical environments. The goal is to create a co-working space outdoors, where meeting spaces are combined with individual workplaces. (City webpage) The outdoor conferences had been tested a few times already before the pandemic. According to the museum developers, the activity quickly became increasingly popular in the COVID-restrictions period. This event and the experiences of a real change in the demand for outdoor museum visits, is also described as the starting point for the innovation project, by the project leader. The description on the homepage adds to the explanation, not only for why the outdoor conferences were funded, but also why and how the outdoor office is being developed and tested: “… the view of where and how office work takes place has changed. We see a future scenario where outdoor offices have their given place as one of several satellite offices, next to the home office and the workplace office”. This approach to an innovative use of the open-air museum area, conveys that there has been a norm change in citizens’ approach to office work and meetings in the post-pandemic time. These new norms form certain expectations for the future of office work. It is based on the idea that office workers might have already discovered the possibilities of working both outside their regular offices, and doing office work in the outdoors, during a long period of meeting restrictions and “distance work”. The COVID-19 pandemic is thus one dimension of how the ideas came about. In addition, and with reference to work-life research, the project leader states that outdoor activities are healthier. She says that “… the sustainable workplace of the future is a hybrid of outside and inside”, expressing a sustainability dimension that is referencing the long-term wellbeing of office workers. Moreover, several hedonistic values are put forward as desirable, such as experiencing nature in the open-air museum gardens, whilst working. From a top-management perspective, innovation is constructed as a culture that has certain goals to solve challenges that have to do with office work health and life quality, which also includes the environmental aspects of life: … my role is to create innovation muscles and find a method and a structure for working with innovation and to create a culture / … / In general, we need to both solve problems and improve the working conditions for our co-workers …, /…/ We don’t do innovation just for the fun of it, we do it because we see major challenges, and for increasing 52 Malin Andersson the quality of life of citizens, also to protect the environment and health and so on, and we must find new solutions for solving this. (The head of the city) The capacity to implement new ideas and to do innovation work is here matter of responding to challenges in new ways. Doing innovation work in public management, then, constitutes a response to the outer world, as Hartmut Rosa (2019) suggests. Here, the COVID crisis-related health problems and the office work-related problems of individual isolation and stress are formulated as the risk. Attracting new visitors is one challenge, changing established traditional norms that surround office work is another: “The bottom line is that innovation is about daring to challenge our present working methods”, the manager states. In this sense, the why of innovation work in public management is also about responding to change in the more social and cultural sense. The terminology used relates to citizens and museum visitors as a market: “… we also give the business a completely new niche, which in turn can serve as a springboard for new visitors to discover the open-air museum and the botanical garden”. Besides this, the innovation work is a matter of challenging and opposing “old ways” of how services should be offered in a museum, and this is expressed on both the management level and the operative level. Co-creative innovation work The homepage offers a step-by-step guide for innovators, where both citizens and city staff can start innovation processes by downloading a template. Potential participants are asked to fill in a questionnaire, mapping her or his ideas and thoughts. This invitation to citizens is further explained in an interview with the head of the city, who says that “we can’t do it by ourselves, we have to involve our citizens and our enterprises”. Several types of collaborations are being described by interviewees as a necessary condition for realising creative ideas and projects. For instance, the project leader has found inspiration to the outdoor offices and conferences in a regional development research project in another municipality. An EUfunded project in that city was initiated by a social science researcher a few years ago, and over time they have become collaborating partners with the open-air museum. In the annual Outdoor Office Day, several researchers hold open lectures about their projects and the benefits of outdoor office work. Another collaborative partner, involved in the museum creative process, is a local office design firm that designs and produces outdoor office furniture and office prototypes. One of the museum developers points out in an interview that discussing and trying out several different prototypes together with this firm has been key for the creative process, and visitors take Creative Work and Social Innovation 53 part in testing these prototypes, as an example of yet another collaboration partner. While different types of knowledge in separate fields of expertise and experiences, viewpoints or cultures, often are crucial conditions for generating ideas and realising innovations, collaborations constitute a key feature of innovation practices (Mačiulienė and Skaržauskienė 2020). Even though the empirical data emphasises that ideas of non-public actors and citizens are put forward as crucial resources in the creative process, the material says very little about any support or reward from the municipality, in connection with the citizen involvement. Innovation work as learning The innovation network leader describes several criteria for deciding which project ideas get financial support. Some ideas are classified as innovative according to a certain standard, while ideas that do not measure up get no financial support. In that sense, the definition of what constitutes an innovation is clear. There is however considerable confusion about the definition of innovation in the total amount of interviews. The head of the city defines innovation by pointing out its meaning to the user: I define an innovation as something new, something useful and made useful. It’s easy to find and assess something as being new and useful, but it’s very common that we don’t go any further, in other words that the idea hasn’t been made useful, so not having scaled up and not having implemented the idea in real life. And an innovation isn’t happening until it’s been implemented, and you’ve brought home the effects / … / We have to make the idea of the outdoor conferences and outdoor offices useful. The vision is to have a co-working area with ten or fifteen outdoor offices and outdoor conferences. It must be integrated as part of the museum’s ordinary operations. (The head of city) In this meaning of the word, it seems impossible to know when something is innovative, until the creative idea has been used. If we view this definition from Rosa’s (2019) perspective, what might these outdoor offices and conferences be a response to? What is the municipality assuming that the users want? Two themes were identified in the material, as responses to challenges in the outer world: health issues and digitalisation. Innovation in response to health issues The head of the city emphasises that the city works with innovation using a special methodology, in a systematic and structural way. Not just any random idea can get financial support, and with reference to the outdoor offices and conferences he continues: “I love the idea, I think it’s fantastic and very good, and it could never have arrived at a better time / … / we talk a 54 Malin Andersson lot in the city about the previous approach to work, and that it’s connected to a place”. In one sense, testing the idea is bound to a certain place, because some places are constructed as more appropriate for outdoor offices and conferences than others, the open-air museum and garden being one example. The idea is however not only connected to that specific site: “The new thing now, is that work is a matter of delivering on a certain mission, you have a specific assignment in focus. So nowadays we talk about the placeindependent working life”, one manager states. Rosa (2019) argues that innovations have to do with a contemporary imperative in modernity related to “bringing more world within reach” (Rosa 2019, 369), meaning that people aim to optimise their time. This is because we tend to wish to experience more things during our life-course. This phenomenon has been termed “bleisure” (Unger and Uriely 2022), referring to a combination of business activities and pleasure/leisure activities (similar to “bizcation”, or “workcation”). The outdoor office and conference can be understood as such a flexible and value-adding proposition where citizens can optimise their time by being healthier, while working in a place initially assigned for leisure activities. The user is assumed to be able to work from anywhere, at any time. Also, this implies that the good office worker should strive towards becoming healthier and more effective at the same time. The heightened interest in the outdoors seems to have come about alongside an increased focus on health issues, reinforced by the COVID-19 crisis. At the same time, this can be understood as a response to social acceleration and peoples’ experience of time, which in a way contradicts the work health theme. Innovation as response to digital nomadism It is not only the office, as the place where people used to work, but also the work task that is in focus in this new approach, the head of the city argues. Some contemporary jobs come with the option of spending work hours outside of the initial job location, or office work on the move. The idea here, is that office work is no longer place-bound, so hypothetically it can be done anywhere. People are assumed to have become digital nomads (Richter and Richter 2020), wanting to do office work inside or outside, sitting in socalled satellite offices, or in co-working spaces. Today, after the pandemic, many office workers still work from home several days a week. The head of the city tells the story of how he himself, during the pandemic, started to do outdoor office work occasionally. While being explicit with this novelty in his own work situation, his staff, colleagues, and followers on social media had initially reacted in a slightly negative way. The mobile work situation was however described as something important to pursue and address: But I do this to signal that it’s ok to do so! And the point of all this was to change our working conditions for the better. We’ve had all of our work Creative Work and Social Innovation 55 meetings outside during spring and I always post that on social media / … / Sometimes one has this old approach to work, with Luther sitting on our shoulder, saying that it should be hard and wearisome, like work in the era of farming and factory work /…/ but the relaxing and comfortable sides of working, for instance in the gardens, that belongs to the new image of work. It is said in the public management innovation literature that digitalised economies require rapid transformations, and that municipalities achieve those via management methods such as “agile leadership” and “anticipatory innovation” (Voß and Simons 2018). The former, to be a flexible leader for innovation, is demonstrated by the manager, so the digital development has caused changes that the city responds to. The leadership method of forecasting changes for innovations, before any change has happened, was presented in a large meeting as an ideal for the municipality, although that is not a strong theme in the rest of the empirical material. In this management context, development of the digital technologies used for office work, plays an important role. It is not certain that Rosa (2019) would describe the new image of work in terms of “relaxation”, or as an example of a norm of optimising time and a response to the acceleration in society (Rosa and Trejo-Mathys 2013). Humans’ approaches to work have changed in parallel with the development within digital-driven mobility. There are now, for many, more possibilities than ever to commute and combine work with leisure-related travel. The municipality’s emerging interest in the idea of outdoor offices and conferences as part of the public services, can be thought of as answers to changes in the digital landscapes. The efforts to change public norms, values, and attitudes towards working life can also be regarded as a response to increased digitalisation. Although, still, it is clearly not easy to change public perceptions surrounding office work. Creative work as a learning process Another emerging theme in the material is the process of learning. Much inspired by business life, the municipality’s management team offers different test arenas for residents to try and experiment with prototypes. Voluntary testers are invited to book the outdoor offices in a session free of charge. In exchange, the participant answers two questionnaires, post-visit. At the time of the fieldwork, visitors can test two office prototypes: one standing desk and one desk with a chair. One prototype is placed in the middle of a field, next to the cattle in the open-air museum. Another similar prototype is placed by a field of apple trees, and a standing outdoor desk is mounted on a tree. The testing process is a way for developers and managers to gain insight into visitor’s experiences and to pilot-market the new services. 56 Malin Andersson The interviews show explicit ambitions to create a culture of testing and experimenting. This is done through a discourse of fearlessness, courage and risk-taking. For instance, one manager forcefully asserts that the notion of testing is vital. He says he appreciates a character of bravery and that risktaking is a very important criterion for “being innovative” and “for any idea to fly”. The city management grants people from the staff annually with an award, called The Mistake of the year: The greatest challenge in all innovation work is the organisational fear of making mistakes. Especially in the public sector, we’re raised and educated that we cannot make mistakes. We have the authorities, we have media, we have politicians who are reviewing us all the time: “DO NOT make mistakes!” And if you do, you risk ending up on the front pages or something. / … / So, creating cultural change is a major challenge, it’s difficult, but important, to test in a small situation and make mistakes, and adjust, and then finally we’ll decide and assess whether this idea will be scaled up or not. So, to realise the action capacity and imaginativeness with colleagues in the city, we’ve developed a model for measuring the effects of an idea. This will be the basis of our assessment, whether the ideas are going to be invested in further and thus scaled up. We talk a lot about effect-measuring, and not everything is measurable in terms of figures, that’s how it is, but we nevertheless need to be able to communicate and argue for why we choose to, for instance, perhaps invest half a million crowns in this idea of outdoor offices. Here, a fearless culture of failure is explicit. On one occasion, a staff training day was arranged for 500 city managers, with the purpose of teaching the right conditions for innovations. The staff was encouraged to be bold and dare to make mistakes. With respect to specifically outdoor offices and conferences, the head of the city emphasised the importance of decentralisation and to give the project leader and developers the freedom to test ideas: … to test this rather crazy idea [outdoor offices] / … / not everything will work out, all development is built on making mistakes, to make mistakes, and it’s not the mistakes themselves that are interesting, but the experience you gain from making mistakes / … / So we have to have an organisation where we make mistakes, otherwise we can’t develop / … / we’ve even started to have an annual award called the mistake of the year, and this is because we really want to show that we’re serious about this culture. The head of the city argued that the public life in general is extremely controlled by external reviewers. Therefore, they must “go the extra mile”, trying to be bold, even if “… it’s not the mistake that’s interesting, but the learning process”. Again, conducting the innovation work in this context Creative Work and Social Innovation 57 puts emphasis on co-creation as a learning process between the municipality staff and visitors. Testing and mistakes are here being presented as fundamental parts of innovation in the municipality. Schwarz and Bouckenooghe (2021) note that there has been an emerging focus on innovation as a learning process within organisations in general, and that failure is often regarded as a necessary condition for future success. They find, however, that the literature on organisations and innovation could benefit from a more nuanced discussion about the role of education and knowledge in innovation. A nuanced perspective, they suggest, should not only view failure as a basis of success. While experiences in the form of a “trial-and-error attitude” are idealised, the role of scientific knowledge tends to be downplayed. Schwarz and Bouckenooghe (2021) find this to be of relevance in organisations where there is a strong push towards innovation, because an overly strong focus on risk-taking does not always lead to success. Real failures can ultimately lead to negative outcomes. In public contexts, where public resources are scarce and need to be employed effectively, organisation and innovation should always be coupled with expert knowledge, they argue. Responsible resonance? Looking back in time, sociologist Richard Sennett (2007) describes two established approaches to public institutions. In the 18th century, an ideal institution was expected to be strict and predictable, run by routines. This form of strict organisation was considered good in the sense that it symbolised a sense of order. Over time, a different approach emerged, opposing the strict bureaucracy. In contrast, the new view considered routinised work as mundane and harmful to the human soul. Public institutions have often been described as stagnant and producers of hardness and apathy (compare Herzfeld 1993; Paulsen 2016) and therefore creativity might not be the first thing that comes to mind when we think of public management. But as I have shown here, and others before me, it is no longer only capitalist worlds and commodities that are applicable to understand creative work and innovations, but also public institutions (see also Andersson Cederholm and Hall 2020). One important aspect of innovation in the public context studied here, is that the renewal processes are emphasised to be collective achievements. What are these ideas and innovation practices responding to? The proposed value of outdoor offices and conferences is that they are new for citizens and visitors, and they bring in new income to the public museum. Moreover, the innovations promise more efficient use of existing resources and are said to create better work health for the public. As well as answering to a demand for more efficient use of public resources, another explicit response that the municipality seems to communicate, is to present itself as innovative. This place-branding strategy aspires to attract businesses, 58 Malin Andersson re-visitors, and new citizens. In the case studied here, new and additional ways of using and commercialising a since long established public space, are presented as a new public service. The additional and alternative use of the open-air museum area is expected to increase the efficiency of public spending and the new service products bring in more money to the museum. The services function also as interactive marketing because new visitors might discover the place as a destination for future return visits. The space in question already conveys a certain meaning to visitors: it is well known for its nature, history, and recreation, but not for office work. The innovation work increases the chances to engage and fulfil that original mission, thus teaching citizens about nature and local history. From an economic perspective, the innovation is a new, hybrid commercialisation of an existing resource. This focus on innovation can be understood as an example of yet another commercial idea that reinforces an accelerating modernity. The outdoor office is indeed in line with the argument that humans of today can (and therefore do) optimise their time, trying to live several lives in a shorter time, by living as effective as possible. To do both work and leisure activities during office hours does in a sense seem very stressful. Further, it blurs the boundaries between work and private spheres of life. The accelerating quest to address changes, risks tweaking our understanding of time, and this will make humans even more stressed, Rosa (2003) argues. So, is the proposed value of office work in an open-air museum a blind spot to invisible norms that “work should be fun”, or to an assumption that the outdoors is always somehow better than sitting inside an office? The innovation in question promises to target stress. To sit in the tree-office or do team building with colleagues in nature is presented as a way to deal with burnout. So, assuming that outdoor offices and conferences are indeed healthier, they can also be understood as the kind of “careful response” that Rosa prescribes as the remedy for social acceleration (Rosa 2019, 443). From the public management perspective, the innovation work is about communicating a culture of courage, rewarding staff with awards and exposure on the website. It also offers inclusion in special social networks for innovation. The ideas challenge established norms about office work, which is generally expected to happen indoors, and it is an innovation that simultaneously promotes place, and place independence. References Aasen, Tone Merith and Oscar Amundsen. 2013. Innovation som kollektiv prestation. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Andersson Cederholm, Erika and Patrik Hall. 2020. “Performing ambiguous policy: How innovation events simultaneously perform change and collaborative order.” The Sociological Review 68 (6):1403–1419. doi: 10.1177/0038026119895219. Andersson, Malin. 2019. Kustnära yrkesfiske i förändring: från mångsysslare till entreprenör. Dissertation. Faculty of social sciences, Lund University. Media-tryck. Creative Work and Social Innovation 59 Relational thinking is linked to a process ontology. Bringing these ideas of relationality, multiplicity, and process together implies understanding policy documents and agreements and practised space as the outcome of relationships so far. By foregrounding “being in process” Massey makes the case for multiplicity, or the heterogeneous co-existence (2005, 10) of people, spaces, buildings, ideas, and politics. Spatial functions are therefore not decided upon only once, but remain constantly open to people, ideas, and uses that are never fixed but always subject to negotiation (Massey 2005; Landau et al. 2021). For space, this means an indeterminacy and openness to difference and change (Massey 2005, 11) and requires sensitivity to differences and the tensions those differences create (Landau et al. 2021). In order to continue to analyse the interconnections that have so far constituted REHAB, I’ll elaborate shortly on the methods used in this study. Studying a neighbourhood art organisation To understand REHAB as an ongoing, socio-spatial process consisting of relationships to and between people, political ideas, and the space itself, I apply a close reading of the context (Bell and Orozco 2020). The body of data comprises official policy documents, 11 semi-structured interviews (conducted between 2019 and 2022, including artists, MKB, and cultural and social work departments). Additionally, neighbourhood walks, photography and field diary entries were used to account for potential changes in the neighbourhood. Additionally, the local “Cultural Strategy 2014–2020” and related “Action Plans” (City of Malmö 2016, 2019) were analysed with a focus on working conditions, spatial development, and the role of artists in the city. Artists, as Bain (2005) and others pointed out, present a diverse group, and during my inquiry, I met with a friendly group of artists and creative workers, mostly white middle-class and queer people, with various artistic and professional skills. Some artists were just beginning their careers and others were known across the city and beyond, and the artists’ creative practices may best be captured under the notion of hybridisation and the blurring of boundaries between previously-defined artistic spheres (Abbing 2023, 310). Musicians, either with degrees from music school or self-taught, playing classical instruments, or electronic and experimental instruments, textile artists, fine artists with art school degrees, artists working in public art, sculpture, murals, and participatory processes, often working in intersections to education. Some were also working in crafts and magic, and when I write “‘artists” in this chapter, it includes all of the above. In Abbing’s account, the process of hybridisation is characterised by less antagonism, and less disdain for mainstream art, but also by disparate, smaller scenes, niche practices, and the phenomenon of mutual featuring in, e.g., music productions (cf. 2022, 310). I spoke with “old” and “new” members of REHAB, some of whom were part of a preceding collective and 66 Marthe Nehl part of the idea development process, and others who joined when the first ideas of REHAB had already materialised. I conducted interviews with artists at REHAB, where they rehearse, sketch, paint, build, meet, sculpt, plan, and administrate. To grasp the processual, I visited REHAB repeatedly to talk about past ideas, day-to-day challenges, and future dreams. I asked about tensions and conflict underpinning REHAB and learned about the possibilities to thrive as artists—both organising collectively and in collaboration with other local organisations. The findings are presented and discussed in the upcoming section. REHAB: Organising creative work differently REHAB is written in glowing letters, marking the entrance of the building in the residential area Östra Sorgenfri, which has been open since 2017. Located on the ground floor, the premises are surrounded by a pizzeria, a falafel shop, and a new playground across the street. Compared to other studio collectives’ locations, this space is both centrally located and embedded in the residential neighbourhood, and it is organised collaboratively with the municipal housing company MKB. Slightly biased from other cases, I gazed around expecting signs of conflict, but can only capture a poster stating “Malmö should not be like Stockholm” and “freeze rents”, distributed by a leftist organisation addressing housing issues across the city. I interpret those as an indicator of a sensibility to gentrification issues. I continue to wonder what gentrification means in the ongoing production of space (Massey 2005), and what else keeps this production going. “Sorgenfri breathes culture and artistry” is a marketing slogan in the window of the local MKB office. That MKB works culture and sustainability not only when it comes to marketing, but politically, is desirable, since the city-wide cultural strategy calls for access to, and participation in, the production and consumption of cultural offerings (City of Malmö 2015). REHAB, as a joint project with artists and cultural workers, is interesting for many reasons. In an interview with MKB, it becomes clear that the pull factor is especially effective in attracting new cultural actors through the visibility of other actors, and its effect on the tenant’s neighbourhood experience is valued: “when it comes to the galleries and REHAB, it’s participating in those events that we arrange during the year, which are meant to attract our “customers” to be a part of, and experience their area—their home—in a different way”. Beyond this instrumental interest, and in accordance with the city’s cultural strategy (cf. City of Malmö 2017, 11), MKB has practical interests in REHAB. According to the strategy, in terms of long-term urban development “[…] professional artists and cultural players should be included […] with an emphasis on social aspects, such as in the development of forms and methods for citizen dialogue, consultation processes and area development” (ibid.). Artist’s social capital brings with it the possibility to initiate other relationships in the neighbourhood, since they Creative Work and Working Space 67 are active and present through activities at REHAB, which are part of the neighbourhood’s public sphere. For the artists, collaboration with MKB is interesting above all as a reliable provider of space. One artist stressed that proximity to a municipal housing company could be beneficial for (non-arts related) career plans. Throughout my meetings, I understand the organisation of REHAB not simply as a non-political affiliation with a public housing association, but rather a somewhat strategic step to not only point out deep-seated shortcomings in the cultural–political system, but to suggest and test an alternative. From this point of view, REHAB may even present a claim for artistic and cultural work under good conditions. This is argued for in a particular way: building on their own experiences of precarious work, the artist mobilises the narrative of precarity to justify their engagement with MKB: “Artists sit in bad premises and earn little money, but at the same time are so extremely important to a city, but are pushed out further and further away, that’s off. It really is a loss for the cities when they do so, it has to be solved in some way. But like with everything else, it’s the economy that matters”. In this last sentence, the artist points to the economy of place in which access equals economic capital or the ability to pay (a higher) rent. Commercial and/or political? REHAB’s particular management of financial constraints includes a negotiated subsidy system (see finding 2), and a simple commercial activity. The latter is not unusual in self-organised or independent cultural organisations: running a bar, playing concerts, or as in this case, offering simple services like renting out meeting space. The rental happens in a non-profit context, and money is reinvested into “[…] better conditions for the cultural workers in the house”, as stated by their official webpage. Those commercial activities should not interfere with their work as artists, either by steering their work or by taking up too much time: “if we sell post cards, artistically speaking, something got lost”. Furthermore, renting space produces a platform where (ideally), actors who want to work in the vicinity of artists, operating in the cultural sector, or professionals like architects, who are attracted to artists, rent the premises. Some actors hope this would create leverage for influence, that “it’s usually decision-makers who come here, so we have the opportunity to influence them a little bit”. In day-to day terms, active artists and cultural workers at REHAB take care of the rental depending on their capacities and individual needs, as maintenance and service work is paid in the form of hourly wages to artists, who then pay for their studio spaces. The question of whether, and in what form, a commercial component is possible, led to the separation of the former collective Cirkulationscentralen. Those who rejected the entrepreneurial attitude formed an artist-run gallery, 68 Marthe Nehl and others welcomed the idea of “another place”. Contrary to the accusation that commercial activities are in contradiction to what it means to be an artist, another artist describes that he appreciates this model because, unlike many funding schemes, it is quite straightforward; as it is obviously commercial but transparent about the distribution of money. Eventually, the commercial and the political appear closely intertwined and interdependent. The commercial rental of meeting space is invested into producing REHAB as an organisation that provides an alternative to exploitative and insecure spatial conditions of artistic and cultural work. The next paragraph unpacks the reasoning that underpins the negotiated subsidy system upon which REHAB is built, and elaborates on how this is put into practice. “Socialrabatt” and “Service exchanges”—formalising a conflictual collaboration Artists and cultural workers exploit the otherwise rather troubling instrumentalisation concept in this neighbourhood redevelopment process. Rather than contesting it, they emphasise the potential positive effects they may have on neighbourhood development: “people want to be where artists are, that’s where it is cosy. […] People make money from the fact that the artists are present in central locations in the city. So, you have to take advantage of that, and make sure that the artists also get a part of it”. As in this statement, the artists make it clear that they are aware of their role, which gives them negotiating power in MKB’s process, which also has levers. According to MKB, the lowered rent for artists and cultural workers enables them to demand return services, which have proven advantageous for them over time: [W]e found some ways to also ask for “counter-performance”, like an exchange of services. It doesn’t have to be about money or proper rent. If we lower the rent, we give them [artists] a discount, we ask for an exchange of services, so they need to work in some of our arrangements, or have an open house, in some or the other way find an outreach to the people living in our apartments. […] and this “exchange of services” is one way for us to formalise it. The above indicated that conceiving of artists as powerless and instrumentalised, and housing associations as powerful, as the established binary idea suggests, does not necessarily simply lead to exploitation of those assumed to be powerless. Furthermore, such thinking is unconstructive in informing action, and I prefer to unravel the arguments further to explore the interdependent relationship (Hebert and Szefer 2013, 13). At the heart of this “formalised relationship” are therefore two fundamental needs and different motivations: the artists’ need for space on the one hand, and MKB’s goals for neighbourhood development based on arts Creative Work and Working Space 69 and culture, on the other. Politically informed, the latter opens up space for artists, and the possibility for MKB to incorporate artists’ knowledge and skills into their processes. To meet these mutually dependent needs, the artists are bound to the spaces, and MKB is bound to the artists and cultural workers. But to place cultural activities visibly in the neighbourhood, MKB doesn’t specifically depend on the artists at REHAB. Rather, it is the artists who willingly respond to the service exchange and free themselves from external accusations, such as being gentrifiers, or at least position themselves in a way that works for them. In the next section, I will look more closely at the tensions that arise for the artists from the collaboration. Bringing change—“A fine line to walk” As indicated above, the instrumental role of art and culture in neighbourhood development is not fundamentally denied, but forms a basis for (sometimes conflicting) service exchanges. Regarding the artists, it works as a two-fold mechanism: both as a dynamic exchange with room for agency and leverage—but ultimately also assumes the form of neighbourhood change, in which the artists consciously position themselves. To understand REHAB’s social embeddedness, understood as intensities of different relationships with local urban cultural actors, business owners, and residents (Bain and Landau 2019), or its role in the social heterogeneity of space (Massey 2005), I asked the artists active at REHAB whether they had any concerns about their role in the neighbourhood. Two artists mention a group of elderly people. Questions like “what if we weren’t here?” appear, but then one of them said “we as artists need space, too”. Relating to their interconnectedness in a gentrification wave, the artists express an inward orientation to the community around them, rather than an interest in attracting visitors from beyond the neighbourhood: I can sometimes feel maybe a little conflicted, because we don’t want it to become a neighbourhood for only young artists and young families that want to move in. We don’t want to be part of that, we just want to support this community, do things for them. That can sometimes be a fine line to walk. Also seeing how … like [other neighbourhoods] being gentrified slowly but surely, and I guess maybe it is hard to avoid, but I think we are all hoping we can be a part of keeping this community [intact] and doing things for them and not for people to come here and visit, but do things important for people here. As an example of the social dimension of local embeddedness (Bain and Landau 2019), the above statement of an artist indicates an inward orientation to the internal functions of the neighbourhood; in this case both the local community, but also to the supportive community of artists. 70 Marthe Nehl Such practices of anchoring may spur more long-term relationships, contrary to fast-paced neighbourhood regeneration (Bain and Landau 2019, 2). Furthermore, other than SoHo, a case Sharon Zukin (1989, 2011) uses to exemplify the role of artists in urban change, the residential neighbourhood Östra Sorgenfri is much more regulated than a central district in New York City. Nevertheless, tensions accompany the artists’ day-to-day work of organising REHAB. Several artists express their concerns and slight feelings of guilt, specifically regarding the elderly. Before the artists and MKB founded REHAB and engaged with the space, it was rented to ABF (a workers’ education association) where elderly people living above the premises of REHAB socialised and participated in activities. The seniors continue to have a regular get-together with coffee every Friday, and this tradition is something REHAB values and protects. In addition to these conflicts, there are further aspects that shape REHAB as place of artistic and cultural work, and which partly distinguish it from other places, as I will demonstrate in the next section. “A work environment with a little more social awareness” REHAB, as a workspace for artists and cultural workers, has qualities that, in many respects, correspond to existing studies on shared spaces. For example, as in the quote below, it is clear that the space helps to create a sense of professionalism that is often lacking in artists due to a lack of recognition (cf. Bain 2005). An artist states that the most profound difference is: being able to work under decent circumstances as an artist. […] This is a workplace, I go to work, and this is my work, and it is a nice presentable place where you can take potential clients. I think giving yourself that dignity, giving that worth to your profession is important, even if it is not the most common profession, and not the most wellpaid profession. The statement also indicates an appreciation of the possibilities of professional development beyond the artistic career; a space to encounter “potential clients”. Furthermore, in the sense of Bain and McLeans’ (2013) emphasis on “doing it together”, artists use the shared space to tackle precarity, like insecurities caused by the irregular job market. Since available jobs cause competition and work is organised rather informally through social networks (Alacovska 2018), tensions between need and willingness to support one another are not improbable. Recognising this, an artist explains, REHAB functions as an “employment agency” for cultural workers. In practice, projects acquired by individual artists are tapped for opportunities to integrate other colleagues, since some artists are more experienced and successful in writing grants and proposals than others, and new possibilities for individual or collective projects open up. Creative Work and Working Space 71 Supporting each other this way may relate to the lack of organisation experienced among artists and artist collectives in Malmö more broadly, where a typical experience is described as “mushroom picking behaviour”: “If you have found a good spot in the forest, you keep silent and enjoy it by yourself”, an artist explains. Some artists mention the absence of collegiality outside REHAB, and express a need for a more socially aware cultural politics. In this vein, I interpret REHAB as a position emphasising the need for supporting and caring daily work (cf. Alacovska and Bissonnette 2021), and its dependence on safe space for continued connectedness to unfold. A musician describes: I’ve been working collectively, even though I didn’t have this collective space all my life. It’s always been working with friends, like all my bands, we started projects as friends in the first place and then as colleagues. It is kind of natural to me to fit in in some kind of environment, with pitching in with what you are good at. Another artist explained that the collective space and the possibility of supporting each other with “what you are good at” has contributed to the recognition of one’s own work in a different way, to recognising one’s work and knowledge in a different way—through mutual recognition—something other studio spaces would not have allowed. Service exchanges as policy and a playground Above, I illustrated how REHAB as a space is organised and organises operations between MKB and the artists today, or at least over the course of my data collection. This last finding attends to how REHAB is organised in relation to local cultural policy, and attends to REHAB’s situatedness in “space-time” (Massey 1994). I close the analysis with an illustration of what a service exchange inspired by this strategy may look like, and turn to the making of a neighbourhood playground. The challenge of the spatial, in my understanding of Massey (2005), is to not exclude time as in past events, but acknowledge what is coeval and was coeval (cf. 2005, 78–79) in the process. My data shows that the idea to collaborate did not just appear, but resulted from long-standing relationships between municipal actors and developers, and artists and cultural actors over the course of almost a decade. These long-term relationships also provide part of the basis for the local cultural strategy. According to Möller (2021), Malmö’s cultural policy is also built upon globally-circulating ideas of the Creative City, which is evident in formulations in the local cultural strategy, encouraging the use of arts and culture as resource for (sustainable) development: The city’s cultural policy can no longer be regarded as concerned only with a strictly defined cultural sector. If sustainability is to be reinforced, 72 Marthe Nehl artistic and cultural expertise have to be regarded and utilised in more and new ways. That is why a cultural strategy for the whole city of Malmö is needed whose activities, in combination and with the help of art and culture, can reinforce the city’s development towards sustainability on all levels. The culture strategy applies to the whole city of Malmö’s organisation. (City of Malmö 2015) Both global ideas and local practice in heterogeneous co-existence constitute space (Massey 2005, 10), and inform future practices. The playground next to REHAB is the result of a joint process and collaboration between MKB and REHAB, the city’s cultural department, Malmö’s museums, the city’s archive, two local schools, a local women’s association, two city planning sections, and neighbourhood inhabitants of various age groups. It presents the Action Plan for the Cultural Strategy’s incentive to “include professional cultural players in development processes and consultation processes and area development” (2016, 11). Through formats such as movie screenings, book clubs, sculpting, school visits, picnics and soup evenings, around 250 people were involved in a period of three years (2018–2020), and the artists contributed their skills. An MKB representative shared that the book circles were “great fun and really different” for the housing company. An artist, on the other hand, shared that the recurring meetings made it possible to create relationships of trust, so that eventually the needs and concerns of vulnerable groups materialise in the final architecture of the playground. McLean (2014) reminds us that a critical discourse is quick to dismiss collaborations like these without recognising their potential to critique and change from within. She points to the “small acts of consciousness raising” (2014, 2170) that emerge in conflictual collaborations; within which, as this example shows, alternative, bottom-up organisation of spaces and the processes involved in their design can be tested. Concluding discussion This chapter presented service exchanges as a form of a mundane practice (Borén and Young 2017) and an example of organising a neighbourhood creative workspace. The findings suggest that instrumental functions of arts are not refused but strategically used in service exchanges, and resources and power are unequally distributed between the cultural practitioners and the housing company, but this this does not necessarily mean one-sided exploitation. Instead, there are reciprocal, continuously negotiated “servicerelations”, which I propose to call “service-entanglements” in order to draw attention to the process in which, and through which, new entanglements and services continuously arise and constitute the space over the long term. In the analysis of interdependencies of conflictual interests, I find: a) an entanglement of transparent commercial transactions next to; b) a political claim for better working conditions; c) a formalisation around Creative Work and Working Space 73 acknowledged dependencies; d) inward-oriented practiced solidarity; and e) relative stability despite an openness for change. Surprisingly, however, the conflicts are not downplayed, but openly discussed and form the basis for service exchanges. MKB profits from the image renewal and relies on the artists’ local activity to demonstrate their commitment to social sustainability and to serve the residents an enjoyable living experience. Requiring the artists’ complicity, both parties assume their role with caution and constantly negotiate advantages and disadvantages, thereby creating and maintaining spatial conditions for less precarious work. Commercial activity is often frowned upon, but creates the possibility for artists to embody an alternative to the otherwise often austere places of cultural production. Ultimately, the negotiation of service-entanglements presents the relational process through which REHAB is produced and where further conflicts, learning moments, and opportunities arise. Finally, it adopts a differentiated view and profound understanding of the reality of artists and cultural workers. In what ways do individual artistic projects become commercial or consciously separated from commercial activities? What spatial requirements are entailed? If the goal is to integrate artists into different areas of development, as envisaged in the Cultural Strategy (2014–2020), the question is what can be learned from this example and what needs to be considered in the future. Bingham-Hall and Kaasa (2017) warn that collaborations with public housing companies bear the risk of entailing limitations on the freedom of artists to decide upon, or to explore processes without a clearly-defined goal. This case indicates a tendency for joint projects (playgrounds or neighbourhood festivals) where MKB creates a setting or context for artistic contribution, but those events are limited, and the private studio space offered by the collaboration gives room for independent work. I cannot say anything about the actual distribution of individual artist’s time, but I do get a sense that some artists carry more organisational responsibility than others. Whether and how this is related to the negotiated service exchanges on which the collaboration is based, is also a question that, for now, remains unanswered. Finally, I return to and scrutinise the argument of space as a critical foundation for any form of social or cultural organisation. While tools and skills such as workshop facilitation and reading circles facilitated by artists and cultural workers certainly played a role, the meeting space at REHAB must be understood as the backbone of the process; necessary for it to unfold and for shared ideas to materialise. Here, participants could gather recurringly over the planning period and share not only quick visions and ideas, but see deeperrooted knowledge exchange materialise in the neighbourhood in the form of murals, photographs, and finally, in the playground itself. Not only has the playground developed in this process, but the presence of art and cultural workers in the neighbourhood has become increasingly entrenched. What this does not make clear, however, is to what extent the local cultural 74 Marthe Nehl actors are networked and organised with other actors in the city, and how and whether the REHAB example can serve as seeds for grassroots activities in other places. An artist told me that he distributes the idea in the form of lectures to interested actors, but where and how the ideas are implemented exceeds my current knowledge. Piecemeal activities cannot change anything in the long term, but alliances and coalitions must be formed in order to be effective beyond the local context (McLean 2014; Hollands 2019). References Abbing, Hans. 2002. Why Are Artists Poor? The Exceptional Economy of the Arts. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Abbing, Hans. 2023. The Economies of Serious and Popular Art How They Diverged and Reunited. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan US. Alacovska, Ana. 2018. ‘Informal Creative Labour Practices: A Relational Work Perspective’. Human Relations 71 (12): 1563–1589. 10.1177/0018726718754 991. Alacovska, Ana, and Joëlle Bissonnette. 2021. ‘Care-Ful Work: An Ethics of Care Approach to Contingent Labour in the Creative Industries’. Journal of Business Ethics 169 (1): 135–151. 10.1007/s10551-019-04316-3. Baeten, Guy 2012. Normalising Neoliberal Planning: The Case of Malmö, Sweden, In Contradictions of Neoliberal Planning. Dordrecht: Springer. (pp. 21–42). 10.1 007/978-90-481-8924-3_2 Baeten, Guy, Sara Westin, Emil Pull, and Irene Molina. 2017. ‘Pressure and Violence: Housing Renovation and Displacement in Sweden’. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 49 (3): 631–651. 10.1177/0308518×16676271. Bain, Alison. 2005. ‘Constructing an Artistic Identity’. Work, Employment and Society 19 (1): 25–46. 10.1177/0950017005051280. Bain, A., and H. McLean. 2013. ‘The Artistic Precariat’. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 6 (1): 93–111. 10.1093/cjres/rss020. Bain, Alison L. 2018. ‘Artists as Property Owners and Small-Scale Developers’. Urban Geography 39 (6): 844–867. 10.1080/02723638.2017.1405687. Bain, Alison L., and Friederike Landau. 2018. ‘Artist Intermediaries in Berlin: Cultural Intermediation as an Interscalar Strategy of Self-Organizational Survival’. Urban Research & Practice 11 (3): 247–262. 10.1080/17535069.2017.1334810. Bain, Alison L., and Friederike Landau. 2019. ‘Assessing the Local Embeddedness Dynamics of the Baumwollspinnerei Cultural Quarter in Leipzig: Introducing the POSES Star Framework’. European Planning Studies 27 (8): 1564–1586. 10.1080/ 09654313.2019.1592120. Brag, A., P. Möller, M. Hellström Reimer, and W. Davis 2014. Kultur som fjärde dimension av hållbar stadsutveckling: ide katalog. Malmö: Malmö Högskola. Bell, David, and Lourdes Orozco. 2020. ‘Neighbourhood Arts Spaces in Place: Cultural Infrastructure and Participation on the Outskirts of the Creative City’. International Journal of Cultural Policy. January: 1–15. 10.1080/10286632.2019. 1709059. Bingham-Hall, John, and Adam Kaasa. 2017. ‘Making Cultural Infrastructure’. London: Theatrum Mundi. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/85683/1/Bingham-Hall_Kaasa_ Making%20cultural%20infrastructure.pdf. Creative Work and Working Space 75 productions, we suggest a model that has eight distinctive phases, which include all artistic work from the first idea until the result. The first two phases involve key persons in the production, but by the second phase, artists and personnel other than the project initiators are involved to contribute ideas and creative input. Conceptualisation The first phase focuses on the ideas of “theme”, “format”, and “medium”. In this context, the theme should be understood as the thematic exploration in the project, the format as what we are aiming for artistically, and the medium is how it will be represented in the theatre space (for example through dance, composed music, mediated storytelling, or situated acting). The outcome of this work is often what is then used in the applications for funding or in the pitching material directed to a theatre, and the work is done by the project owners. Planning In the second phase, the artistic team is determined. Deciding which artists will be involved is crucial to learning what can be achieved, artistically. Additionally, here all the conditions that affect the project are identified: In which venue will the production be performed? How much time do we have to do the project? How much time is there for rehearsals? Can all artists work in the production all the time? In this phase, a budget is also decided to determine what is possible. In the next two phases we work in a more hands-on way with what will become the actual performance. Thematic content In this phase, we share thematic associations, drafts, scenography models, and inspirational material that could be of interest in understanding the project and theme. Together we map out a first interpretation of how to represent the theme through the material we have gathered. Performative content In this phase we collect temporal material which relates to the artistic medium with which we are working. The material could be text fragments or audio-visual try-outs. If we are trying out new mediums, we also do workshops with actors, dancers, or musicians to understand how we should work together and to ascertain whether there are certain conditions we need to consider. The two phases above cover a type of creative work that differs from the work in the first two phases. In the first two phases of conceptualisation and 82 Jörgen Dahlqvist and Kent Olofsson planning, the focus is on thematic ideas, and on expanding the notion of how theatre could represent this theme. In the latter two phases addressing thematic and performative content, the focus is on what can be done artistically and on trying to find solutions to problems. Here we rely on the expertise of each person involved to come up with ideas. The next phase concerns the first draft of the production’s structure. Transforming the content into structure In this phase, the dramaturgy and the composition of the performance are drafted. The dramaturgy of the performance in this phase is in states of becoming in the different productions. When starting with a dramatic text, the dramaturgy is quite fixed from the beginning, and in productions that are devised the dramaturgy can come late in the process. How the dramaturgy and the work on structure are organised also affects how creative the work will be. The more open the structure is, the more everyone is invited into the process of creating the outcome. This will be discussed in more detail in the three cases below. The two phases that follow are more directly directed towards the final performance. Pre-production of materials for the rehearsals In this phase, we prepare the work by producing work material for rehearsals. Rehearsals In this phase, we rehearse together or separately in smaller groups, shaping the performance. For us, the actual performances are also an important part of the ongoing process, and to a greater or lesser degree we encourage changes also after the premiere of a production. Performance Even after the work is premiered it is possible to offer creative agency to the performers. When performing before an audience, the artistic work needs to be calibrated through the audience’s response. Conceptualisation and transforming the content into structure should be recognised as the work that constitutes a generator or initiator for the artwork. An understanding that the artistic process is not a single continuum, but a process made from different phases allows for a more detailed understanding of how creative agency is distributed and enacted by the artists involved in the artistic process. Strategies for Creative Agency in Performing Arts 83 Agency through open-ended dialogue Död åt välfärdsstaten was a performance initiated and conceptualised by the both authors. The production was multidisciplinary and consisted of theatre, storytelling, video, dance, and music. On stage during the performance were three actors, two dancers, four musicians, and one video technician. The production premiered in 2018 as part of the Transistor Festival in Malmö. The performance addressed the dismantling of the welfare system in Swedish society which has taken place in recent decades. The performance tried to locate the ideologies behind this change, and the performance was therefore based on famous speeches by Swedish politicians from the 1930s until recently. Methodically it explored how storytelling and musical composition could be blended with choreographed movements, and how this could inform the development of new methods of interdisciplinary collaboration. In the summer of 2017, as part of the conceptualisation and planning phase, we applied for funding for a transdisciplinary performing arts project. While waiting for a reply on this application, we decided to start to explore the thematic content. Together with the jazz musician and singer Lise Kroner, we developed an audio–visual composition that was performed live at an interdisciplinary performing arts festival. The music was largely improvised, although songs by Lise were integrated into the overall form. In addition to this, we created a visual track from various political speeches by Swedish politicians which was performed along with the music. This work contributed to the structuring of the dramaturgy and composition, and to both the thematic and performative content of the final performance. When the project was granted funding in the winter of 2017, there was not yet a choreographer in the project. In January, Lidia Wos, a dancer and choreographer, was contacted and told about the project and the ideas behind it. Lidia immediately became interested and agreed to join the project. When this was done, she contacted a dancer. At the same time, we brought in actors and continued to initiate and deepen the collaboration with the musicians. At this point, we all began working with material that could be used in the performance. At first, the different art forms—theatre, dance, and music—were rehearsed separately. The work was led by the two authors and Lidia separately. We had meetings once a week, where we briefed each other on the progress and discussed details of the overall structure. This process gave a large amount of freedom to all the participants to come up with material which could later be integrated into the overarching structure. After a while, everyone met in joint rehearsals where the ideas were tried out. When rehearsing, the two authors, together with Lidia (and later Linda Ritzén, one of the actors), functioned as external observers to keep track of the coherence and meaning-making of the performance from an audience’s perspective. This function was changed and distributed as needed during rehearsals. 84 Jörgen Dahlqvist and Kent Olofsson Even if the concept, the planning, and the dramatic structure were already decided before most of the artists joined the work, the production had such a porous structure that it was easy to incorporate everyone’s ideas into the proceedings. The artistic problems that occurred when trying to integrate the different art forms were solved through open-ended dialogue, where all artists together tried to find ways to incorporate as much as they could of the ideas that emerged from the practical work. Agency through negotiation På spaning efter den tid som flytt (In Search of Lost Time), which premiered at Orionteatern in Stockholm in 2019, was a stage adaptation of Marcel Proust’s seminal series of novels (2019) put into a theatre monologue. The production was presented by the theatre as a dramatisation of Proust’s 4,000-page attempt to put into words everything in existence that cannot really be put into words—a work about time, space, memories, consciousness, and senses—and about love, death, happiness, ambition, politics, and war. But most of all about what it means to be alive and to bite off more than one can chew (Orionteatern 2021). Orionteatern is an independent theatre in Stockholm which aims to produce experimental and unconventional productions, leaving room for artistic freedom for the artists working at the theatre. The artistic team for the performance included a dozen people, with all the functions normally found in a traditional theatre production: director, composer, scenographer, costume designer, video designer, and technicians. Many had worked together before, but not in this constellation. What differed from other productions was the presence of two directors, Maja Salomonsson and Nina Jeppsson, who shared artistic leadership. The latter was also the actor who would perform in the piece. This created a special working situation, with one artist directing from the stage within the performance, and the other sitting on the outside keeping an eye on what is presented to the audience, as directors traditionally do. The conceptualisation started with Jeppsson and Salomonsson reading all four thousand pages of the seven-volume novel, a work that went on for months. They selected sections and passages in Proust’s text that they found particularly interesting and captivating, and at the same time they framed important themes that resonated with them. Interestingly, they tended to select the same parts of the text. The reading process resulted in hundreds of pages of selected material. This material was sent to the other members of the artistic team. The director Maja Salomonsson elaborates on this process during an artist’s talk: We had meetings with the artistic team where we just presented everything that had excited us, and what we had found in the text: Strategies for Creative Agency in Performing Arts 85 everything that had touched something in us, and everything related to that. All the images we had gotten. And then this resonated further in the other artists, and in the different art fields. This created a common collective reading, where everyone could continue to associate. (Nina Jeppsson & Maja Salomonsson, artist talk moderated by Hanna Nordenhök, May 19, 2021)Orionteatern 2021 From this shared collective understanding of the text, the artistic team started to imagine possible solutions for the music and scenography as well as for costume, light, and video design. The work that took place while producing the thematic and performative content of the performance was truly non-hierarchical. In interviews the directors said that the overwhelming and almost impossible undertaking of staging this monumental novel also gave them a sense of artistic freedom. The fact that there was no formulated idea on how to do the work from the start and no preconception of what kind of performance it would eventually become meant that each artist in the team was responsible for carrying out their own artistic visions. The associations to Marcel Proust’s universe formed the imaginative world of the performance and this was manifested in the images, costumes, video projections, and in the music composed for the performance. Simultaneously, the next phase started where the collected ideas and associations were to be transformed into a dramaturgical structure. The two directors began writing a narrative script for the performance based on the selected texts they had derived from the novel and the material that the artistic team had proposed. Now they had to make decisions on what to include and not and maybe more importantly, how these scenes should be staged. Salomonsson wanted to use more parts of the text, while Jeppsson aimed at other solutions. During a personal conversation, Nina Jeppsson says: I, as director and dramaturge and actor, tried to talk about [doing things in] another order. [For me, it had] more [to do] with composing with spatiality, dynamics, different tempos, and movements. The text [was] just one of the materials. What holds the performance together is the cavities and the differences in-between. (Nina Jeppsson, personal conversation with Kent Olofsson, September 17, 2021) These differences in the view on how to select and stage the material led to a process of negotiation. In conversation, both Salomonsson and Jeppsson say that they had parts that they thought were especially important to stage in a certain way. This decision was made through long discussions, where both argued as to why their specific idea was the right one. Salomonsson said that she felt that Jeppsson had an advantage in that she was the one on stage with an “insider” perspective, i.e., a more direct connection to how an idea of staging would work for the actor on stage. 86 Jörgen Dahlqvist and Kent Olofsson However, this process would prove to be fruitful once rehearsals began and had been going on for some time. It resulted in a performance where the different parts strongly contrasted each other in an organic yet unpredictable way. The spoken parts were contrasted with sections where dance, music, video, and light would be the key elements. In a conversation, Maja Salomonsson remembered thinking: Now we are collaborating and both of us need to compromise—and it can turn out bad when two artists must compromise. Instead, it was like a third person now emerged, between [the two of] us and [the others] in the artistic team. (Maja Salomonsson, personal conversation with Kent Olofsson, September 16, 2021) This case shows how different phases in the creative process can benefit from diverse and fluid working structures and hierarchies. The performance was a collaborative artistic effort, even though a large part of the process was negotiating artistic ideas for the staging. Through these negotiations, a new autonomous identity emerged from the shared imagination of all members of the artistic team, and helped to integrate different ideas. Shared agency Loneliness is an existential question that took on a whole new meaning during the pandemic when everyone was expected to social distance from other people. The idea with the performance I ett fält av guld (2021) was to explore how this enforced solitude affected our ways of relating to each other. This was created through a web of different stories, which together created a greater narrative of the lonely times of lockdown. The production premiered on the digital play channel on Örebro Teater’s web page in February 2021. The performance included the entire ensemble of actors at Örebro Teater. All the conceptual and structural work was done before meeting the actors, as was the planning. The first table read was also recorded digitally, and a short demonstration video was produced so that the theatre could react to the concept. Returning to the processual model presented above, the first six phases were completed before rehearsals began with the actors. This workflow doesn’t deviate from traditional theatre processes, where everything is decided upon before meeting the actors. What differed was the fact that this performance was to be rehearsed and presented through Zoom. This, however, did not please all the actors. In a conversation with one of the actors, she confessed that her notion of theatre is that it is a collaborative art form, where actors explore the intentions and motivations of different fictional characters. In her mind, this project was exactly the opposite. Strategies for Creative Agency in Performing Arts 87 When rehearsals began, the actors were invited to influence the process by being asked how they wanted to work and if there were things they were interested in trying out in this format. And through this, the actor mentioned above found her way into the process: My creativity came when I was able to create the character. It is interesting. I remember when you said that the result should feel intimate and authentic. It is easy to think that this means creating a character close to oneself, or to perform my own personality […] this doesn’t work so well for me. In this project I instead found pleasure in developing a character and asking myself who she was. I also imagined what had happened before and after each film sequence. […] I just immersed myself in this person, and this was creative. (Katarina Krogh, personal conversation with Jörgen Dahlqvist, April 1, 2021) Through the work, the actor was encouraged to try out new things. This meant exposing herself to situations that felt awkward at the start, such as being “in character” and filming with a cell phone and a selfie stick inside a shopping mall. The format liberated her from many of the constrictions she would have been under during a regular theatre production: This was so new for all of us, so no one knew the answers. The only way to work was to test things yourself, and through this, creativity emerged. […] I can experience that there is right and wrong in how to do theatre. What a process should look like. All the way from the first table read to the eight-week time frame until rehearsal. There are so many unwritten rules that we just follow. (…) I think it is a limitation that all of us are having preconceptions on how things should be and what a process should look like. (Ibid.) In the conversation after the production, the actor said she was happy with the collaboration, and when asked to elaborate on the factors influencing success, she said: The way you led the rehearsals made it work. Please note that I don’t use the word director. It didn’t feel threatening that you appeared as an image on the screen to watch me do things. Except for that one time when I was supposed to cry, then I didn’t want you there. (Ibid.) For the actor, the position of director has hierarchical connotations. When she describes the work climate she instead focuses on certain qualities as “affirmative” and “positive”. She also describes how she discovered that she had agency in the process: 88 Jörgen Dahlqvist and Kent Olofsson I realised that [you] are not going to tell me what to do, or have a lot of opinions, so there is just a manifold number of possibilities for me. It became fun to try things out. It became a joint effort to come up with ideas. (Ibid.) In this process, a shared agency emerged between the actor and the playwright/director, which emanated from the themes the performance was addressing. The format and the medium were new to both parties, so there were no pre-existing methods to lean on—the aesthetics needed to be invented through the process itself. Despite not being the initiator of the project, the actor could form her process and was encouraged to express herself artistically. She felt creative in being able to pursue ideas and working methods, but also in being able to transgress the initial awkwardness of acting in public in the shopping mall. Even though she didn’t know how the result would turn out, she became confident in her own creative output. The importance of creative agency in collaborations In this chapter we have presented a model of how to understand our artistic processes. What has become evident to us is that the process is complex, and it changes during creation and iteration phases. Even if there is a fixed structure, it doesn’t mean that this is a static process. Rather, the different phases in the process are plastic and changeable, and allow for both hierarchical and flat structures, depending on what is needed at the time. A more nuanced understanding of the artistic process gives space for creative agency to the participating artists and other professions in theatre. The strategies we have presented have given agency to the artists in the collaborations in various ways. Artists and other personnel join during different stages of the process, but still contribute to a high degree to the artistic outcome. The design of the project process affects the way the collaboration has been enacted. We have shown that it is possible to distribute and share the decision-making between the different agents of a production. These strategies question the hierarchies between the different professions without relativising or diminishing these functions in the actual work. By creating a creative space where agency is in focus, the aesthetic outcome will also change. Opening and democratising the processes enables more perspectives to be considered in the artistic work. This means that the performance will be filtered through a manifold of voices rather than through an individual artistic subject. We believe that this leads to a richer expression; one where more people invest their artistic ideas towards the result. Changing the ways that we work will also allow for new formats to emerge within the performing arts field. The democratising of creative agency therefore adds aesthetic value for the audience. Strategies for Creative Agency in Performing Arts 89 References Becker, Howard. Art worlds. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1982. Dahlqvist, Jörgen, & Olofsson, Kent. ‘Shared spaces: Artistic methods for collaborative works’, Studies in Musical Theatre, 11:2, 119–129, 2017, doi: 10.1386/ smt.11.2.119_1. Fransson, P. Omförhandlingar: Kropp, replik, etik. Diss. Lund: Lunds universitet, Lund, 2018. Glăveanu, Vlad P. Distributed creativity. SpringerBriefs in Psychology, 2014, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-05434-6_1 Glăveanu, Vlad P., & Beghetto, Ronald A. ‘Creative experience: A non-standard definition of creativity’, Creativity Research Journal, 33:2, 75–80, 2021, doi: 10.1 080/10400419.2020.1827606, April 24, 2022. Goebbels, Heiner. Aesthetics of absence: Texts on theatre. London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. Hill, Leslie, & Paris, Helen. Devising theatre and performance: Curious methods. Bristol: Intellect, 2021. John-Steiner, Vera. Creative collaboration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Kershaw, Baz, & Nicholson, Helen (ed.). Research methods in theatre and performance. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011. Mitchell, Katie. The director’s craft: A handbook for the theatre. London: Routledge, 2009. Olofsson, Kent. Composing the performance: An exploration of musical composition as a dramaturgical strategy in contemporary intermedial theatre. Diss. Lund: Lunds universitet, Lund, 2018. Orionteatern. ‘På spaning efter den tid som flytt’, 2021. Accessed from https:// orionteatern.se/arkivet/pa-spaning-efter-den-tid-som-flytt-3/, October 31, 2021. Östersjö, Stefan. Listening to the other. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020. Östersjö, Stefan. ‘Art worlds, voice and knowledge: Thoughts on quality assessment of artistic research outcomes’, ÍMPAR, Online Journal for Artistic Research, 3:2, 60–89, 2019. Accessed from doi: 10.34624/impar.v3i2.14152, April 25, 2022. Proust, Marcel. In search of lost time. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2019. Rebstock, M., & Roesner, D. (ed.). Composed theatre: Aesthetics, practices, processes. Bristol: Intellect, 2013. Roesner, David. Musicality in theatre: Music as model, method and metaphor in theatre-making. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Runco, Mark A. ‘Everyone has creative potential’, in Creativity: From potential to realization, Sternberg, Robert J., Grigorenko, Elena L., & Singer, Jerome L. (eds.), 2004, accessed from 10.1037/10692-002, April 24, 2002. Runco, Mark A, & Jaeger, Garrett J, ‘The standard definition of creativity’, Creativity Research Journal, 24 (1), 92–96, 2012. Thomson, P., & Jaque, V. Creativity and the performing artist (Electronic resource). Academic Press, 2017. Trencsényi, Katalin, & Cochrane, Bernadette (ed.). New dramaturgy: International perspectives on theory and practice. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014. Turner, Cathy, & Behrndt, Synne. Dramaturgy and performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 90 Jörgen Dahlqvist and Kent Olofsson University of the Arts Helsinki. Looking for direction: Rethinking theatre directing practices and pedagogies in the 21st century. Helsingfors: University of the Arts Helsinki, Theatre Academy, 2022. Artist talks, personal conversation, and email correspondence (translations to English by the authors) Katarina Krogh, personal conversation with Jörgen Dahlqvist, April 1, 2021 Nina Jeppsson, personal conversation with Kent Olofsson, September 17, 2021 Maja Salomonsson, personal conversation with Kent Olofsson, September 16, 2021 Nina Jeppsson & Maja Salomonsson, artist talk moderated by Hanna Nordenhök, May 19, 2021, accessed from https://vimeo.com/552303975, October 10, 2021 Strategies for Creative Agency in Performing Arts 91 their income from their creative work. As one of the participants in our research, a cultural text writer, explains about his current situation: “There aren’t that many opportunities on the labour market anymore, so I was actually forced to become a cultural entrepreneur” (Kamiel, interview May 2020). When asked why he signed up for the course, he explains: “Because I hoped I could increase my turnover a bit” (interview May 2020). This state of affairs can be described as liminal entrepreneuring (Garcia-Lorenzo et al. 2018), where activities are characterised by an in-betweenness and “boundary-spanning” to extend the scope of their practices, moving from artistic practice to arts entrepreneurship (Callander and Cummings 2021, 749). Through the analysis of our interviews, we noticed that all of our participants sometimes referred to themselves as entrepreneurs but also as makers, artists or creative professionals. They navigate the space between the categories of entrepreneurship and art, adjusting their identities from being independent artists to also seeing themselves as entrepreneurial brand managers and business owners. The following two sections illustrate how the participants, together with the business support programme, operate in this liminal space. Help to potentially leave the liminal space As the “route to entrepreneurship” is a popular programme, there is a selection process and a limited capacity of 12 participants. Anyone can apply online, but after a round of interviews, participants are selected on the basis of their motivation, career stage, and willingness to change their current practice. The selection is therefore not focussed on artistic skills but on the potential of the applicant to develop as a cultural entrepreneur and the extent to which the course can impact their career. This may also explain why, in the feedback that C+O receives from the participants, almost all report that the course has had a lasting impact on their artistic practice. Already through the selection process, the programme ensures that the training is able to construct value as selected participants open themselves up to intervention, paving the way for the programme to add value to their practice in the form of reflection, suggestions, and emotional support (Strandvad 2009). It can therefore be argued that participants are selected based on their position within the liminal space, and thus their potential for change through the programme. The first two weeks of the course are centred on identifying the needs and aspirations of the individual participants. By focusing on personal leadership and the essence of their artistic practice, the course begins with a focus on developing the soft skills necessary for entrepreneurship: who am I as an entrepreneur and what is the story I want to tell? One of the staff members explains this choice as follows; “financing is actually the final step of your entrepreneurial development, with the result that you will be able to find the money” (Course coordinator, interview September 2021). The next step is to 98 Sara Malou Strandvad et al. figure out how the participants can create an audience for their creative practice. Even though the course does not directly address the artistic practice and content that participants produce, the trainers and coaches advise participants to change and modify the way they approach and present their work. This way, the programme demonstrates a subtle form of governance, providing space and advice to reflect on one’s own practice in order to take responsibility for managing oneself. Madelief mentioned that the course required her to change her mindset from thinking, “I need something”, namely money from potential clients, to “I have something to offer” (Visual artist, interview March 2020). While the course “route to entrepreneurship” focuses on the individual’s journey, shaped by the qualities of each participant, these individual journeys still develop within the confines of the course. With its fixed structure, the course composes and defines cultural entrepreneurship in a standardised format. When participants join the course, a certain mediation of their practice takes place, generating an altered version of what they were already doing by framing and presenting it differently. This means that while individual participants are at the centre of the course and receive personalised coaching and feedback, it is not their own ideas of what they need that are the leading element in the support provided. Rather, the programme decides which topics and aspects are important and need attention from the participants. Yet, even if the business support programme provides an opportunity to think differently about one’s resources and strategies of action, and to consider possible futures and trajectories for one’s creative practice, these still need to be put into practice by the participant. It is up to the participants themselves to do something with the tools they are given. This means that the business support programme outlines ways of adding value to the participants’ practices by framing them differently, but the participants need to implement this new framing and thus ultimately construct this added value themselves. In between public funding and commercial sales Even when cultural entrepreneurs are taught how to sell their work and charge fair fees, they may still need to rely on subsidies to support their artistic practice. Public funding as an alternative to selling was a topic that came up in our interviews with both staff and participants, although few of our participants had received arts funding. To get funding, you need to be able to write clear project proposals that can get through multiple rounds of review. But because cultural entrepreneurs are not always familiar with the language necessary to persuade commissions, boards, or policymakers, it is often difficult to apply successfully. Douglas, a visual artist who makes installations, has experienced this more than once; “In a conversation, I am quite good at expressing what I want to say, or what it is about, or what it is I need. But when I put it on paper, I almost always get the same response; yes, Creative Work and Business Support 99 we understand where you want to go, but we see it is not detailed enough” (interview April 2020). This suggests that cultural entrepreneurs may not only need guidance on where to find the money, but also hands-on advice on how to sell their story to get funding. However, when it comes to the subsidies that finance art projects, it is not uncommon in the Dutch funding system that there is no possibility to include an income for the artist in the budget. This was confirmed by our participant Phlox, who remarked “I didn’t really earn money from that subsidy, it almost cost me money” (Breakdancer, interview September 2020). While funding for the arts is legitimised by positive factors for society, critics of the current Dutch cultural policy have noted that the producers of these artistic goods often do not receive compensation for their work (SER 2017). Moreover, our interviewees highlighted that funding comes with strings attached. For example, Jacinto, a DJ in his mid-40s, described why he was reluctant to accept funding for a long time: “I wanted to keep my freedom and subsidies come with a lot of restrictions. People give you money, so they expect something in return, also content-wise, and you have to account for every step you make” (interview September 2020). As recipients need to account for their spending and document the impacts of their project, our participants found that public funding was a lot of extra work and did not always pay off. Thus, while individuals may have clear and strong intentions to implement changes in their practice, this can prove difficult as selfemployed artists operate in a landscape where they have limited “ability to attack” (Robinson and Novak-Leonard 2021, 6). Discussion: Changing the name but not the game As previous research on the role of business support programmes has shown, our study confirms that such programmes have few possibilities for changing structural issues. Creative business support programmes may guide cultural entrepreneurs through the maze of business and bureaucracy, but may ultimately be of limited help in radically changing the situation for most selfemployed creatives. This reflects what cultural studies theorist Angela McRobbie has argued; that the hardship of creative work, which can be seen as a way of accumulating authenticity early on in a career (McRobbie 1999), often does not constitute a rite of passage leading to a different situation, but becomes a permanent condition (McRobbie 2002). In other words, they may be ready to implement an entrepreneurial re-routing of their work, but this may not necessarily lead them to a different situation as the landscape of the cultural and creative industries remains the same. In our analysis of how C+O operates as a cultural intermediary within the liminal space in which the participants find themselves, we arrived at the same conclusions. Business support programmes may have changed the name, but not the game; artists and creative professionals now call themselves cultural entrepreneurs, but they still have to operate in the same political and economic landscape. To 100 Sara Malou Strandvad et al. discuss this, we will highlight the ways in which C+O is embedded in larger socio-economic infrastructures. The artists in our study find themselves in a labour market with an increasing influx of entrants, not least from arts education programmes that produce so-called bohemian graduates (Faggian et al. 2013). This leads to a situation where, as Ashton (2013) describes it, art students’ main concern becomes “getting a job rather than the conditions of that job” (481). This leads many to opt for self-employment. As a study of Dutch cultural entrepreneurs laconically puts it: “our informants felt the chips happened to have fallen in such a way that they found themselves working as independent professionals” (Hermes et al. 2017, 96). Other studies have classified this type of entrepreneurship as “unintended” (Essig 2015), “accidental” (Coulson 2012), or “forced” (Oakley 2014). None of the participants in our study live exclusively from their artistic work. They rely on side jobs, funds, social welfare, or other income streams such as their partner’s income. This means that they are experiencing a form of underemployment (Denning 2010) in the sense that their productive capacity is under-utilised or at least not generating a sustainable income. Confirming what other studies on cultural entrepreneurship in the Netherlands have documented with statistical data, the portfolio careers of the creative entrepreneurs in our sample mean that this group experiences greater risks in terms of lower job security and higher chances of unemployment (van Andel and Loots 2021; Been and Keune 2022). As Ulrich Beck has pinpointed, the financial stability of “lifelong full-time work” in the global North has shifted to a “risk-fraught system of flexible, pluralized, decentralized underemployment” (Beck qtd. in Denning 2010, 85). This raises the question of whether business support programmes that aim to support cultural entrepreneurs tap into a feeling of personal failure that reflects “the neoliberal ideology about choice and self-making” (Hermes et al. 2017, 94). Because of the strong connections between their artistic practice and identity, failure in creative work can also be experienced as a personal failure, explaining the need for emotional support. Some of our participants expressed that they thought little of their own work before the course, but treasured the trainers’ validation of their work during the course. Rozemarijn stated, “they gave me the tools, but also an acknowledgement, which I really appreciated. An acknowledgement like ‘hey, you’re doing really great!’” (Visual artist/designer, interview June 2020). This supports the finding from Munro’s study of a creative intermediary agency that a key feature of the business support program is emotional support, reassuring participants that they are not alone in experiencing challenges (2017). Thus, the affective support suggests that participants can improve their individual situation by buying into the training. Would it not be more beneficial to change this system rather than emotionally supporting individual participants in the difficulties they face because of the discrepancies in the cultural policyscape? One way to change Creative Work and Business Support 101 the challenging situation for artists is through structural funding, similar to the previously offered WWIK. Within our sample of artists, we observed structural funding in the form of social welfare schemes (Anemona), pension benefits (Madelief), and a municipality-run funding scheme for selfemployed citizens (Kamiel). While the three participants who received this structural funding were operating in the liminal space and were interested in a course on cultural entrepreneurship, we found that they were less vulnerable in times of crises, and were able to make choices that could benefit them in the long run. As Kamiel stated, “In difficult periods, like now [during the COVID-19 lockdowns], you have that safety net [from the funding scheme that was in place before the pandemic]” (interview May 2020). This gives them a greater chance of exiting the liminal space and paves the way for a sustainable long-term form of entrepreneurship. Such funds thus create circumstances in which entrepreneurs can cross the liminal space and move towards sustainable careers. Still, as we discussed in our analysis, most of the existing project-based subsidies are not ideal. Moreover, there are many prejudices surrounding arts funding, both from politicians and the general public, as well as from artists themselves. Around the time the WWIK ended, artists were seen as “subsidy devourers”, as our participant Rozemarijn (visual artist/designer, interview June 2020) reminisced. This mindset still exists today. Furthermore, given the previous budget cuts for the creative sector, it is unlikely that politicians would be open to handing such large sums of money directly to artists. Therefore, it can be argued that structural subsidies, such as the WWIK, which is similar to a Universal Basic Income, could be very helpful for cultural entrepreneurs to build a strong foundation for their practice, both artistically and economically. However, the political and social world might not yet be ready for its (re-)implementation. Although these structural issues in the cultural sector cannot be solved by offering business support to cultural entrepreneurs, a solution may still lie in the business support programme. C+O is a unique case study because it not only provides business support but also has an advisory role for policymakers. Through their courses and consultancy function, they gain knowledge from the participating cultural entrepreneurs regarding what issues they face and what kind of policies and support systems are needed to solve them. This information is then used by C+O to advise governmental bodies on the current state of the arts and cultural sector. Although their power is limited, they collect the individual voices and bundle them into a narrative that is voiced by a leading organisation in the cultural sector, thus giving the narrative more prominence. In this function, their role as a cultural intermediary not only adds value to the work of individual entrepreneurs but also has the potential to influence cultural policies for the better. They mediate not just between production and consumption (Nixon and du Gay 2002), but also between artists and policymakers, highlighting that cultural intermediation takes place not only between artists and consumers but in a wider political landscape. 102 Sara Malou Strandvad et al. Conclusion Through a case study of the Dutch knowledge centre for entrepreneurship in the cultural and creative sector, Cultuur+Ondernemen, this chapter has investigated how a business support programme functions as a cultural intermediary to help artists as cultural entrepreneurs navigate the liminal space in which they find themselves. In the analysis of the case study, we show that the training programme requires the participants to be open to the suggestions of the trainers and coaches and that the help of the programme consists in providing a different framing of the participants’ activities. Our analysis also documents that participants appreciate the recognition they receive from trainers and coaches. Lastly, our analysis emphasises that participating artists are genuinely interested in generating income from their entrepreneurship and that they prefer this to applying for funding to sustain their artistic practice. We acknowledge that our research was limited in the number of participants and was only involved in their practices for a short time. Its aim is to be interpretative and not to provide generalisations. Nevertheless, it corroborates findings from previous studies of creative business support programmes by highlighting the emotional support that trainers provide to participants alongside business support, and by emphasising that the support programme is placed within a wider policyscape. Our analysis shows that it is difficult for a business support programme aimed at cultural entrepreneurs to change the existing structures in the cultural and creative sector and that the political agenda moreover restricts what a support programme can do as a facilitator. Ultimately, the training on offer is confined by certain needs that adhere to the neoliberal idea of the artist-entrepreneur. This means that training in business skills does not fundamentally change the situation of the participants. In fact, it may uphold a vicious circle of taking responsibility for challenges that are structurally conditioned. The case of business support programmes draws attention to how cultural entrepreneurs are positioned within the wider economy. Participants come to the support programme to gain tools to increase their income and thus create more stability. But even with the help of the business support programme, artists as entrepreneurs may only be able to escape their precarious situation through a re-categorisation from struggling artists to cultural entrepreneurs. Thus, creative business support programmes are used as an attempt to circumvent underemployment in the cultural sector. The support programme functions as a cultural intermediary that adds value by facilitating cultural entrepreneurs to redirect their practices, ideally leading them away from precarity through a liminal space of rethinking their existence between art and entrepreneurship and settling on a sustainable business practice. Yet, we show that although individual cultural entrepreneurs benefit from the course, the issues in the cultural and creative sector are structural and therefore cannot be solved by offering business courses alone. Rather than Creative Work and Business Support 103 suggesting that artists lack business skills, we argue that they suffer from the changing government rhetoric that allows policymakers to evade responsibility for this growing group of their citizens. Changing this situation requires more radical solutions than just business support. For example, funding that is similar to the conditions of the Universal Basic Income or revisions to educational systems might be alternative ways of addressing the issue of precarity in creative work. These remain topics to be explored in future research. Note 1 All authors contributed equally to this chapter. References Ashton, Daniel. “Cultural Workers in-the-Making.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 16, no. 4 (2013): 468–488. 10.1177/1367549413484308 Banks, Mark, Rosalind Gill, and Stephanie Taylor, eds. Theorizing Cultural Work: Labour, Continuity and Change in the Cultural and Creative Industries. London, New York: Routledge, 2013. 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It is a hub that gathers several different initiatives. It is a go-to base for these sorts of operations. “Creative” is such a worn-out word, but I cannot find a better one. In the quotation above, the managing director is reflecting on the makerspace where he works. Over the past decade, the former industrial building has housed creators, entrepreneurs, and cultural workers, and simmers with life from early morning until midnight. Today the building holds machinery, working spaces, and meeting facilities. Individuals and collectives come here to test and develop creative ideas, and to find different kinds of support, but also to give lectures, workshops, and produce events. It is a platform for creative and cultural work. This chapter takes an interest in the world of platforms for creative and cultural work. Platforms for creative and cultural work started to become popular in the late 20th century, and have grown rapidly over the years (Browder, Aldrich & Bradley 2019). The phenomenon originates from business models for start-ups and entrepreneurs, such as incubators, science parks, germinators, and accelerators (Hackett & Dilts 2004; Hannon 2004). Alongside the maker movement, another start-up trend appeared in the wake of the 1990s dot-com era. The trend was facilitated through enhanced knowledge sharing within physical as well as virtual environments, and an increase in collaborations, as well as access to and decrease in the cost of technology that previously was mostly restricted to research and development facilities (Löfgren & Willim 2005; Browder, Aldrich & Bradley 2019). Collectives with roots in the tech movement who had crossed over to the doit-yourself movement started to take form and resulted in so-called makerspaces, creative hubs, hackerspaces, tech shops, and fab-labs (Seravalli 2014); a development that has been described as “the next industrial revolution” (Anderson 2012). DOI: 10.4324/9781003402688-9 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Some projects will work and grow, while others will turn out to be dead ends. One managing director underscores participants’—“the enthusiasts, carriers of the idea”—own responsibility, pointing out one of the key skills in his line of work, namely the possibility and ability to delegate the execution and responsibility of projects to others. Rather than initiating or executing projects, platform professionals’ work consists of paving the way for creativity. There must be some sort of facilitator. Not result owners, but enablers. We are a facilitator … That is our frame. Meetings. Knowledge. Research. Events. Funding. Putting in people who can help in shaping a concept. Putting in people who are damn good at negotiating. (Project leader) Platform professionals facilitate creativity by organising and providing economic, organisational, physical, and social frameworks. Without frameworks, they argue, there is a risk of missing opportunities and new collaborations. We will now go into two of the everyday practices that platform professionals perform in order to enable and help develop creative activities and projects. The first practice regards helping participants refine their idea (s) and make them feasible, and the second one concerns creating collaborations. We will start with the refinement of ideas. Peeling the onion A lot of conversations are about “what do you mean, what are you thinking, how are we going to be able to do this?” And sometimes we pick up a ball saying, “let us do this” and “ok, if we are going to do this, how should we go about it?” So, it is a lot about asking questions. (Project leader) Asking questions is described as a central practice in platform professionals’ work: a tool in the facilitators’ toolbox for enabling creativity. Raising questions concerning goals, execution, needs, and opportunities appears to be important in relation to all activities and at all stages of the process of different projects. However, asking questions is described to be of particular importance in the selection of initiatives or projects. Depending on space and resources, some platforms have developed protocols for acceptance while others choose to apply a more flexible approach. One managing director describes how her organisation has developed and implemented a system with different support so as to better sift between applicants. The change is explained as a shift from a grassroots approach, where creative workers have been appointed organically, to a more formalised system with established selection criteria and levels of engagement. Shifting systems entailed that previously-appointed creators and entrepreneurs had to re-apply for their space in and access to the platform; 114 Ida de Wit Sandstro m and Marie Ledendal something that created considerable tension within the organisation. “Some became very scared and suspicious, and it started a painful process that has lasted through a whole year”, the business manager tells us. “Many had to leave”. In contrast to the formalised process with defined criteria and questions that she applies, another managing director describes a more inclusive and organic selection process. This managing director says that new initiatives must fit within one or more of the platform’s broad key themes. However, if an initiative falls outside of them but is considered interesting, the platform might consider supporting it anyway; “we do not have a readymade road map”. Bergman and McMullen (2020) argue that makerspace managers can either act as active brokers who facilitate and communicate opportunities, or as passive brokers who deliberately do not facilitate such engagement. These two different approaches are also applicable in the selection and acceptance of participants. To get new entrepreneurs acquainted with the environment of and structure within the makerspace, managers can either try to ease new entrepreneurs into the social and technological environment through guidance and networking, or leave the acclimation process to the entrepreneurs themselves. Both examples discuss the rigidity or flexibility of the management approach. Whereas the first managing director seeks control and insight, the latter argues that the process itself must be given the reins. [Q]uite often we get proposals that I find extremely cheesy and poor, that cannot become anything. Then I must brace myself and think that I do not have anything to do with that. Despite an apparently more relaxed approach, the managing director has developed strategies in order to sift between projects. The strategy, again, boils down to asking questions. Then we will schedule a meeting to talk about the needs and opportunities. Sometimes we have to say no, they can be too extensive and would interfere with other operations. Or we might think that they are not feasible. It does not happen often, but sometimes one must ask people to downsize their ideas, take them down a notch. Sort of “we will do a pilot; we will do one event first, and then we will see if we can conquer the world next week instead”. And we almost never turn anyone down, we do not have to do that, the building is not full. (Managing director) The differences in approaches and protocols can be derived from the fact that platforms for cultural and creative platforms—specifically municipallyfunded ones—are relatively new. Roles and practices have not been set in stone, and there is no “how-to book” for managing these types of platforms. Rather, it appears that they are still being tried out and developed. During their interview, the managing director with the relaxed approach called for Platforms for Creative Work 115 research that can lead to the development of protocols for best practice, as was also suggested in Bergman and McMullen (2020). However, in contrast to what Bergman and McMullen argue, the narratives in our material do not show that the platform professionals act as active or passive brokers, but rather both, depending on the specific activity or project. In the initial stage, the practice of asking questions seeks to identify opportunities and assess needs, and the professionals take on a more active role. They continue to ask critical questions after an initiative has been accepted in order to strengthen the carrying capacity of the specific activity and/or project, but seem to take on a more relaxed approach. I hear that you are saying this, this, and this. Ok, we can start with that tomorrow—but what is our dream? Where would we like to land? It is like with athletes—you can say “I am going to the Olympics”. But then you must go to the sports centre every day to practise. (Project leader) Asking questions is a tool for professionals to help individuals and collectives at the platforms refine their ideas and make them feasible. It is also a way to point out and place responsibility for different activities and projects, as well as their execution, on their initiators. In this process, the professionals underline their role as facilitators, switching between different levels of engagement. As stated, the platforms offer resources for creative ideas to take form and thrive through the facilitation of a physical framework; that is, office spaces, meeting rooms, and different kinds of technical equipment. But even more important, according to the professionals, is the social framework that they can offer as a node for different networks and collaborations. Having peeled the onion, another practice takes over. A recurring theme in the stories about the professionals’ work is their role as facilitators of connections and conversations between different actors (cf. Browder et al. 2019). Connecting people This leads us to the second of the two practices that we have identified—namely the practice of connecting people. An important part of platform professionals’ work is to organise and take part in more formal meetings for knowledge transfer and collaboration. I am an initiator. Organising, getting things going. Find who is going to do it, get them on board. Educated coach. Working a lot with values and methodology. Omnivore. (Project manager) In taking part in these meetings, platform professionals function as lightning rods, taking in information and ideas that they can later use and spread to their respective networks. One of the platform professionals stated that 116 Ida de Wit Sandstro m and Marie Ledendal access to a physical place is often the main reason for approaching the creative platform. The second most important aspect is not money, but rather structure and networking so as to provide support for “doing things in the right order”; of how to create an event; marketing, pricing, or how to use a machine, etc. The platform professional describes a set-up of a milieu where the experience and knowledge of the individuals in the different projects and initiatives in the house collectively constitute a knowledge bank that concerns these matters. Again, networking—or linking different people to each other—becomes key in facilitating this knowledge transfer. The platform practitioner’s role can, accordingly, be argued to be rooted in the idea of the collective do-it-yourself movement, and peer-to-peer learning structures. But this occurs through facilitating the structure itself, rather than necessarily being the go-to person regarding specific knowledge or know-how. Another example of utilising more formal meetings as a structure to facilitate creativity concerns financial support. One of the platform professionals informed us that in relation to financial support, the platform generally does not fund the initiatives. The budget for running the organisation does not cover the ability to fund projects and larger events. Another platform professional expresses similar sentiments, and adds that they are “very dependent on the projects marketing themselves; that they also seek funding”. However, during the interviews, set-ups are described where applying for funding is supported in different ways. The platform professional can support projects in applying for funding, providing information and insight on where and how to apply, but also when it fits with the platform’s aim to take part as a co-applicant in a funding application. Furthermore, platform professionals point to the importance of initiating meetings between different persons or initiatives. Meetings between parties that may be interested in applying for funding together, or between parties where one party has experience in applying for similar funding that someone else is interested in, where the former party can support the latter party in the application process. The set-up furthers the platform practitioner’s role as “a facilitator of networking”. This is a role platform professionals can hold due to their recurring contact with all the different projects, their understanding of their aims and visions, as well as through updating their knowledge on the project’s different applications. Thirdly, the platform practitioner’s role as a facilitator of networking could also be viewed as a producer’s role. Here, platform professionals act as a link between different projects and the external public; through, for example, producing larger public events hosted by the creative platform in which different projects can partake. This can either take the form of a more tailored specific event, with a clearer focus, or more general events. The platforms describe different structures in relation to conducting this type of event; from more of a focus on participants hosting almost every Platforms for Creative Work 117 event, to the platform practitioner producing some of these events, to having someone employed as a producer within the organisation. In the prior and the latter cases, the platform practitioner’s role relates more to a support function in facilitating this type of co-hosted event through previously-mentioned internal networking channels between different persons and projects. Whereas in the third more middle-of-the-road option, the structure involves the platform practitioner taking on the tasks of a producer. However, one platform practitioner underlines that these types of actions are time-intensive, and because she has to prioritise working on the long-term strategy, vision, and goals of the platform, she has chosen not to do them anymore. Apart from describing the more formal aspects of networking, platform professionals often returned to the importance of enabling informal contact surfaces, where different competencies and fields can be connected, enabling the exploration of common interests and possibilities. They describe how creativity and creative projects arise through small talk and the informal exchange of ideas. Informal communication can be defined as a type of communicative interaction that is not governed by strict forms and rules (Coupland 2003). Non-formal interactions take place near the water cooler, at the coffee machine or during lunch breaks, but also take place in formalised settings among unrelated individuals. “The informal network comprises spontaneous, emergent patterns, resulting from discretionary choices of the individual” (Stohl 1995, p. 65). Studies on informal communication have examined, for example, emergent networks, to better discuss less formalised and more natural forms of communication. Informal channels are generally better evaluated than formal ones, with informal channels often used to communicate organisational culture. Small talk creates connections; “small talk can be briefly defined as an informal type of conversation that is often followed by the proper discussion, negotiations, and other forms of formal discourse” (BieleniaGrajewska 2017, p. 6). “Invite them”. Put them at the table, give them coffee, and ask if all is good. Then it happens. (Project leader) Despite a portfolio of different meeting facilities and machinery, it is the very mundane cup of coffee that is the platform professionals’ number one tool to get the small talk going. According to platform professionals, getting together over coffee is the first step toward joint projects and great ideas. The importance that is given to small talk underlines the informal and self-organising character of the platforms, and the ideas and conceptions that form this context. In the next and concluding section of this chapter, we will linger on what this can tell us about how creativity is conceptualised. 118 Ida de Wit Sandstro m and Marie Ledendal In the age of creativity In this chapter, we have focused on creative platforms and how creativity is facilitated in platforms for creative and cultural work in Scania, Sweden. One way to structure innovation and creativity that is intended to result from these platforms could, of course, simply be to allow participants to use the space and create connections on their own accord without any interference from management, leaders, or other professionals, or without any structures to increase output. To put it bluntly, their job is to facilitate networking and creativity through the possibility of “accessing a number of square meters and a cup of coffee”. However, several of the platforms have engaged professionals to run them. We have aimed to understand the role of these platform professionals, to map how they help to facilitate creativity through these milieus. More specifically, this chapter has aimed to provide some reflections on the work tasks of these platform professionals. From their narratives about their work, we have learned that the professionals’ working days are varied, often including both strategic matters and more hands-on tasks. They write applications for funding and prepare physical spaces. We have understood that they perceive themselves to be enablers of creativity who facilitate creativity and cultural work through different practices; supporting rather than performing. From their narratives, we have identified and discussed two key practices—namely the practice of asking questions and the practice of connecting people. By asking the right questions at the right time, platform professionals act as friendly critics who help individuals or collectives get to the core of their ideas and make them feasible. Asking questions also helps identify opportunities and assess needs. Through the practice of connecting people, platform professionals gather and use their networks in both formal and informal contexts to strengthen the overall framework of the platform, as well as individual activities and projects. Both practices require coaching skills, social competence, and a willingness to prepare the scene but leave the responsibility of the actual execution to others. Keeping track of the bigger picture demands the ability to put together building blocks of different sizes and shapes into a totality that moves in the direction of innovation and growth. It also requires knowledge of when and how to restructure the pattern, to continually encourage growth and counterwork stagnation. Focusing on the overall goal requires that platform professionals do not get lost in detail or too engaged in specific activities, ideas, and projects. Some will grow and develop out of the platform framework, others will instead turn out to be dead ends. The task of the platform professional is to create a balance between openness and structure, exploration, and results. Through narratives of and about the work of the professionals who handle and manage these platforms, this chapter illustrates how creativity and creative work are encouraged and facilitated at the chosen platforms. Platforms for Creative Work 119 They also tell us that creativity is thought of as a project that requires different kinds of structures, spaces, and support in order to come about and thrive. At the same time, creativity is presented as something amorphous and unplannable. Platforms for creative and cultural work are viewed as catalysts that facilitate and enable both structure and freedom. Platform professionals organise and maintain physical spaces for ideas to take form and grow, as well as a social space for collective thinking that is described as crucial for creativity. We would like to introduce the idea that the platform professionals can be perceived as a contemporary guild whose actions and use of language and terms illustrate the creative imperative of our time. This guild frames activities and business as creative, adding value to them as worthy points of attachment to the intended recipients. In this way, they are involved in qualification and function as mediators of conceptions and norms of and about creativity. References Abbott, Porter H. 2002. Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anderson, Chris. 2012. Makers: The new industrial revolution. New York, NY: Crown Business. 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Livsstilskonsumtion på känslornas marknad. Malmö: Liber. Thompson, Greg. 2017. “The evolution of the modern maker space”, The Journal, Vol. 44, no. 2, p. 7–10. Thompson, Paul, Parker, Rachel, & Cox, Stephen. 2016. “Interrogating creative theory and creative work: Inside the games studio”, Sociology, Vol. 50, no. 2, pp. 316–332. 122 Ida de Wit Sandstro m and Marie Ledendal Part II Sites, Spaces and Performances these individuals use social media platforms in ways that are connected to what they do, but also in a more mundane manner—just like most users of such platforms do. For this reason, we wish to nuance, deepen, and complement existing analysis focused on marketing and branding by examining a broader array of practices that make different aspects of creative work visible. Far from considering megastar artists, we wish to explore the possibilities that social media affords by using publicly available data that artists and creative workers have posted about their work, focusing in particular on the more ordinary, mundane, and non-heroic as a gateway to a richer understanding of creative work. Building on the argument that social media is not only a stage where to present oneself but also a workspace (Bonneau et al. 2021) where ideas are crafted and progressively brought to light, where knowledge can be gained and reflexivity sharpened by sharing work to document, legitimise, or criticise it, we set out to explore What aspects of creative work do social media posts render visible? And in the process of rendering them visible, how does this enrich our understanding of creative work? Methods Data collection: working out loud posts as data source Following our interest in the informal use of social media (rather than the mandatory use including corporate uses prescribed by an organisation), we have been exploring how artists or creative workers use social media in the course of their mundane work activities to document, share, and exchange about their work. We have named this practice working out loud (WOL), thereby emphasising the focus on work, rather than on self-presentation or branding (Sergi and Bonneau 2016). We define WOL as a “communicative and sociomaterial practice where individuals voluntarily turn to public social media platforms to share what is part of their daily work” (Bonneau et al. 2021, 51). Similar to informal watercooler conversations, WOL often addresses aspects of work that are taking place backstage or are otherwise left in the shadows. Such an approach values the mundane over the spectacular, the detail over the grand narrative, and has been inspiring other research on social media (re)presentations of specific professional identities, such as farmers (Riley and Robertson 2021). Here, we expand on this research by examining how social media and WOL posts offer a lens through which we can better understand the daily process and experience of creative work and therefore extend the discussion of the representation of creative practices beyond the dominant narratives found in popular media (e.g., Duffy and Wissinger 2017; Eikhof and Chudzikowski 2019). This post 5 provides an illustration of a WOL post. 6 In it, we see a finished piece of work by a visual artist and a caption that details the process of its making. 130 Nada Endrissat et al. As we can read, the post is not so much used to promote or sell the piece of work, but rather to give behind-the-scenes access to the practices and techniques they have employed to make it. In the combination of image and text, the post outlines how creative work is often unplannable, takes its time, and is not fully predictable. The artist admits how the process includes “messing around” and gives some guidance and advice about what smaller and larger pieces require. From a WOL perspective, posts like these are a vivid illustration of documenting and exhibiting creative work (Groys 2013) while also providing advice (in the sense of teaching) to one’s followers. We began collecting WOL posts like this by searching public Instagram posts rather than focusing on specific artists. Our inquiry was thus phenomenon-led (what are artists doing when they work out loud on social media?), rather than user-led (who is doing it and why?) A first step of empirical exploration inspired by digital ethnography (Hine 2015) led us to uncover what artists were sharing on Instagram. Instead of restricting the search by defining a priori keywords or hashtags, we explored what could characterise creative work in various settings and performed queries through Instagram’s search engine by asking ourselves who could be narrating their creative work (e.g., a painter) and what kinds of words or hashtags this person might use (e.g., #oiloncanvas). As we progressively refined our definition of WOL, we also incorporated its dimensions into our data collection work (e.g., #workinprogress). Combined, these empirical, conceptual, and experiential aspects nourished our exploration in an abductive way and allowed us to immerse ourselves in the wide variety of experiences workers share when they talk about their work and their work experience on social media (Sergi and Bonneau 2021). Then, we gradually discovered a number of hashtags that would prove relevant to come back to (e.g., #artofinstagram, #artistatwork). However, rather than systematically collecting all posts found through these hashtags, we captured the instances that fit, broadly speaking, with our general interest in WOL. We thus conducted several rounds of data collection, from which we selected a corpus of 70 posts for our data analysis. Doing so, our examples reflect a purposive sample, opting for a thick data rather than a big data approach (Latzko-Toth et al. 2017). Data analysis We documented all posts through screenshots in an Excel file and compiled information about each instance (URL, date, how it was found, etc.), including a column with initial comments and labels. We then engaged in systematic thematic coding in an open and inductive manner. This included coding for the emergent themes related to our first research question, identifying what is rendered visible through the posts. Our analysis considered both the visual and textual elements of posts, using Social Media and the Documentation of Creative Work 131 the descriptions, hashtags, and comments to contextualise the pictures. This led to a list of different themes including the expression of emotions or political opinions, the context setting, the material used, etc. Next, we noted patterns and commonalities that allowed us to group the themes together. Here, we paid particular attention to the images that the posts revealed about creative work and to what extent they complemented or contradicted images of creative work, similar to Eikhof and Choduzkowski (2019) analysis. We were particularly interested in images that were surprising or seemed to fundamentally differ from practices of conventional selfbranding and self-promotion on social media. In doing so, we identified several posts that did not follow the presentation of the glamorous side of creative work as “fun” and “free” (Duffy and Wissinger 2017). Despite the fact that the majority of posts were formulated in a positive tone, we found instances of posts expressing negative elements, such as boredom, anxiety, or anger that we grouped together as expressing themes of imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness in creative work, thus complementing our understanding of creative work and allowing us to address our second research question. It is important to note that these themes do not represent traditional categories such as those that grounded theory would bring to the surface, as they are not mutually exclusive (Charmaz 2006). In addition, our analysis rests on what is made present and visible in these posts and does not explore the artists’ motivations or intentions. We do, however, consider the accompanying text and selfchosen hashtag. Below, we detail the three themes that we identified and provide illustrative examples that show how they extend existing images of creative work on social media. Table 8.1 provides a summary of the data interpretation process and our findings. Findings: the “backstage” of creative work Social media offers a platform to document, exhibit, reflect on, and promote creative work, thereby (re)producing particular images or myths about creative work. As outlined above, our focus here is on the “backstage” or behind-the-scenes lens of what WOL posts reveal about the work process and experience of it. We found several examples of posts that featured at the same time a piece of artwork and comments expressing gratitude to all the creative workers who willingly share their work on social media to help others get creative, learn, and be inspired, sometimes accompanied with hashtags like #artistappreciation or #creativeprocess (like this post, 7 which makes use of these hashtags). Looking at posts that use these hashtags quickly sets the stage for the insights that the following three themes reveal about creative work: moments of imperfection, incompleteness, and impermanence that undo the myth of the extraordinary creative genius. We now explore these three themes. 132 Nada Endrissat et al. Imperfection The theme of imperfection features prominently in the WOL posts we have collected. It refers to all the elements that could be categorised as mistakes, mishaps, or processes that did not turn out in a way that satisfies the artist. Different from the general positivity bias and the glamour myth that is circulated in popular media (Duffy and Wissinger 2017), this theme provides an interesting counter-narrative: creative work, far from being an effortless “A-ha!” moment (Lucas and Nordgren 2021) is defined by many instances of imperfection and strenuous failed attempts. With social media’s openness, it becomes interesting to note that these elements—inherent to any creative process—are made publicly visible. Posts exposing imperfection can also be about the final piece emerging from a process of creation, showing a result that can be characterised (and is sometimes characterised by the artists themselves) as “not good”, “not Table 8.1 Summary of findings Elements of creative work rendered visible in WOL posts Conceptual theme that informs our understanding of creative work Publicly acknowledging specific aspects of the work that include: • Doubts or struggles concerning their own work • Pieces of work that can be considered a “failure” or “unsuccessful”, e.g., strategies or choices that did not work out • Behind-the-scenes views that show the imperfection of the working conditions Imperfection What is visibilised on social media is often not the finished product (art piece) but the incomplete, unfinished work that is still in progress including • Prototypes or ideas that are presented to show how things develop (or fail to develop) • Reflections about the situation with a link to goals/intentions/milestones (sometimes not achieved) • Temporality Incompleteness Showing ephemeral/informal/ unacknowledged aspects related to the fleeting experience of work including • Evaluating momentary situations/choices • Expressing moods, doubts, frustration as well as joy, happiness, success • Re-evaluation of past decisions Impermanence Social Media and the Documentation of Creative Work 133 working”, or a “failure”, for various reasons, like the choice of material, the choice of technique, the execution, the working conditions, among others. Even more, these elements can be acknowledged in a variety of ways. On occasion, such an acknowledgement is limited to being shown and shared, in a post that mainly presents the imperfection. In other posts, artists go beyond simply exposing the imperfection and use this imperfect result to reflect on the material dimensions of their practice, or on the challenges of artistic endeavour in general. Posts that showcase imperfections also allude to doubts artists may have as they progress in realising a piece, or the struggles they face or have faced (either materially, in execution, or emotionally). Reflective notes can provide additional insights into the process of making including the struggles and doubts creative workers face. Some posts, like this example, 8 where the artist documents imperfections in a reflective manner, provide insights related to the practice of passing on knowledge/ experience, but others include different relations to imperfections, like humour or anger, for example. As is the case with many posts on Instagram, hashtags also play a key role in characterising what the post makes visible. For example, we can find many instances of the use of the rather direct #makemistakes and #artmistake (like here 9 ), as well as the hashtag #artfail (used over 29,500 times in early March 2023). Posts that discuss mistakes or failures—for example, in drawing, painting or sculpting—offer another illustration of how parts of the creative work, like failed attempts and “starting over” that usually remain hidden from public view, are made visible through social media and provide the reader with a better understanding of what creative work entails: “starting over”—again and again (see this timelapse 10 for an example, where the artist writes “wanted to share this to show that all artists, no matter the level, have days where they mess up”). While a perfect finished product of creative work retains an aura of mystery, seeing the process of its making as well as its imperfections makes creative work more accessible, suggesting that creativity—far from emanating from a “genius”—is a practice that is defined by many failures and days when artists “mess up”. The central message here is that creative work requires the courage to try it out, which can be exemplified by the use of other hashtags, like #daretocreate. Incompleteness Based on our data collection and analysis, sharing steps along the process of creating a new piece seems to be a habitual part of what artists and creative workers do on social media. Completed art pieces are, of course, featured on artists’ feeds, but often alongside photos and captions that narrate the process of their creation. Such incompleteness can be revealed in many ways, by showing the initial ideas or prototypes where the piece started, the preparation needed before beginning the work (e.g., the setup necessary to start working on a new piece), and all intermediary states imaginable. 134 Nada Endrissat et al. Intermediary states may also showcase strategies that are working, or approaches that may be failing. In this sense, showing the incompleteness of a piece may represent an occasion to also expose imperfections, pointing again to the vast array of elements that may be conveyed through a single Instagram post. A recurring theme in many posts is the idea that creative work is—by definition—work in progress. Indeed, the hashtag #workinprogress (and variations, like #wip and #wipart) appeared recurrently in our data collection. Making the link to the prior theme by pointing out that creative work does not only imply starting over but is constantly evolving and never really finished. In this sense, it contrasts starkly with the portrayal of creative work as easily marketable (Duffy and Wissinger 2017). On Instagram, one can find an abundance of posts that allude to this theme of incompleteness, and that discuss how creative work does not only entail a “final masterpiece” but really develops in small steps of continuous improvements, like this one. 11 Indeed, the hashtag #workinprogress (or #wip in its shortened form), used in connection to artistic endeavours abounds on Instagram, pointing to the widespread use of social media to share ordinary progress on creative projects. 12 Another illustration of incompleteness can be seen in posts that describe projects that are not finished and may never be finished, like the making of this tenor ukulele. 13 Besides admitting that creative work involves many instances of incomplete versions, this post also highlights an element of temporality (here captured in the comment, “for a really long time … maybe one day I’ll finish it”). What is interesting here is what Groys (2013) has noted about the changing nature of creative work through the internet: documenting the process of its making becomes an artwork in itself. In other words, the documentation of incomplete creative work not only provides an insight into how the process evolves but it also shows that documenting (as a form of exhibiting it) becomes part of creative work, suggesting not only a change in the image of creative work but also in its nature. One could argue that photos of incompleteness, such as photos or videos of artists at work in their atelier are not new and have been part of exhibitions and books for many decades. However, what is different with social media platforms is that the possibility of making the process visible is now widely available to anyone, as long as they are users of the platform. Furthermore, such platforms do not impose limits on what artists and creative workers might want to share (except for when artwork gets censored—see footnote 2), allowing for the possibility of capturing and making public all steps of a process, either through photos or videos. Indeed, with other technical functionalities available to anyone, any artist can nowadays make a time-lapse video (an accelerated version of a long video) exposing the full process to anyone. While making such videos was possible in the past, it required technical knowledge and material that has now become accessible to a vast number of people through smartphones. The presence of such technology in artists’ hands and pockets, combined with the ease of use and Social Media and the Documentation of Creative Work 135 plasticity of social media, has allowed more artists to show and talk about what they are doing as they are doing it. Coming back to Instagram, we can see many posts where artists and creative workers expose the incompleteness of a piece, and comment on where they are in their process, on how things are shaping up, if their plans and intentions are materialising as expected, or on the dead ends in which they might find themselves. Interestingly, in the process of showing and commenting on the work in progress, artists may also share tips and tricks to achieve a piece or an effect, which might include revealing the inner workings of a piece. This can be seen in the example of this sculpture, 14 where the artist shows its incompleteness while describing how the piece is being made. This casts creative work almost like a collaborative achievement, similar to what Becker (2008) had described. Rather than art worlds, social media is an illustration of creativity communities where creative workers interact with their audience and colleagues. In this sense, exposing incompleteness through social media not only contributes to documenting in a mundane fashion the process of making a piece, but may help and inspire other artists. Furthermore, it can even expose aspects that may otherwise appear mysterious to an onlooker when considering a finished piece (like a finished sculpture). Similar to moments of imperfection, creative work in its incompleteness suggests a kind of do-it-yourself manual. Unveiling the process of its making can encourage others to engage in creative work themselves (Ullrich 2016), putting forth a democratised understanding of creative work that anyone is capable of engaging in. Impermanence The third conceptual theme we noticed in our material refers to all ephemeral and fleeting aspects associated with the process of creative work, aspects that accompany artists and creative workers as they are progressing, but that are not included in their finished pieces, or in what is produced along with the final piece (such as a formal description of a piece for a catalogue). These elements are a part of daily work and experiences, like thoughts and reflections on what artists are doing or dealing with in their overall practice (hence not reflections on imperfections or on a specific step in the completion of a piece), passing moods, expressions of doubts, frustration or joy, momentary feelings of having achieved something, or other reflections on what is lived from the artist’s experience (see this post 15 alluding to impermanence in the form of reflection on one’s artistic practice). Posts on social media thus allow for the capture of elements that would otherwise leave no trace and remain unnoticed or that refer to the working conditions/setting that are part of the process but not inscribed in a visible manner into the pieces. Impermanence may also refer to all the elements that are tried out as variations in the process of working on a piece, but that may be discarded and not make it into the final piece, as suggested by this post 16 showing an experiment with unknown (at the time of the post) results. 136 Nada Endrissat et al. Impermanence also refers to the ephemeral nature of social media visibility. Even if technically, WOL posts persist beyond their publication, so that it is possible to access them asynchronously by going back or by launching a search, their dissemination and access by other users are characterised by immediacy and instantaneity. Social media publications follow one another at a frantic pace on the user’s feed, creating a continuous flow of posts. Indeed, older posts are immediately replaced by new ones and end up being relegated to more rarely consulted spaces. Artists and creative workers document things as they happen, in the action, knowing that they have no control over the pace at which they will disappear from their audience’s view. This might challenge traditional ideas around art’s permanence (Groys 2013), and it can also induce stress or anxiety among creative workers as they constantly need to update and produce new events to create a form of visibility amid social media’s ephemerality. This is vividly illustrated in the following post, 17 which voices anxiety about the pressure to be productive and to post on social media as a new facet of creative work. Conclusion In the past, being an artist was often associated with the idea of working secluded and disconnected from society. Pieces of work would only be shared when finished, to have a surprising, unexpected effect (Groys 2013; Ullrich 2016). The new practices of sharing unfinished work and letting followers participate in the art work’s becoming alter this view and fundamentally challenge the relationship between artists and their audience as well as their artistic self-concept. According to Ullrich (2016), artists like Mondrian, Beckmann, or Rothko would have never agreed to reveal their works in progress. It was essential to their sense of self as artists to remain independent. However, in today’s creativity-driven society, scholars have claimed that artists are motivators, sources of inspiration, and guides for others to explore their creativity and become creative (e.g., Ullrich 2016). As we suggested in our findings, seeing the beauty of imperfection or incompleteness in behind-the-scenes posts renders creative work more accessible and less mystical. Those images might serve as encouragement to try it out for oneself, sparking interest and confidence among followers to engage in creative work. It reduces the threshold and status difference between artists and followers making it easier to identify with the artist. Given this shift in relationships, some speak of digital democratisation, where the documentation of incomplete or unfinished works in progress is thought to provide access to knowledge to those who did not have access before, promising that “people just like us can succeed if we put in enough effort” (Duffy 2017, 99). On a more critical note, our findings also reveal that not only the image of creative work has changed but also its nature. In the context of social media, it has become somewhat of an imperative for artists and creative workers to Social Media and the Documentation of Creative Work 137 be connected and to show and share their work as part of their creative work. These practices, along with the changed relationship between author and community, promote new subjectivities, such as the entrepreneurial subject and culturpreneur (e.g., Flisfeder 2015; Loacker 2013). Artists are increasingly seen as independent enterprises and artistic values are fused with entrepreneurial ones (e.g., Duffy 2017; Eikhof and Haunschild 2007). As a consequence, art (creativity) and commerce (economy) are no longer opposing poles but merged in the realm of the debate about creative industries (Duffy and Wissinger 2017; Loacker 2013), while in practice, creative workers continue to experience the tensions that such merging implies (see in particular the post above that critically reflects on how creative work nowadays demands online engagement). Creative work implies creativity but also productivity —and the creation of content—not only for oneself and one’s artistic practice but also for the social media platform. To conclude, our findings make three contributions. First, we contribute to existing debates around what defines creative work (Duffy and Wissinger 2017; Eikhof and Chudzikowski 2019; Menger 2014) and how mundane practices and imperfections, incompleteness, and impermanence might be constitutive of it. Second, we contribute to the demystification of creative work by showing that it is not the product of a creative genius but a mundane, often tiresome, and frustrating endeavour that is embedded in a community of followers and other creative workers that share, comment, and motivate each other, thus creating new images of artists as “one of us” (Duffy 2017) and suggesting that “creativity is a skill that everyone has” (Eikhof and Chudzikowski 2019, 6). Third, we add to our understanding of social media as a new workspace (Bonneau et al. 2021) by suggesting that social media work has become an integral part of creative work that entails writing blog entries, sharing pictures on Instagram, and uploading videos on YouTube (Groys 2013). The intent might be to receive feedback and advance one’s work or to create a cathartic moment by sharing emotions or inner struggles. But the creation of online content for social media platforms seldom happens spontaneously and often relies on the orchestration of several elements and skills. It thus creates new demands on creative workers (Duffy 2017), for example by having to follow updates on apps, change platforms, and adapt their skills accordingly (Duffy et al. 2021) leaving less time for creative work. Yet, some have argued that blogging, vlogging, and Instagramming are, in fact, the “new models of creative work” (Duffy and Wissinger 2017, 4655) so that social media is not just a new workspace for creative workers to document and share moments of creative work but also a technology that demands content generation as a new facet of creative work not discussed so far. To sum up, this chapter has illustrated the relevance of social media as a new site of creative work whose investigation in the form of WOL posts as data source provides new insights into the processes of creative work, altering the “myth” of creative work in the social media age. 138 Nada Endrissat et al. Notes 1 In this section, we review research that has focused primarily on artistic work and the image of creativity. With the rise of the creative industries, the notion of creative work has proliferated, encompassing disciplines that extend far beyond the original notion of artistic work (such as painting, literature, or performing arts). While we acknowledge these differences, much of what we know about the myths pertaining to creative work has its origins in what the literature has described as artistic work. We therefore use artistic work and creative work interchangeably in this section (see also Bain 2005; Groys 2013). 2 However, the apparent openness of social media, compared to museums and galleries, may be limited by these platforms’ policies, especially regarding content moderation—which might become an issue of censorship. See for example the cases of multimedia artist Stephanie Sarley and Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, as described in the following articles: https://www.theguardian. com/artanddesign/2016/mar/10/stephanie-sarley-provocative-art-instagram-bloodoranges-feminism-sexuality https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/oct/16/vienna-museumsopen-adult-only-onlyfans-account-to-display-nudes 3 https://www.theartstory.org/movement/performance-art/ 4 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2073029/; https://www.charbonartspace.com/ ron-mueck-screening-yqax8; http://www.gerhardrichterpainting.com/#/thefilm/; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1845773/ 5 https://www.instagram.com/p/BT7r7IMlPeS/?hl=fr 6 It would have been optimal to include some of the Instagram posts we collected directly in this chapter. However, due to copyright issues we were unable to do so. Instead, we describe in general terms some of the posts we found and refer with links to illustrative examples. We also include relevant hashtags that can be used by readers to look up posts like the ones we discuss in this chapter. 7 https://www.instagram.com/p/CRjfhOMDfRa/ 8 https://www.instagram.com/p/CS-jx5xpNho/ 9 https://www.instagram.com/p/CTzbethISPz/ 10 https://www.instagram.com/p/B8M30m2gWF6/ 11 https://www.instagram.com/p/CQe756bA2wk/ 12 Indeed, the hashtag #workinprogress has been, at the time of writing this chapter, used on more than 20 million posts. These posts may not all be about artistic or creative work and may be used in ways that are not limited to describing an actual work in progress. As mentioned previously, uses of hashtags do not follow strict norms and users remain free to use all the hashtags they wish, in the manner they see fit for what they want to communicate with their posts. 13 https://www.instagram.com/p/CPH6N2MsfEU/ 14 https://www.instagram.com/p/CUjBUp5rggi/ 15 https://www.instagram.com/p/BSnydwDFL4h/ 16 https://www.instagram.com/p/B4c_swpHp2K/ 17 https://www.instagram.com/p/CTXe9-WI-eF/?img_index=1 References Bain, Alison. 2005. “Constructing an artistic identity.” Work, Employment and Society 19 (1): 25–46. Becker, Howard S. 2008. Art Worlds: Updated and Expanded. University of California Press. (first published 1982). Social Media and the Documentation of Creative Work 139 years, scholars have attempted to provide definitions which may be descriptive of this category of workers. According to the Creative Trident approach (Higgs et al. 2008; Cunningham 2011; Flew 2012), the creative workforce is collectively composed of three types of employment: 1) specialist—artists, professionals or creative individuals working in the creative industries; 2) embedded—artists, professionals or creative individuals in creative roles “embedded” in industries not defined as creative; 3) support—staff in the creative industries providing management, secretarial, administrative and accountancy back-up. Creative work is also characterised by a high heterogeneity of legal arrangements through which workers operate in the industry. The paradox between the high level of education, knowledge and skills of this workforce (Bianchi et al. 2021) and its mostly fragile working conditions led scholars to develop different nouns and expressions to describe CCWs. Richard Barbrook (2006) has comprehensively catalogued them (Huws 2007), and his list includes “elancers”, “bobos” (“bourgeois bohemians”) and “cognitariat”. Inspired by a Marxist approach, and given the strong connection between personal and professional desires and ethos in the sector, our analysis would like to focus on a critical analysis of CCWs’ working conditions rather than on subject formation. Adopting this perspective, we would like to focus on two aspects specifically, represented by 1) precarity as a unifying concept and 2) individualism and non-unionism in the sector. In doing this, despite our focus on performing arts, we refer to literature on CCIs in general, as we believe that all the concepts that follow largely apply to this specific segment. Precarity as a CCWs’ unifying concept The fragile working conditions in the sector mainly represent a consequence of the neoliberal agenda, and the emergence of the “gig economy” (Prassl 2018): to respond to the flexible, project-based increased demand of fragmented companies competing globally, workers—driven by passion and in need of individual self-realisation (Hamilton 2012)—have accepted precarity as the everyday reality of working in CCIs. As Comunian and England (2020) argue, this reality and working conditions further stretched towards the lower denominator during the Global Financial crisis of 2008, where previous employees were often pushed to become freelance and selfemployed to allow CCIs to bounce back (De Propris 2013). The precariousness of the contractual arrangements is one of the main characteristics of creative work which falls in the category of the atypical, ranging from part-time working to short-term contracts, with self-employing and freelancing being the most frequent work status (Hesmondhalgh 1996; Blair 2003). Gill and Pratt (2008) use Negri’s concept of the “factory without walls” to define precarious labour conditions, including “all forms of insecure, contingent, flexible work—from 242 Jessica Tanghetti and Federica Viganò illegalised, casualised and temporary employment, to homeworking, piecework, and freelancing” (p. 3). Narrowing the analysis down to the category of PAWs, the situation seems even more problematic. Performing art work appears as an extremely precarious field of work, which forces artists to permanent selfexploitation without offering any secure employment prospects (Roselt and Otto 2014), also highlighting problems with job insecurity and unpredictability (Pasikowska-Schnass 2019). More specifically, EAIPA, the European Association of Independent Performing Arts, describes the general situation in Europe—highlighting high levels of insecurity, low incomes, a heavy workload, and poor pension prospects in a variety of European countries (Eder 2018, 2021). According to an analysis of PAWs’ conditions across Europe (Eder 2022), the field represents an exceptionally precarious working environment, with low income, inadequate social security and a high proportion of workers at risk of poverty. Furthermore, less than a quarter of the respondents to the study can live exclusively from artistic work. Also, the study highlights the predominance of short-term working conditions: the performing arts workers interviewed work predominantly as freelancers (63.61%), 23.16% are in hybrid employment, 8.42% are employed full-time, and 4.81% are employed part-time. The situation of this working category became even more severe in the context of C-19, during which the income of PAWs in Europe deteriorated by 18.8%. Adopting a Marxist perspective, it is clear how the neoliberal switch to “post-Fordism” and the introduction of more flexible and autonomous working modalities, instead of providing more freedom and recognition, made the balance of power shift from labour to capital, causing working conditions to become much less secure and more precarious (McGuigan 2010). Also, this fragility may contribute to making CCWs feel alienated, creating a discrepancy between their inner and intimate ethos and their professional behaviour. One of the clearest consequences of this is represented by the push towards individualism promoted by the competitive race for the next job, contract or gig (Ross 2009). Individualism and non-unionised CCWs The DCMS’s (Department of Media, Culture and Sport in the United Kingdom) definition of the creative industries (1998) explicitly focuses on the individualist nature of CCIs, describing them as “those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent” (DCMS 1998: 3). For Lash and Urry (1994), individualism is the requirement of key workers in the CCIs to act as autonomous, reflexive and creative individuals that underlines the paradigmatic role of these sectors. This individualism has resulted in less visible forms of solidarity and resistance that have been reported for other sectors of the gig economy Creative Work, Precarity and COVID-19 243 (Heery 2009; Tassinari and Maccarrone 2020). The effort to manage networking and portfolio careers leads the workers to the development of a selfmarketing and self-branding approach (Dardot and Laval 2009; Gandini 2016), which does not foster the attitude towards a collective action (Bellini and Dorigatti 2019). This risk is concretely reflected in the low membership density within unions (Bellini et al. 2018). Focusing on PAWs, many scholars recognised the generalised scarcity of trade unions in the sector (Saundry et al. 2007; Umney and Kretsos 2014; Ciarini 2015), and a limited number of experiences of from-below movements (Turrini and Chicchi 2013). Individualism and the difficulties in developing associationism in the sector can also be interpreted in light of a Marxist perspective. Huws (2007) believes that CCWs are, on the one hand, agents of change: without new ideas, “the expansionary logic underlying capitalism cannot stand still due to high competition”. On the other hand, the process of creation may also cause the destruction of other workers’ careers, provoking consequences to their livelihood. In this context, this competitive pressure may obstruct traditional allegiances and solidarities in the sector. This can be seen as another example of the kind of alienation attributed to “proletarian workers” by Karl Marx, which strongly characterises the creative workforce (Huws 2007). Given this scenario, and the strong contradiction between CCWs’ inner and working conditions, this workforce may feel “annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence” (Marx and Engels 1844). Thus, creative labour might be seen as alienated under capitalism and, as a consequence, the worker might be alienated from a natural feature of humanity and from other human beings in society (McGuigan 2010). The insurgence of awareness of these contradictions and of the consequent alienation may cause workers to disrupt the paradigms they got used to, building on new forms of connections and dialogue, with associationism and unions representing the main starting points in this sense. Unmasking precarity: employment patterns and social protection of CCWs in Italy In Italy, the most authoritative source of data on CCWs is Fondazione Symbola, which, since 2011, annually released the report Io sono cultura, focused on the status of CCIs: according to the 2021 publication, the sector in 2020 employed 1,445,600 workers, corresponding to 5.8% of the employment of the whole economy, among whom PAWs were estimated to be around 95.000. The report also shows a prevalence of “freelancers” (62%) in the sector, identifying seven sub-categories, even if with an unclear distinction between them (entrepreneur, self-employed, VAT holder, cooperative member, family business, short-term collaborator, occasional collaborations). Narrowing the analysis down to the 244 Jessica Tanghetti and Federica Viganò performing arts sector, freelancers represent 66% of the total. These numbers highlight the vertical disintegration of the sector, with few large companies (cinema, broadcasting, some few stable orchestras, or theatre companies) offering more stable jobs and a greater number of medium, small and micro companies who work mainly in non-continuous collaborative relationships feeding the large pool of freelancers, and increasing the fragmentation of the sector. In this precarious context, C-19 further exacerbated the situation: data provided by the INPS Observatory (INPS 2021) show that the number of workers in 2020 fell by 21%. A closer look at the SIAE’s Performing Arts Observatory 1 (the observatory is the data collection centre of the Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori) makes it possible to quantify the losses in terms of events, spectators and audience expenditure: overall, in Italy, with reference to cinema, theatre and concerts, in 2020 almost 2.4 million shows were cancelled, corresponding to over 103 million admissions and 1.4 billion of total public expenditure (tickets, subscriptions and other expenses). Expenditure fell by 79%, with a negative peak for concert activities (-89%), which were particularly affected by the cancellation of major pop events. In relation to social protection, the situation in Italy reveals a weakness in the welfare system for atypical categories in general and for CCWs in particular. The criticality of social protection for this sector has its origin in a failure to recognise the specific status of these workers. In this regard, in the last decades there have been several interventions in the law regulating the performing arts sector (the so-called “Mother Law” n. 163/ 1985 Nuova disciplina degli interventi dello Stato a favore dello spettacolo), with the aim of developing funding schemes in favour of CCWs. Italian CCWs, despite a few recent legislation advancements, obtain minimal social protection benefits, which differentiate them from workers in other countries such as France, which provides one of the best practices in Europe, with “intermittent performing art workers” benefitting from a social support system consisting of legislative simplification, and the possibility of claiming unemployment for every single day they were not employed. Other similar examples, based on a law recognising the status of the artist, can be found in other European countries: in Austria, with the Law on Social Security for artist (2001); in Belgium with the Finance Act 2002, recognising the social security for artists; in Germany, with the Artists’ Social Insurance Act (1981); in the Netherlands with the Artist Work and Income Act (1998); in Spain with El Statuto del Artista (2018), to mention the well-established systems. Beyond individualism: performing art workers’ associationism in Italy Despite the vulnerability of their working conditions, historically PAWs in Italy have lacked a proper representation of their interests and Creative Work, Precarity and COVID-19 245 bargaining power at the private, public, and political levels (Rizza 2005). Before the pandemic, they had been generally reluctant to join trade unions and to engage in collective action as, in order to cope with the fragmentation and pressure of careers, they mainly adopted a “self-reflexive approach” (Bellini et al. 2018). The pandemic has been disruptive in mitigating this individualistic approach, triggering a consciousness and collective solidarity. Just a few weeks after the beginning of the 2020 lockdown, many informal workers’ groups emerged and multiplied over the following months, evolving in a few cases into formal and legally recognised collective organisations. In reviewing the actors, formal and informal, that over the years attempted to represent PAWs’ interests and to organise them collectively, we consider both trade unions/associations and groups of self-organised precarious workers/grassroots activists (Choi and Mattoni 2010). The main difference between the two categories is that on one side, there is a trade gatherer representing workers, while on the other are the workers themselves to represent their own rights. While activism is a connatural characteristic of trade unions, it is not possible to clearly distinguish between self-organised groups of workers and grassroots activists, as there is always a degree of activism also in bottom-up movements. Also, there are some actors operating nationally, even if often with regional antenna organisations, and some others active in specific geographical areas. In this context, this study analyses the actors involved in PAWs’ collective bargaining in Italy at a national level, before and during the pandemic, providing a focus on the Lombardy region. Performing arts workers’ collective bargaining in Italy before the pandemic The performing arts industry is highly diverse and includes not only artists performing in front of an audience, but also those working behind the scenes. Thus, workers involved in the industry range from artists, performers, musicians, singers, actors, and dancers to sound/lights technicians, playwrights and theatre tailors. Despite the width of the industry, a trade union exclusively dedicated to the representation of the interests of these workers has never existed in Italy. PAWs have been mainly included as sub-categories of wider trade unions, although their needs have always been very peculiar and different from those of any other category of workers. In Italy, there are three main trade unions represented by CGIL, CISL and UIL, which created sub-federations encompassing a wide range of sectors and also including the performing arts industry, namely SLC-CGIL, FistelCISL and Uilcom-UIL. Alongside this, over the years a few trade associations have been established, consistently smaller compared to these trade unions and in some cases, as mentioned above, incorporated by them. Some examples are 246 Jessica Tanghetti and Federica Viganò ANAP, National Association of Performing Arts; Assoartisti and Feditart, dedicated to artists’ rights protection and trading; AIAM, focused on the operators in the music industry; AICAB, dedicated to comedians; AID, dancers’ association; and CONDAS, national dance, arts and performing arts committee. These associations are characterised by having a focus on specific categories of workers, but their contribution to the bargaining process has always been marginal. Also, some experiences of collective representation belonging to the category of non-union actors should be mentioned, which cover an intermediary role between the market and the state, for instance, mutual aid cooperatives or in some specific cases professional associations (Bellini and Lucciarini 2019). In Italy, we can name the Sindacato Operatori dello Spettacolo Musicisti-SOS, which nevertheless should be considered a proper association rather than a union (Turrini and Chicchi 2013; Bellini et al. 2018). Also, the role of self-organised precarious workers’ and grassroots activists’ groups has been minimal before the pandemic. The most popular bottom-up group has been Cre. Sco (Coordinamento realtà scena contemporanea), a national organisation with regional antennas, established in 2010 with the intention to develop social solidarity in the performing arts and contemporary culture industries, while less popular and structured has been the movement MSV (Movimento Spettacolo dal Vivo), established in 2018 with the purpose of supporting organisations and professionals in the field, and of improving the social welfare regulation for the performing arts industry. It is reasonable to assume that some other informal groups also existed before the pandemic, but their popularity and role in the bargaining process have been so minimal that it is not relevant to mention them for the aims of this study. C-19 and the explosion of performing art workers’ movements PAWs have been severely affected by C-19, experiencing a long-lasting impossibility to work and serious difficulties in replacing their activities through digital tools and platforms (Spiro et al. 2021). This immobility and time availability became valuable resources to connect with each other and share on common struggles experienced. Overcoming the generalised individualism that has historically characterised the sector, a cross-sector communication emerged, firstly through social media groups, resulting in a multitude of self-organised groups of workers and grassroots activists, which in a few cases evolved into legally recognised trade unions and associations. These groups tended at first to be very specific to the sub-category of workers (for example performing arts technicians, actors, theatre tailors), but also some wider groups emerged with the aim of protecting the rights of the workers in the performing arts industry overall. The objectives of these groups were not only to support workers in facing the impact of C-19, but Creative Work, Precarity and COVID-19 247 mainly, to study long-lasting changes for the sector able to substantially improve the structural conditions of its workers. Also, the groups generally aim for legal recognition of performing arts work, making it more visible to institutions and policymakers and better regulated. Alongside the activities of the historical trade unions, new trade associations emerged during the pandemic with the aim to protect specific categories of workers taking into consideration the peculiarities of the industries they work in. Based on an activistic approach, in March 2020 the inter-union network RISP (Rete Intersindacale Professionisti Spettacolo) was established, affiliated to the activist inter-union organisation Cobas. Focusing instead on sector-specific trade associations, UNITA (Unione Nazionale Interpreti Teatro Audiovisivo) was established in July 2020, dedicated to the protection of audiovisual theatre actors, founded by more than 100 performers. Also, a trade union specifically dedicated to the events/clubbing sector emerged for the first time, namely SILS (Sindacato Italiano Lavoratori Spettacolo) and one dedicated to technicians, called Artemis (Associazione Rete Tecnici e Maestranze Intermittenti dello Spettacolo). The emergency also provoked an active response from sub-categories of performing arts workers, who developed groups which actively attempt to participate in the bargaining process at an institutional level. Examples are “Sarte di Scena” (Tailors on Stage), an informal self-organised workers’ group focused on making the work of tailors working on stages and performing arts venues visible, or A2U Attrici e Attori Uniti (Actresses and Actors United), self-organised actors’ group and “Lavoratori della Danza” (Dance Workers). Bargaining locally: the case of the Lombardy region In the previous paragraphs, we described the national workers’ groups operating in Italy that emerged before and during the pandemic. In analysing them, we noticed that the large majority originated in the Lombardy region, with the founders mainly based and operating in the city of Milan. We found it therefore of particular interest, building on previous work (Tanghetti et al. 2022), to investigate the local dynamics of self-organised workers’ groups and grassroots activists based in this area, also analysing the relationship between them and the local institutions. The Lombardy region is at the heart of the Italian creative and cultural economy, and its CCIs generated €23.7 billion in 2021 (27% of the nation’s total), employing approximately 344,000 workers (23.5% of the nation’s total) (Symbola 2022). In this context, Milan represents the Italian city with the highest incidence of cultural and creative sector in the local economy: the added value generated by CCIs in the city counted for 9.7% of the economy in 2020, while the total number of workers in the sector was 9.8% of the total employment in the city (Symbola 2021). 248 Jessica Tanghetti and Federica Viganò Focusing on the performing arts workers’ group originating in the Lombardy region (Table 1), it is interesting to note that almost all of them (except one, “Attrezzismo Violento”) emerged during the pandemic. Suddenly, performing arts workers found themselves at home, without work and inevitably in front of a screen allowing them to talk to each other. Therefore, the pandemic played a key role in granting workers time to reflect, meet (mainly remotely), and discuss and share their common struggles, which was impossible before C-19 due to their hectic working lives. For the first time, workers had the opportunity to talk and to reflect on their working conditions, joining together in order to ask not just for support for the pandemic, but overall for long-lasting changes in the sector. The Lombardy region was at the heart of this phenomenon, due to the width of the local network and the concentration of CCWs in this geographical area, known for the significance of its cultural scene and for the primary role of Milan as a creative city. Some of the groups emerged there with the scope of operating only locally, whilst some others evolved into a national group. Interestingly, a degree of meta-coordination also emerged as many sectoral organisations started talking to each other under the umbrella of Coordinamento Spettacolo Lombardia (CSL). The coordination body allowed for shared discussion to take place in relation to future actions, but also to create a critical mass to engage with the city and regional policymakers. This also meant sector-specific organisations were no longer working in silos, and the level of collective lobbying power could increase. The activities—thanks to the coordination of CSL—also resulted in collective manifestation as soon as the lockdown restrictions were lifted. The trajectory of development, from the more informal discussion to the more formalised association and activism in the square, is seen as a crescendo and an important step for performing art workers, to not only gain full selfawareness and transform it into public awareness, but also to open up the discussion with institutions to create change and dialogue that will inform the future development of the sector and its workers. Therefore, the move of many of them towards more formal structures suggests the need for longerterm sustainability of CCWs’ rights and working conditions, rather than simply addressing the impact of C-19. Also, as highlighted below, the C-19 pandemic did not simply expose issues of work precarity or lack of social security for the sector, but, more critically, it highlighted to many CCWs the invisibility of their work, professionality and skills. Therefore, with the easing of lockdown, the physical manifestation became a very important moment for CCWs to make themselves visible in the fabric of the city of Milan, but also visible nationally in the context of their contribution to Milan as an important economic, cultural and communication centre in Italy. Using internet search and social media analysis, we mapped the protests and public manifestations occurring in the city of Milan in the period Creative Work, Precarity and COVID-19 249 May 2020–April 2021. We established initial protest started as early as 14 May 2020, with gatherings in front of the famous La Scala Theatre and with banners being displayed across many iconic buildings and cultural venues across the city from 24 May 2020. The first public protest in the iconic square of Piazza Duomo on 30 May, when the lockdown was eased, saw the participation of 2,000 workers. From these initial protests, more long-term (“stato di agitazione continua” lit. “continuous agitation state”) initiatives started with garrisons of workers stationed in front of other key and iconic cultural and institutional venues in June 2020 like Palazzo Marino, Teatro Dal Verme, Piazza Castello. The Milan CCWs also joined a national demonstration in Rome on 27 June 2020. In July, the CSL staged a three-day garrison of workers at the National Social Security Institute (INPS) building in Milan until they were invited to meet the General Director of the Institute for the Lombardy region. Garrisons of workers and flyers distributions continued into the summer. In October, as new lockdown measures were introduced, other protests started taking place with garrisons of workers located in Piazza Duomo, Piccolo Teatro Strehler, and Milano Expo to include in December a garrison of workers in front of the offices of the regional administration (Regione Lombardia). In January and February 2021, the protests continued with protesters taking bicycles and skates under the brand “Cultural mass” and travelling across the city and its cultural venues, from the Milano Triennale and joining a national protest on 23 February 2021 with the title “un anno senza eventi” (“One year without events”). March and April 2021 saw the peaceful occupation of Piccolo Teatro Grassi as a permanent garrison under the banner “Piccolo Teatro Aperto”, to incentivise dialogue and interactions across workers, audiences and institutions. Throughout the protest and manifestations, the CCWs met very little institutional support and struggled to receive feedback and collaborations from the city and regional institutions. Local institutions and policymakers were exposed for not caring enough about CCWs—or maybe lacking awareness about their role and work structures—and not acting fast enough, when providing support. However, although the dialogue with institutions presented many challenges, for the first time the coordination of workers has allowed them to have a voice. Discussion and conclusion The chapter has reflected on the connection between individualism, precarity and CCWs in Italy, with a focus on the performing arts sector. While there is a broad range of intervention internationally on this theme, due to the lack of data and the way CCWs remain often hidden within the project-nature of their work, Italian CCWs are not often discussed in the literature (with some exceptions, see Arvidsson et al. 2010; d’Ovidio and Cossu 2017). Therefore, the first objective of the chapter is to make these unstable and borderline 250 Jessica Tanghetti and Federica Viganò legal employment frameworks and patterns more visible nationally and internationally. The themes of precarity and individualism are emphasised by adopting a Marxist perspective, through which human and working conditions in the industry can be seen as the causes of a shift of the balance of power from labour to capital, causing also alienation to workers, due to the discrepancy between their inner and intimate ethos and their professional behaviour. In this context, C-19 emerged as a moment of disruption that has pushed the complex ecosystem (Comunian 2019; De Bernard et al. 2021) far from an equilibrium that has so far worked to the advantage of its industries, but not the workers they employ, putting the basis for enhancing working conditions and strengthening human dynamics in the sector. We connect to previous literature in order to outline the conclusions of this study, specifically referring to Holling’s (2001) adaptive cycle (see Figure 1). The model shows patterns of change in ecosystems through four phases: “growth” (r), describing the accumulation of resources in the system; “conservation” (K) of established patterns and resource distribution; “release” (Ω) of rigid structures and patterns and the redistribution of resources throughout the system; and reorganisation (α), where opportunities for change emerge and innovations contribute to the transformation of the system. The cycle has been used to reflect on economic shocks and the importance of adaptation and resilience by many authors (Simmie and Martin 2010). In our case, it is interesting to notice that the period of growth and consolidation pre-C-19 (phase “r” of the model) had been characterised by increased structure and connectedness only for employers and institutions that, thanks to the neoliberal agenda, have not been asked to take into consideration the welfare of workers as in previous decades (Filion 2013). Therefore, the conservation status (phase “K” of the model) had pushed CCWs to be more isolated rather than connected. Here, C-19 emerges as a moment of shock, contributing to the “release” (Ω) of opportunities, offering CCWs—despite stretching their livelihoods—the opportunity to rethink existing structures and to form new networks and collective movements to lead the reorganisation (α) of their working contracts and rights. Nevertheless, the opportunity to abandon individualistic agendas and collectively bargain for better working conditions needs to be contextualised within the struggle for many workers to remain in the sector, and for some of their traditional employers to remain in operation. The reorganisation is clearly experienced by workers as an opportunity to rethink the existing framework of employment and also the existing operational models of the industry. In the case of workers in the city of Milan, the main reorganisation needs to also involve a rethinking of the city as offering inclusive and sustainable creative work to lead to a new potential for growth. The adaptive cycle here can shift from simply restarting a potential cycle of new growth to rethinking what growth is. Primarily, it can consider how CCWs’ rights and care Creative Work, Precarity and COVID-19 251 2 observations from a an immersive multi-year ethnographic study from 2006 to the end of the enterprise (Lingo 2020), which one of the authors was able to conduct thanks to the close relationship she established with the subject of the study, and b three rounds of ethnography, one in 2016/2017, one in 2018/2019 and the last in 2022, covering both extraordinary occurrences such as onetime meetings with professionals, and everyday working life; 3 fifteen semi-structured interviews held between 2018 and 2022 with the entrepreneur, his business partners, collaborators, and also a few customers. Different data were analysed differently: through the archival material we reconstructed the detailed factual history of the enterprise (and coded facts according to whether they involved matters of creative work or entrepreneurial creativity). For example, the minutes of board meetings were significant in testifying the formal trajectory of the enterprise as the result of entrepreneurial creativity and creative work, whereas the personal diaries contained more information about the entrepreneurs’ free rein in terms of cultural and social aspirations, not necessarily weighted with considerations on their entrepreneurial feasibility or sustainability. Observations were used to detect how things worked in practice (Watson 2011) before being codified in the formal documents of the business archive. It is a fact that observations facilitate the identification of otherwise difficult-to-observe patterns of behaviour (Mair et al. 2016; Rojas 2010; Yin 2014). Notes from the immersed multi-year ethnography granted access to distant-in-time entrepreneurial practices and made it possible to sort behaviour according to what pertains to creative work or entrepreneurial creativity, while notes from more recent rounds of ethnography focused on digging into entrepreneurial aspects identified as critical by the multi-year ethnography. Finally, interviews added nuance about the entrepreneur’s thoughts and feelings connected to his enterprise venturing. We talked together about his thoughts and feelings regarding some specific facts, we asked him to evaluate his business performance over time, and obtained explanations on the hows and whys of his behaviour. The adoption of multiple data sources supported not only the necessity of triangulating the data, but also that of disentangling the entrepreneur from his enterprise when we realised that a discrepancy was emerging between the “objective” representation of the enterprise performance and the entrepreneur’s “subjective” thoughts and struggles around it. In order to avoid the risk of the author’s closeness to the entrepreneur causing her not to see certain things, the two researchers played different roles in the data collection and analysis phases, based on the level of confidence with the subject of the study. While the “high confidence” researcher 258 Monica Calcagno and Rachele Cavara [Document text truncated for crawler view.]