International Expert Roundtable

Last Friday (June 25) saw a high-level gathering of academics and policy makers from around the world, brought together to discuss worrying–yet frequently invisible–inequalities in cultural work. Participants from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and across Europe, highlighted the mythologised nature of cultural and creative industries as “cool creative and egalitarian”, exploring the way this obscures very real inequalities in the sector and renders them on speakable and unmanageable. Fresh from the Gender,Work and Organisation conference, Deborah Jones and Judith Pringle discussed the New Zealand film industry, whilst Angela McRobbie spoke “against cool”. Mustafa Ozbilgin highlighted the need for a new critical vocabulary to engage with inequalities, and the Greater London Authority’s Alan Freeman provided much-needed statistical information. The event was the sixth in a series organised by CMCI’s Rosalind Gill and Andy Pratt, in conjunction with Mark Banks and Stephanie Taylor from the Open University. It was funded jointly by CMCI and the ESRC’s CRESC programme.