Is Social Enterprise the Answer to Successful Development of the Popular Music Industry in Wales?

Wales Institute for Research into Cooperatives

Len Arthur, Molly Scott Cato, Tom Keenoy, and Russell Smith

The Research Project

• Grants of up to £10,000• Small research projects relevant to the  Social Justice and

Regeneration portfolio and the strategic objectives set out in 'Wales: A Better Country'.

• Successful applications needed to demonstrate:

advanced understanding of  themes within the Social Justice and Regeneration portfolio

ability to contribute to the existing evidence base through the production of new evidence and novel ideas

clear aims and objectives proven ability to carry out research in the chosen field value for money

Social Enterprise and the Cultural Industries: a comparative evaluation of the role of three

development agencies in promoting cultural enterprise and economic regeneration

• A comparative analysis of 3 development agencies (1 publicly funded organisation, 1 independent community organisation, and 1 private sector organisation) which are all engaged in developing and promoting young talent.

Research aims

To identify the key factors which contribute to the best practice and good examples of stimulating enterprise among young people who, on the margins of conventional employment patterns, are attempting to establish themselves in the cultural industries.

To deepen our understanding of how the ‘cultural industries function’ and identify mechanisms that work in providing a more secure basis for generalisation across those organisations in Wales which are engaged in promoting social enterprise in the cultural industries.

A Response to ‘Social Exclusion’?

• Nexus of issues that lead to a significant proportion of our society facing an intractable and interactive set of problems: lack of work, loss of identity, low incomes, inability to interact as an equal with other members of society.

• The social economy may offer an alternative route to mainstream employment that can start to untangle this nexus of disadvantage

Examples of urban renaissance through development of cultural sector

• Glasgow European Capital of Culture 1990• Sheffield’s Cultural Industry Quarter• Madchester in the 1980s• King’s Cross St. Pancras, London• El Raval, Barcelona• Cardiff failed in its bid to be Capital of Culture in

2008

Critical academic views

• ‘the idea that culture can be employed as a driver for urban economic growth has become part of the new orthodoxy by which cities seek to enhance their competitive position’ (Miles and Paddison, 2005: 833)

• ‘expectation that culture will solve social problems’ to be nothing more than ‘a form of political displacement activity’ (Selwood, 2006: 44)

• ‘Local authorities have turned to cultural regeneration as a phoney substitute for real economic revival’ (Heartfield, 2006: 80)

Key research questions

• Does the success of the policy relate to the nature of its management?

• What is the social and economic impact of the development agencies work in the communities where they operate?

• Is this affected by the agency’s organisation form?

• What contribution can these organizations make to longer-term regeneration?

For love or money?

• Clash between their art and their livelihood, since there is an in-built resistance to selling what is a personal and creative outpouring rather than a material product.

• Adorno stated the extreme form of this view in his comment that: ‘The entire practice of the culture industry transfers the profit motive naked onto cultural forms’ (1991: 86).

• Negus (1992) describes this as ‘a conflict between commerce and creativity or art and capitalism’.

• In the Welsh context, Cultural Enterprise (2001), has identified that ‘practitioners are often driven more by a passion for the product than for profit and growth, resulting in a skewed approach to business’.

The filter-flow model

Who gets the value?

• Welsh bands signed with London records companies

• How indie are indie labels?

• Are the Arctic Monkeys doing something different?

So you like to play the guitar?

• Self-management and sharing of value

• Inclusion of marginalised young people, especially men

• Inclusion of excluded cultural groups

• Loose organisation, more like franchise than hierarchy

What a co-operative has to offer

• A particular approach to the sharing of value

• An empowered management approach

• Empowerment required for regeneration

• Cooperation between creators of value and cultural intermediaries

• Overlapping identities and role flexilibity within the business