Broadway North: craft in Canadian creative industry production

Jennifer Hambleton Jennifer Hambleton

doi:10.13169/workorgalaboglob.10.1.0064

Abstract

This article considers how the autonomy and occupational identities of craft workers are shaped by the organisation of production in culture industry workshops that fabricate theatrical display environments. Representation of craft autonomy in the literature on creative labour is sparse and tends to overlook the fact that craft autonomy is different in some respects from artistic autonomy. Drawing on qualitative semi-structured interviews with craft workers, designers and culture industry workshop owners and managers, this study examines the digitalisation and industrialisation of theatre production work. The article contributes to an understanding of craft autonomy as collective, part of a community of practice in a context in which experiential and practice-based knowledge is mediated by digital fabrication tools and the structural conditions of the work.

Highlights

Work in theatre is project-based and precarious and that has always been an aspect of the working lives of craft workers in Canada who specialise in stagecraft.1 The skills and stagecraft learned in theatres in Southern Ontario that are subsidised by government arts funding exist in relation to a global market for theatre display in the USA and elsewhere that is affected by the fluctuating strength of the Canadian dollar and consumer demand
Theatrical production work has traditionally been a collective endeavour, with a hierarchical division of labour necessary to create a theatre production (Becker, 1982), but in the commercial workshops, an assembly line approach to building sets is enabled with the use of digital fabrication tools
Several themes were emphasised in these conversations with the craft workers and workshop owners, including the use of technology and tools in craft practices and the influence of new technologies in the labour process, the way that people were recruited for jobs, how they learned on the job and the history of theatrical production industry in the region

Summary

Introduction

Work in theatre is project-based and precarious and that has always been an aspect of the working lives of craft workers in Canada who specialise in stagecraft. The skills and stagecraft learned in theatres in Southern Ontario that are subsidised by government arts funding exist in relation to a global market for theatre display in the USA and elsewhere that is affected by the fluctuating strength of the Canadian dollar and consumer demand. Though much creative work is based in concrete labour that happens through collective activity within theatre production processes, craft workers do not receive any royalties or residuals for their contribution to cultural commodity forms. The persistence of flexible specialisation theory, despite critical responses to it, has drawn attention to the part that small independent artisan workshops play in culture industry production, but there is a lack of research in the creative labour literature that investigates the work practices in these workshops (Dawson, 2012). The recent cultural phenomenon of the ‘maker movement’ values many of the same ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement as those expressed in the writings of John Ruskin and William Morris (Gauntlett, 2011) These include an appreciation of the beauty of handcrafted objects and a valorisation of the independence of the artisan who controls all aspects of the production process in his own studio.. Craft is ‘supplemental’ to art (Adamson, 2013; Banks, 2010) but material knowledge is essential to the fabrication of creative industry commodity forms

Methodology

Conclusions