Let’s face the music and dance: Andy gives keynote in Sheffield

Andy gave a keynote paper on September 9th-10th: ‘Let’s face the music and dance’. Austerity and the cultural economy., The Arts Economy conference, International Sociological Association, Sociology of the Arts RC37, Sheffield University

Andy’s paper drew upon a an earlier one published here:

 A world turned upside down: the creative economy, cities and the new austerity

The conference dinner had Martin Ware (of the Human League) as a special guest.

 

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between the cultural economy and the ‘rest’ of the economy in the context of global cities. Specifically, it questions the normative assumption that the cultural economy is wholly dependent on the ‘real’ economy of global cities, usually interpreted as the financial services sector. The current economic situation has provided us with a hint of a natural experiment: and the result is that whilst one might have expected culture to suffer hardest and first, in fact it has not, and seems to have higher rates of growth than mots parts of the economy. This provides us with good reason to re-examine the relationship between the cultural economy and cities, and the position and role of culture in and out of austerity. My conclusion is that the outcome is different to what normative explanations would lead us to expect.