Disrupting disciplines: meeting the challenge of the industry-ready agenda for
the freelance creative practitioner
Julia Calver
Leeds Beckett University. J.calver@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
Robert Davis
Leeds Beckett University. R.w.davis@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
Stephen Parker
Leeds Beckett University. S.l.parker@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
From the late 1990s, successive UK governments have developed a political
narrative that presents the cultural industries as a successful and vital component
of the economy. Running in parallel with this economic agenda has been an
educational imperative in which the university sector has had to integrate an
ability to deliver graduates ready for employment or who have demonstrable
entrepreneurial skills. We argue that the notion of an industry-ready workforce in
the cultural industries fails to reflect the freelance, self-employed, portfolio or
micro-industry models that make up a large proportion of the industry workforce.
Drawing on research with industry practitioners, recent graduates and higher
education students, our research in the field of music production points to the need
to engage with the industry-ready agenda in terms of the freelance
practitioner/consultant. Using case studies from the music industry, we explore an
initiative for developing entrepreneurial effectiveness to address the implications
of the industry-ready agenda.
We argue that for higher education to actively promote and prepare
students to undertake a freelance career may require a more innovative approach
than the existing rhetoric around employability and entrepreneurship currently
implies. By placing the freelance practitioner at the centre of the industry-ready
agenda a number of tensions emerge which challenge existing educational
structures be they physical, pedagogical or ideological. Giving the freelance
practitioner a voice invites us to disrupt disciplines and to allow real
entrepreneurial competencies to be developed in the university environment.
Economic and educational context in the UK
While the importance of the cultural industries in developing the UK economy
can be traced back to the 1980s (Hesmondhalgh & Pratt, 2005), it was not until the
late 1990s that the UK government attempted to actively influence the economic
potential of the creative economy through a sustained series of policy initiatives and
commissioned reports. In 1997, the newly elected Labour Government created the
Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) which, one year later, published
the Creative Industries Mapping Document (DCMS, 1998) representing their first
attempt to quantify the economic and employment potential of the creative industries.
Alongside this initiative, the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural
Education (NACCCE), reporting jointly to the Secretary for State for Education and
Employment and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, produced All
Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (NACCCE, 1999). The NACCCE
report recommended that the key areas of industrial and educational policy be brought
together in order to support the development of key corporations ‘in the fields of
communications, information, entertainment, science and technology’ (NACCCE,
1999: 19). These initiatives were to develop into a significant narrative which was to
have, and continues to have, a profound effect on educational policy in the UK.
Initial estimates prepared by the DCMS in 1998 suggested that the cultural
industries generated annual revenues of over £57 billion and employed more than 1.7
million people (NACCCE, 1999, pp.19-20). By 2014, these estimates had been
upgraded to indicate that the Creative Industries, now a clearly defined subset of the
Creative Economy, accounted for 5.2% of Gross Value Added (GVA for 2012) or
£71.4 billion. Employment for the creative economy accounts for and estimated 2.55
million jobs and the creative industries itself is estimated to account for 1.68 million
jobs or 5.6% of the UK workforce (DCMS, 2014, p. 5). The economic strength of
the creative industries has become such that in November 2014 a newly created nonGovernmental organization, The Creative Industries Federation (CIF) has been
created with support from more than 220 companies including film, television,
publishing, fashion and the arts. The organization is being promoted as an
independent lobbying group that will represent the creative industries in the same way
that the Confederation of British Industries (CBI) represents independent employers.
The relationship between higher education and the economy was cemented in
2009 when the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills incorporated higher
education as part of its remit. Further reports such as Higher Ambitions: The Future of
Universities in a Knowledge Economy (2013) aimed to build a ‘consensus between
individuals, government, and employers as to how our higher education system
should be supported, adapted and expanded’ (BIS, 2013). The implication of the
report was that major changes would be required to ‘expand new types of higher
education programmes that widen opportunities…to reflect the reality of the modern
working lives’ (BIS, 2013, p. 6).
While policy shifts and the reorganization of government departments pointed
towards a bringing together of education and industry, the picture emerging from
publications such as the Manifesto for the Creative Economy (NESTA, 2013)
provided a stark reminder of the disconnect between education and employment.
Evidence suggests that most universities haven’t been producing the kind of
talent that the creative industries demand. We see this in the poor employment
outcomes of graduates from creative media specialist degrees evidenced in
Next Gen1 (only 12 per cent of those graduating from games courses secured
employment in the industry within six months of leaving university) and other
studies (Bakhshi et al. 2013, p. 103).
1
See http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/next_gen_wv.pdf
The implication of this report is that there is a potential disconnect between
the skills used in education and the skills demanded by employers that policy
initiatives alone have failed to reconcile. In his reflections on the music industries,
O’Hara points out that,
There are two parallel worlds – one of a growing field of education and the
other of an increasingly complex industry that largely ignores the existence of
the education programs. There has not been much thought give to best practice
in linking the courses to the as yet undeclared needs of the music industry
(O’Hara. 2014, p 28).
The changing characteristics of the music industries over the past few years
(Williamson, & Cloonan, 2007) underlines a further problem for developing a direct
relationship between higher education courses and employment, a situation which is
replicated in other areas of the creative and cultural industries. A further problem has
been that the agenda has been dominated by a discourse which has privileged the
‘interaction between large organizations and SMEs’ (Culkin & Malick, 2011).
However, this may be an inappropriate model for the cultural industries and for the
music industry in particular which has, according to Ball et al., seen ‘a drift away
from work in medium‐sized enterprises to micro‐businesses [which] is consistent
with recent changes in the sector’ (Ball et al., 2010, p. 3). Drawing on a longitudinal
study of creative graduates, Ball noted that:
45 per cent of graduates had worked on a freelance basis and around
one‐quarter had started a business during their early careers…
Self‐employment is a serious career entry strategy and feature of portfolio
working, as well as reflecting the way in which work is organized in the
creative sector – a predominantly contract economy (Ball et al., 2010, p. 28).
We have presented this extended contextual account and outlined some of the
political, educational and philosophical narratives that have influenced our thinking.
The UK account will, in some ways, will mirror the experience of other countries
whose governments will have developed their own response to the cultural industries
and from this their own educational agendas (European Commission, 2006, 2008;
World Economic Forum, 2009). For the UK, while policy is set centrally, it is for
each university or higher education provider to determine their response to the workready agenda.
As a University, we are also concerned with the wider cultural economy and
have a wide range of courses including film, game design, performing arts, art and
design and music, as well as a range of courses in events management and related
areas of tourism and hospitality. Our institutional response is, as follows most
institutions in the university sector, centered around a number of institutional and
school-based initiatives including careers services, bootcamps, networking events,
grant funding, business incubators, work placements, visiting industry professionals,
work-placements, work-simulated assignments, and the employment of industry
experienced academic staff.
Our concern here is for the freelance practitioner whose existence can easily
become lost in the focus on employment in larger organizations or small to medium
enterprises. For the past three years we have established a research program which
has focused on freelance practitioners working in the music industry with the aim of
exploring the transition to employment in this field. We have used semi-structured
interviews with a range of established industry professionals, recent alumni who have
gained a foothold in the industry and current undergraduates who have expressed or
demonstrated an interest in working professionally within the music industry.
It became clear that many of the experienced professionals who entered
the profession before 1980 did so through an apprenticeship scheme. The nature
of this apprenticeship varied but for some, this was largely informal situational
learning.
Probably for those first couple of months, as a tea boy/runner, I was
probably 9 to 5 office hours just to see was I reliable, capable of getting the
tea, getting the sandwiches, getting the coffee machine going every morning
and doing whatever else was asked. By three months it was decided that I
could be left on a session.
For some, the three months could be years (six was the most time spent
as a runner) but for those who went through this journey, this period was
invaluable.
The longer you spend in watching people making decisions that you really
learn to hear inside music, your ear becomes naturally critical…In the same
way that a Navy admiral would make instant decisions with an educated and
experienced insight, it’s the same thing with making records but you learn that
from just spending a lot of time with people.
People skills emerged as an important theme as professionals discussed their
early experiences, including an awareness of their own skills and abilities:
There was no formal training it was “dive straight in” and one of the earliest
lessons I learnt from that, which is a very important credo that I still hold
today was to not pretend you know something when you don’t. If someone asks
you and you don’t know how to do it, just say “I’m sorry, I don’t know”. I still
do that now.
The apprenticeship model is one which addresses education from a situational
viewpoint: apprentices are immersed in the world of work and it was seen as not only
a place to meet musicians but also to learn from them. Learning in this kind of
situation brings out a number of skills, many of which can be mapped onto what the
Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education in UK refer to as an ‘entrepreneurial
mindset’ (QAA, 2012, p. 13) which includes:
• aspects of personality and social identity
• personal ambition and goals
• personal confidence and resilience
• self-discipline and personal organisation
• understanding of one's own motivation
• ability to go beyond perceived limitations and achieve results
• tolerance of uncertainty, ambiguity, risk, and failure
• personal values: ethical, social and environmental awareness.
Developing the entrepreneurial mindset might not, however, be
straightforward as one of our professional interviewees pointed out.
You can’t make a valid comparison between apprenticeships and formal
education because they serve different purposes. On the educational end it’s
geared towards the end result of the piece of paper you get, or specific goals
in this module or that project. If you’re in a real-time studio situation you’re
talking about being in a commercial environment and everything that goes
along with that.
This critical appraisal offered a specific industry perspective from which to
view our courses and consider the strengths of the apprenticeship approach and what
skills it develops in comparison to our present approach. We were also aware that the
apprenticeship model did not offer all the answers. Although not specifically related
to the cultural industry, Unwin’s (2007) study of apprenticeships in England noted
that while ‘just over 50 per cent of apprentices achieve the prescribed qualifications,
in some service sectors, achievement rates are staggeringly low: for example, 16 per
cent in health and social care, 31 per cent in hospitality’ (2007: 118). There are no
figures available from the music industry but we from her study, we this perspective
we might consider that even at its height, the apprenticeship route is not necessarily a
successful gateway to the music industry as an independent freelancer.
We undertook a further set of interviews but this time with students who
completed a simulated industry experience at the university where visiting freelance
musicians work with students on a defined project over a two week period. Initial
comments from the student group mirrored some of the comments from the
professionals group and focused on the importance of social skills.
I think [the most important skill] was people skills, pure people skills… you
had to get to know someone quite quickly…. and you needed to have a
relationship with the person you are working with… it makes it much more
comfortable, a much more enjoyable place to work.
Working with other people foregrounded a different set of parameters to those
normally found in a student-led recording experience. The students discussed their
experience of the recording process noting that,
…you have to keep the flow of the sessions…..when we do modules at ‘uni’,
the flow doesn’t necessarily matter….you are normally recording yourself or
your friend so you just get on with it.
When asked about the overall experience that the employability experience
provided, one student put it succinctly by suggesting that,
We learned more in the employability fortnight than we had learned on the
course so far...even if it was only a simulated working environment…
The employability fortnight we offered
The experience provided an opportunity for students to benefit from working
in a simulated environment it is a limited experience. The activity would accord with
O’Hara’s suggestion that ‘emphasis should be placed on opportunity formation’
linked to students developing ‘social and interpersonal skills’ (O’Hara, 2014: 36).
This kind of experiential learning seems to raise an understanding of the importance
of social and interpersonal skills but we would ask how well this awareness might
prepare students for working at a professionals level.
QAA guidelines on enterprise and employability suggest that students pass
‘through the stages of enterprise awareness, entrepreneurial mindset and
entrepreneurial capability to achieve entrepreneurial effectiveness’ (QAA, 2012, p.
24). What we saw from the employability experience was the development of the
awareness stage with some understanding of the mindset required. Of the five
students in the interview group, one in particular demonstrated ‘entrepreneurial
capability’ in the way he began to work with people, organize the schedule, and took
responsibility for the recording process. One reason for this capability could have
been that this student had been able to shadow a dubbing engineer working on a
drama series for the BBC shortly before the employability experience.
In addition to this experience, the same student was able to take part in the
Joint Audio Media Education Support summer course (JAMES, 2013) where he was
nominated as ‘student of the week’. These experiences provided a way to develop his
entrepreneurial capability both inside and outside of the university environment and
provided an positive range of experience for the student to launch his career as a
freelance practitioner.
Using this model, we began to explore ways in which students who moved
rapidly through the stages of awareness and demonstrated a strong mindset and
capability could be developed using aspects of the apprenticeship model. One such
student that emerged was Christian who was a student on our MSc Sound design
course. Christian had quickly established himself as the ‘go to’ person for anyone
wanting sound on their film and it was clear that his mindset and capability were of a
highly developed. We approached a local post-production company using our industry
contacts and provided an opportunity for Christian to shadow an experienced dubbing
engineer who was working on a post-production project for the BBC.
Christian undertook this role as a research component of his final project and
his report focused on two significant areas of learning. The first was an understanding
of the strict technical standards necessary for the deliver of television programmes to
the EBU R128 standard. The second factor concerned what he called ‘studio skills
which were the,
interpersonal skills that are crucial when working with directors and
producers, who spent a lot of time to make their vision [into] a television
programme… In the end, it is a team working process, with the aim of
creating a series that is great to watch, sonically enjoyable… and in terms of
content an interesting and thrilling experience (Christian, 2014).
On completion of the shadowing experience, we were able to provide a live
project from Ideas Tap which our Film School use as part of their strategy to support
progression into the industry. Christian was given the role of sound designer for an
animation project called Arlene2 directed by London based animation studios,
Sherbert.3 Christian was able to put into practice all the skills and aptitudes acquired
from his previous experience in the post-production environment to produce an
2
3
http://www.sherbet.co.uk/clips/235/arlene-13-08-14
http://www.sherbet.co.uk/
excellent finished product. What was also very much in evidence was the professional
approach he had in the dubbing meeting. His entrepreneurial effectiveness was
demonstrated by the way he took the lead in organizing the necessary resources,
schedules, managing collaborators and ensuring all studio deadlines were met. This
was all the more impressive because he was networking with a range of people while
living at home in Europe.
We are aware that our approach so far is very limited in the number of
students who can take advantage of these opportunities but what we offer is more of a
progression through the stages of ‘awareness, mindset, capability and effectiveness’.
Other students have benefited from this type of approach and have gone on to
establish a freelance profile with various degrees of success. However, not all
students would be able to benefit from this direct experience in a freelance role and
the step from ‘awareness’ to ‘capability’ involves a wide range of experiences. In
addition, we would suggest that not all students would want such an opportunity. The
capability to work in a freelance environment is something that comes from a
particular mindset and any mismatch could be problematic for student, freelance
professional and the University. We are now in the process of developing new studio
facilities that will act as intermediate spaces for those students who need more support
to develop their capabilities prior to working in a freelance environment.
Reconciling the different needs of education and industry has been highlighted
as a problematic existing, as they do, in separate worlds. Our approach here has been
to find ways in which we can link the world of education and employment as a
freelancer in a productive, positive and sustainable way. As educationalists, we are
tasked with, amongst other things, ‘creating learning environments that encourage
entrepreneurial behaviour’ and ‘exploiting opportunities for enhancing the student
experience’ (QAA, 2012, p. 22).
If we were to effectively exploit learning opportunities by creating
environments that encouraged entrepreneurial behaviors, what would that educational
world look like? How can we reconcile the need for the compartmentalization of
students into faculties, schools, year groups, courses and modules? The world of
research, for which we are also responsible, embraces intra-, inter-, multi, and transdisciplinary approaches which is generally seen as a positive step for research yet at
the same time, research in the UK is categorized according to criteria from the
Research Assessment Council which recognizes 36 categories of research including
subjects such as Chemistry; Physics; Computer science and informatics; Philosophy;
Art and design (history, practice and theory); Music, Drama, Dance and Performing
Arts; Communication, Cultural and Media Studies.
Traditionally, education has, directly or indirectly, always prepared people for
work. The challenge of the enterprise narrative as the ‘engine fuelling innovation,
employment generation and economic growth’ (World Economic Forum, 2009, p.6)
has been to focus the range of activities in higher education further towards an
employment-ready imperative. In many ways, this narrative can be seen to be little
more than a simplistic cause and effect model that fails to acknowledge the
complexities of the employment environment. The freelance professional adds to this
complexity because it may take several years for someone to establish themselves in
their professional world. In his discussion of contemporary theories of learning, Illeris
(2003) suggests that to manage the complex functions of modern life, we need to
consider how to combine the
complex totality of traditional and up-to-date knowledge, orientation and
overview… with professional and everyday life skills and a broad range of
personal qualities such as flexibility, openness, independence, responsibility,
creativity, etc. … for learning theory and educational practice it is an evident
challenge to develop a concept of learning that is able to… include the
acquisition of the whole range of different competencies at stake (Illeris, 2003,
p. 397).
The combination of economic change, policy documentation and a more
fragmented employment environment has already contributed to significant disruption
to the educational agenda here in the UK. The impact of policy initiatives taken in the
latter part of the 1990s are still working their way through the system. The current
government has signaled its willingness to disrupt the higher education agenda
through further policy changes and by merging higher education with business and
enterprise departments. Documentation from advisory bodies such as the HEFC and
QAA provide a framework to support these changes. However, the overall narrative
linking higher education with economic generation and employment growth may find
it impossible to take into account the complexity of the working environment.
Further disruption has come from the students themselves. In their work on the
experience economy, Pine and Gilmore argue that ‘experiences should yield
transformations…the individual partaking in the experience often wants something
more lasting than memory…People enroll in… school because they want to affect
their professional and financial well-being’ (Pine and Gilmore, 2014, p. 26). New
courses that appear to directly address the needs of the cultural industries have been
criticized as not fulfilling the promise of employment (Bakhshi et al. 2013). However,
their comments do not take into account the difficulties of the freelance professional
who may take many years to establish a strong footing in the industry and for whom
direct entry into the freelance profession takes place over a timeframe that cannot be
captured by statistics alone.
Stronger narratives may be required to frame the experience of the freelance
practitioner and his or her progress after graduation. Our example here is only one of
several that provide both empirical and anecdotal information to inform our
educational practice. Bögenhold, Heinonen and Akola’s (2014) recent discussion of
the ‘myth’ of entrepreneurship provides an interesting critique of the entrepreneurial
narrative by alerting us to the complexities inherent in preparing for employment as a
freelance practitioner. We might use this approach to critique the myth of the
academic discipline and ask if the complex, dynamically changing and increasingly
fragmented world of the cultural industries is met by an equally complex and
dynamically driven transformative curriculum experience.
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