an excerpt
Culture theorist Angela McRobbie suggests that widespread structural underemployment means it’s time to reimagine creative work by developing structures for “strategies of social cooperation” so that the creative energies of young people can be directed towards the common good in ways that go beyond volunteering. A universal basic income, for instance, could allow artists to develop creative projects directed towards greater community involvement.
McRobbie calls for a renewal of radical social enterprise and cooperatives, including literacy and street education programs, photography workshops, or other projects for urban and environmental improvement. Artists have the ability to make interventions into prevalent social problems, but this capacity cannot be left to the market alone to dictate.
The question remains of how to gather public support for such initiatives. When the problem of earning a living is presented as an individual story, it’s easy to dismiss it as the failing of the individual.
Artists are expected to reinvent themselves, turn to crowdfunding, and hustle their way out of their predicaments. But we cannot crowdfund our way to broad public support for culture or to more sustainable approaches to cultural production. We need to move from narrating individual struggles to discussing community-wide challenges and collective solutions.
Stories of struggle do matter, but we need to start the conversation by discussing why these stories matter and what will be lost if only the wealthy can pursue a career in culture.
from Stowe Boyd http://stoweboyd.com/post/127556580592
