a very impermanent practice - the transformation of creative work in a digital age
DESCRIPTION
This paper will seek to identify the changing nature of creative work and its impacts on the higher education of creative professionals. At the intersection of reduced funding, increased compliance, portfolio careers, social media and technology the modern creative professional faces a significantly different workplace in the digital age. This paper will argue that creative work has become transitory, trans-global, trans-disciplinary and transformative. Further, creative workers have acquired a variety of skills from their engagement with social media, both professionally and personally, that have significant impacts on their expectations and engagement with education. The modern learner is seeking to use skills outside the established notions of artistic practice. These skills support rapidly evolving notions of professional identity, creative work, sustainability, collaboration, evaluation and sharing. The sharing of learner experience through and in creative work practice reveals tensions within a higher educational system predicated on a work practice that is no longer predominant or expected by the graduate. The trans-skills possessed and expected by the learner are challenged or remain under-utilised by their higher education engagement, resulting in disconnects in terms of practice application, the appropriateness of higher education study and the emergence of different modes of study such as DIY education and connected learning (Bryant, Akinleye & Durrant 2012; Jenkins 2009; Kamenetz 2010; Siemens 2005).TRANSCRIPT
the transformation of creative work in a digital age
a very
practiceimpermanent
the argument The nature of creative work has
changed significantly
• Creative industries have experienced reduced funding, increased
commercialisation and mission pressures
• Reduced base pay and standards of living for artists
• Technology has changed production, distribution and marketing of
creative work• Changing skills of the workers
themselves
Has Higher Education changed its provision to meet the needs of the
digital age creative professional?
the method
Part 1Analysis and review of
over 120 blogs made by learners on the BA Professional Practice Programme - MDX
Part 2Extensive literature review as part of a project for the Vice
Chancellor - UG
Part 3My own practice as an
artist and academic in creative industries
policy free zonegovernance free zonestatistics free zone
sorry!
work is transitory
work is
trans-global
work is trans-discipline
work is
transformative
work is trans-professional
What does it all mean?
‘…(learners) communicate in a language that many academics don’t yet understand. It’s an ever-evolving
language of interpretation and expression, an interactive approach to learning, creating, and responding to information through a complex montage of images, sound,
and communication. Students are pushing learning into a new dimension’
John Seeley Brown
‘We’ll have to abandon our institutional identities as users and clients to embrace more inventive, experimental, self-conscious
identities. Well have to become bricoleurs ‘The bricoleur-faculty draws on and engages students in the expanding new literacies fostered by
Web 2.0s new openness…the bricoleur-faculty asks students to make meaning through new conjunctions of sound, image, and text.
Larry Hanley
