Revealing and re-valuing cultural intermediaries in the ‘real’ creative city: Insights from a diary-keeping exercise

Beth Perry,Karen Smith,Saskia Warren

doi:10.1177/1367549415572324

Beth Perry, Karen Smith + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549415572324

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Abstract

From critics and cultural commentators to professionals who mediate between production and consumption for economic gain, the term ‘cultural intermediaries’ has been variously interpreted over recent decades. Often framed as self-interested entrepreneurs seeking to maximise economic value the wider set of political, social and moral motivations of cultural workers have been often overlooked.Drawing on a diary-keeping exercise with 20 cultural workers in Greater Manchester and Birmingham in 2013, we suggest that a ‘third’ wave of studies of cultural intermediaries is needed, which emphasises socially engaged practices and non-economic values. The study reveals a field of cultural work which mediates between professionalised and everyday cultural ecologies, one which is often invisible and undervalued. Combining methodological insights into diary-keeping as a reflexive exercise, the study suggests that we should reclaim and re-value the term ‘cultural intermediary’ to make visible this socially grounded cultural work, particularly in the current era of austerity and cuts to the arts in England.

Highlights

Intermediary’ to make visible this socially grounded cultural work, in the current era of austerity and cuts to the arts in England
Cultural intermediaries are often considered a cornerstone for ‘recent attempts to characterize the contemporary cultural entrepreneur as a creative, dynamic figure seeking out new “practical utopias” through experimental combinations of economic and cultural practice’ (Banks, 2006: 458)
As the main protagonists in Richard Florida’s creative class, cultural intermediaries are characterised by a creative free spirit driven by the desire to make money and forge new connections between production and consumption (Florida, 2002)

Summary

Introduction

Intermediary’ to make visible this socially grounded cultural work, in the current era of austerity and cuts to the arts in England. Through a diary-keeping exercise with cultural workers in two UK cities, this article seeks to re-appropriate the terminology of ‘cultural intermediaries’ to draw attention to those working in liminal spaces between professionalised and everyday cultural ecologies.

Results

Conclusion