Postindustrial Identities in the Cultural and Creative Industries: Exploring Newcastle upon Tyne and Hamburg.

Durey, Matthew John (2019) Postindustrial Identities in the Cultural and Creative Industries: Exploring Newcastle upon Tyne and Hamburg. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the construction and practice of postindustrial identities of people working in cultural and creative industries in the cities of Newcastle, UK and Hamburg, Germany. Cultural and creative industries have become an important area of research in recent years, and are regarded by many commentators as archetypes of emerging patterns of work in the new postindustrial economy. In seeking to appeal to people who work in cultural and creative industries, cities have experienced, and continue to experience, significant cultural and spatial transformations in order to ‘rebrand’ themselves as ‘cultural’ or ‘creative’ cities with the right material, economic, and cultural landscapes to attract cultural and creative workers. Although it is argued people working in cultural and creative industries are drawn to particular urban environments because of the importance of place for practices of identity construction, very little research concerned with the cultural and creative industries has paid attention to issues of identity.
Drawing on mixed-methods qualitative research comprising ethnographic work, narrative interviews, and a method of urban encounter inspired by Walter Benjamin, this thesis makes a case for understanding these ‘artistic identities’ as constructed through negotiations in relation to a social, cultural, and spatial landscape influenced by the dialectical relationship between art and economy, and the romantic image of the autonomous, independent artist.
This thesis suggests that the artistic identities of people working in the cultural and creative industries are contradictory, ambivalent, and heterogeneous, and significantly influenced by material, social and cultural conditions of work related to the postindustrial economy and the transformations of urban space.

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