BCMCR Research Seminar – Creative Industries: Collaborative PhDs in the Creative Industries

1600-1730 Wednesday 13 June 
C424, Curzon, Birmingham City University
Free registration at this link

Martin Cox | Art and Cultural Impact: Exploring Alternative Models for Creative Practices, Policy and Sustainability in Contemporary Urban Space

Government arts funding has provided an official policy framework for cultural intermediation, creative practice and evaluation in contemporary urban neighbourhoods. This framework has drawn criticism for privileging ‘legitimatized’ culture, reinforcing inequality, excluding grassroots activity and failing to equitably engage multi-faith urban communities. However, there are signs of alternative models for sustainable creative practice in urban, multi-faith communities, tapping into alternative resource networks and engaging diverse audiences through social activism and local enterprise. My research explores:

• What channels of investment exist beyond the standard models of cultural funding?
• What is the role of arts activities which exist outside the standard models of the UK creative sector, including emergent models for cultural funding?
• What is the role of arts and cultural spaces in rejuvenating deprived neighbourhoods?
• What is the role of arts activity in responding to the challenges of an increasingly polarised society and diverse cultural values?

I will present some of my work looking at how institutional frameworks determine the behaviour of cultural intermediation and respond to the Kings College report ‘Towards Cultural Democracy: Promoting cultural capabilities for everyone’ (Wilson, Gross and Bull, 2017) recommendations to ‘break down cultural hierarchies’ and ‘democratise culture’. My provocation will be that cultural democracy cannot be achieved through an institutional framework that is implicitly hierarchical and polarises/commodifies notions of diversity as representations of difference.

Julia Szivak | The role of multilingualism in the creative industries of British Asian popular music

Julia’s PhD project looks at the transnational connections of the British Asian music industry. She focuses on British Asian artists’ connections to India and to the global South Asian diaspora to explore the changes and challenges of the British Asian music industry in the age of new media and global media networks. As journeys play an important role in the project too, in addition to reporting on her work in progress, in this talk Julia will talk about her own PhD journey as well, and will reflect on the experience of doing a collaborative PhD.

About the speakers

Martin Cox: After working as a pie poker*, salad bar refresher, burger flipper, shed dipper and small-time music impresario, I eked out what I generously refer to as a ‘career in the arts’. As a community arts activist, creative producer, programmer and fundraiser, I lead complex multi-art-form participatory creative activities. My award-winning work has been cited as good practice by ACE, DCMS and DFES. In 2017 I was awarded a National Productivity Investment Fund scholarship to undertake doctoral research of alternative models for creative practice in urban rejuvenation.

*My pie-poking experience became the subject of ‘Stories to Tell in the Middle of the Night’ a theatre piece by Francesca Millican Slater: **** “the bleakest thing I’ve ever heard” – Lynn Gardener

Julia Szivak: Julia Szivak is a first-year PhD student at the Birmingham School of Media. Her PhD project is funded by SteamHouse and is supported by Punch Records, Birmingham. Julia is also a research assistant to the PGR Studio and a teaching assistant at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford.