Interchanges - Issue No. 30

Winter 2007 | Download PDF Version

In this issue:
The Future of Work: the Hybrid Worker
Publications
Resources

Dear readers,
This issue of Interchanges looks at a nascent phenomenon in the shape of new patterns of work. A principal player in this scenario, says Jennifer Williams in the article below, is an emergent kind of worker who combines new and traditional approaches to work, increasingly, across sectors and disciplines: a hybrid worker. Coinciding with the recent publication of Culturelink's report of its Second World Culturelink conference held in Zagreb in June 2005 (see the Publications section), we are Including an excerpt of the article by the Centre for Creative Communities, which appears in that publication dedicated to new actors in civil society and which formed the basis of CCC’s participation at the event. The rest of this issue of Interchanges highlights some examples of new approaches to work placing creativity at the centre.

Antonio Molina Vazquez
Editor
Interchanges

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The Future of Work: the Hybrid Worker

“A growing number of experts foresee a radical break in the organisation of work. They expect that use of the new technologies and related profound changes in production will overthrow the long-established work patterns that allowed individuals to predict safely how a job would structure their day, week, year and lifetime.” – Future of Work: Towards a Jobless Employment? OECD 1991

For decades, we have been speculating about how work will look as we move out of the industrial age into the age variously called post-industrial, information or knowledge age. The context in which this discussion about the future of work must take place at the beginning of the 21st century is change and change is gathering pace. The world population is going through an exponential rise in number and, according to experts in population dynamics, it will continue at this speed for at least another hundred years. At the same time, society is becoming more complex and only just beginning to understand how the new technologies can be best put to work.

New structures are being called for as a response to this mounting complexity. These new structures, however, must be informed by completely different organising principles and values from those that have guided us in the past. This shift in thinking is already taking place simultaneously throughout society – in homes, offices, schools and factories.

Logically, systems dedicated to service provision, such as care, education and mental and physical well-being, must also carry out a thorough examination of all aspects of their delivery, taking into account a full range of resources available, including new kinds of workers.

This article narrows in on a particular aspect of the changes that are clearly underway: the emergence of a number of hybrid fields and within those fields, workers that are called for the purposes of this paper ‘hybrid workers’. More specifically, this paper will look at those who use the arts, culture or creativity as a basic ingredient in their work. The paper will also talk a little about some of the shortcomings visible in the established systems we have for the encouragement of these new forms of working and the implications for initial training in a number of fields.

As mentioned, the context for this topic is a time in which society, and the way it is organised, is changing rapidly. The nature of this new society is one that begins to recognise that our problems, whether economic, environmental, educational or social are not separate from one another. They are, in fact, clearly interdependent.

To begin a description about the growing volume of work that does not easily fit into existing categories it is useful to look first at what triggers the need for the work in the first place. It could be shared problems in society such as urban and rural decline, issues around health, literacy or social inclusion. Equally, the trigger might be a desire to create opportunities, such as life long learning, ecological planning or the maintenance of traditional art forms. The clusters of people that congregate around these challenges are bravely stepping outside of their specialist areas, pooling personal and professional knowledge and addressing the problem collaboratively. CCC calls the phenomenon that emerges ‘creative community visioning’, which typically involves at least three sectors, though the activity itself is not usually sector specific.

In a creative community, the specialist sectors will still be drawn upon and necessary but there is also a need to suspend disbelief and develop organically. In a creative community, hybrid sectors like arts and education, education/business partnerships, and others have fused to enable the emergence of a meta-sector with individual creativity as a central ingredient.

Hybrid workers
Quietly, alongside the always long and often painful processes to reform our public policies, there is a steady growth of hybrid workers tackling some of the most intractable problems in society today through inventive collaboration with people and communities.

Reports published recently remind us of the government’s drive to raise the quality of life in our communities. Their emphasis is on increasing prosperity, reducing inequalities, creating employment, improving public services, and delivering better health and education, while tackling crime and antisocial behaviour. It often sounds as if these programmes are geared to people, but in reality, most are not. In fact, these good intentions are a result of a growing awareness that urban regeneration, lifelong learning and community development are at a watershed and pressure is building to find ways to reach the people at the centre of their programmes more effectively.

The studies of the Centre for Creative Communities and others would indicate that all communities have within them this spirit of optimism and enthusiasm. It can be a powerful force for change, but those who have responsibility for political, cultural or educational policy can so easily overlook it.

The processes that prove successful in strengthening collaborative teams are, in themselves, straightforward but they need to be better understood by all who profess an interest in fostering creative development.

As the government papers indicate, we are recognising that problems, whether economic, environmental, educational or social are not separate from one another. But translating this knowledge into practice through our traditional sectors is not at all straightforward. Old hierarchies and established training tend to re-invent familiar approaches with new names. All too often these time-honoured specialised methods of delivery and organisational hierarchies are overwhelmed by new challenges. There are few official programmes sufficiently in touch with (particularly young) people’s lives to effect lasting change. Nor are they geared up to facilitate alternative forms of practice.

This lack is frustrating for a growing number of people who are using creative processes to confront the complex interests, talents and problems of people and communities directly. Artists are working with hospital patients, theatre practitioners are working with young offenders, and police are working with designers on public spaces. On the fringes of all sectors new, often creative hybrid workers are emerging who deal directly with the interdependent realities of contemporary problems. It is not surprising, perhaps, that traditional sectors struggle to keep up.

The youth, community development and informal education worlds have had hybrid workers for decades. With the notable exception of community arts workers who have been active in the UK since the 1960s, designers and others in the creative industries are relative newcomers to the ranks of those who are eager to become more involved in the political, social, cultural and economic context of their work.

Hybrid work and its practitioners, characterised by unconventional thinking that leads to unexpected discoveries, have their share of problems. Policy and training structures that feed into health, education, the arts and other public services are usually rigid in structure and slow to change their ways of working. Known structures are usually favoured over more risky propositions. This is certainly true of creative hybrid practice, which can be ignored by arts and social policy funding alike.

Dutch information specialist Bert Mulder describes hybrid work as coming out of a period in which the over-riding context is an extraordinary rate of change. It is not surprising perhaps, that large institutions and indeed whole sectors such as the education sector, the health sector, the arts sector, etc are really struggling to evolve fast enough to keep up with the fields they serve. As a society, we have entered a period of confusion -- and the search is on for new organising principles with which to think about and design our work.

New organising principles enable the creation of new work patterns based on networks and away from traditional hierarchies. A networked society differs from a hierarchical one in that its emphasis is more on dynamic processes rather than static products. It relies on fluidity and situations that are developed from implicit and unfolding meanings as opposed to being explicit and predicable. There is a strong recognition that the emphasis must be on what people and institutions are becoming rather than acting on an impression of what they already are. These transitions force us to take account of our work habits and our institutional structures.

Implications for training
There are implications for training as hybrid sectors emerge both for initial training and for post-graduate professional development. Put simply, all social workers, teachers artists, politicians, public administration and health workers should be sensitised, through their initial training, to the agendas of other sectors. They should be given skills in the art of collaboration. This kind of adjustment in training will not only help lay the groundwork for the traditional institutions and sectors to change with the times, but it also gives more people within those institutions the understanding needed to recognise and engage with hybrid activity.

It is pretty clear that private business is looking at ways to encourage the development of new kinds of workers through better use of shared work environments. An imperative today is for traditional public service sectors to come to terms with the fact that there are now many hybrid sectors and hybrid workers that can make a huge contribution to some of our toughest problems if given the space and resources. This is not easy, given that many of our structures are rigid and have no mechanisms in place to take advantage of new kinds of workers. The irony is that it is likely that hybrid workers could be the catalysts to accelerate the evolution of traditional institutions into ones in tune with a complex 21st century society.
Jennifer Williams is Director of Centre for Creative Communities.

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Publications

Differing diversities

by Andrea Ellmeier and Béla Rásky
2006, Council of Europe Publishing, Strasbourg, pp.81, ISBN 92-871-6024-4
Cultural diversity, in all its forms, is posing a profound challenge to traditional formulations of cultural policy and to our understanding of the public interests served by this policy. In most countries the artistic and cultural landscape has not evolved to reflect the realities of a changed social landscape. This rift threatens to undermine the legitimacy of cultural institutions and the public policy that supports them. The shift from homogeneity to diversity as the new social norm requires a rethinking of the processes, mechanisms and relationships necessary for democratic policy development in diverse societies.

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New Creative Community

By Arlene Goldbard
New Village Press, 2006, 269 pp., ISBN-13: 978-0-9766054-5-4
For details, please see: arlenegoldbard.com/books/newcc
The book New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development written by Arlene Goldbard brings new reflections of this author who has been for many years one of the best known writers and researchers in the field of community cultural development but also an author of visionary and graceful prose. This new book brings some fresh ideas and findings, following a previous study published by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2001 under the title Creative Community: The Art of Cltural Development.

Goldbard summarizes and describes all main aspects of community cultural development from more practical to the conceptual ones, including the policy framework that necessarily has to be put in place in order to create a favorable context for the “new creative community”. Her reflections include practical aspects and the results of field research or interviews with CCD practitioners and theoreticians. She describes the main models and structures including an overview of historical and theoretical underpinnings necessary for understanding the complexity of community cultural development practices. In an elaborate and analytical way, she describes how CCD moves/moved from theory to practice and through many examples she describes the state of the field today.

Community cultural development is one of those crucial elements from the broad spectrum of cultural activities and practices which is essential for democratic society, for the promotion of diversity and social cohesion. Particularly interesting is one of the last chapters of this book, that focuses on some of the most evident development needs of the field, in particular to the need for the public support both in terms of policy and financing as well as training and awareness-raising.

Arlene Goldbard is one of those writers who not only writes about culture - she lives culture. She manages both to persuade us about her research but also convince us about the importance of community cultural development, which is why her latest book should be read not only by those interested in community cultural development but moreover by those who still need to learn and understand why is it so important.

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Dynamics of Communication

by Cvjeticanin, B. (ed.)
Institute for International Relations/Culturelink, 2006, 413pp, ISBN 978-953-6096-39-8
This new joint publication by Culturelink and the Institute for International Relations in Zagreb, Croatia, presents the contributions of 50 experts from across the world, which were presented at the Second World Culturelink Conference held in Zagreb in June 2005. This period between the First and this Second World conference has been characterised by ever more rapid and important changes introduced by and developed through the globalisation processs in the field of culture. This book identifies the new tasks and changing roles of cultural policies related to diversity and the newly emerging digital cultures, whilst drawing attention to the new actors and ways of working which have emerged as a result.

Among the many contributors to this volume, in addition to CCC’s The Hybrid Worker, we find Colin Mercer, with a paper on newforms of cultural identity and citizenship; Mate Kovacs writing on cultural change and networks in Africa; as well as an article on the need for a global cultual movement by Joost Smiers from the Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands.

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Conferences and Events

For a comprehensive list of conferences, seminars, training courses as well as call for papers please visit our events section.

Resources

In this section you can find initiatives, online resources, organisations and research relevant to the theme of thisissue of Interchanges. Some of them you will have come across, their common thread: an uncompromising commitmentto a society rich in its diversity and willingness to enter into healthy debate and reflection.

Learning in Communities - Conference

6-9 January 2008
Santa Fe, New Mexico
This international conference, organised by the Center for RelationaLearning with the collaboration of CCC, is a unique opportunity for those involved in community education, community leadership and community development to share learning experiences, hopes and values. For more details please contact Centre for Creative Communities on info@creativecommunities.org.uk

Mount Vernon

by Ann-SophieMorrissette, Centre for Creative Communities
www.creativecommunities.org.uk/essays/245.html
Read this article by Ann-Sophie Morrissette, of the Centre for Creative Communities, on our website. An account of the process, which transformed this troubled estate in Belfast through a resident-led initiative where community engagement was not just a buzzword. Visit also the Community Arts Forum, Belfast website on www.caf.ie

Creativity and Cognition Conference

Washington, 2007
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/CC2007/
The Creativity & Cognition Conference series began in 1993 and has evolved into a lively multidisciplinary event combiningresearch and practice. This year’s event is focused on the theme of cultivating and sustaining creativity: understanding how to design and evaluate computational support tools, digital media, and socio-technical environments that not only empower our creative processes and abilities, but that also encourage and nurture creative mindsets and lifestyles.

CAN Website

http://www.communityarts.net
CAN's Web site is an international resource focusing on the work of artists and their community partners - projects and programsthat actively promote the arts as part of education, political life, health, prisoner rehabilitation, environmental protection, community regeneration, electronic communication, and more. Here you will find a wealth of data, documentation and criticism about art that is doing important work that will otherwise be lost.

The Power of Culture

http://www.powerofculture.nl/uk/index.html
The Power of Culture is a website about culture and development. Culture is not a peripheral matter. The ideas, ideals andcreativity of people are the driving force behind development towards more political, economic and social freedom. The Power of Culture reviews art and cultural expressions in conjunction with human rights, education, the environment, emancipation and democratisation initiatives.

C r a c k e r s

Inanimate Alice

http://www.inanimatealice.com/

My USA of Whatever

http://www.johnrichie.com/V2/movies/moviePage.php?title=My%20US%20of%20Whateva&width=550&height=400&file=BUSH_FINAL.swf

Signs of the City

In February this year we introduced the metropolitan art organisation urban dialogues of Berlin,currently co-operating with the CUCR & ICA in London and Artibarri & the CCCB in Barcelonato scrutinise the dramatically changing environment of the modern European city through aninventory of the semiotic signs of the city. (For the project description and ongoing developmentsplease see their website at www.urbandialogues.de).

Professional artists, educationalists and urban researchers work together with youth and youngadults to make a comprehensive synopsis and inventory of the urban environment of threeEuropean metropolis, archiving the signs of the city. Based on collaborative insights, all participantsimmerse themselves in the metropolitan microcosm in a playfully designed urban expeditionto discover the immediate world of signs from the new viewpoint of explorers. Through thenetwork of a variety of institutions within the three research fields the project will portray thesimilarities as well as the differences of contemporary cultural signifiers.

The Centre for Urban and Community Research of Goldsmiths College, University of London, ispatron and academic advisor to the entire project. The Institute of Contemporary Arts London,the Queens Park New Media Centre in London, ARTIBARRI of the Nou Barris district inBarcelona, the FEZ-Berlin and the House of World Cultures in Berlin are some of the main collaboratorsto date. The project is scheduled to launch early 2007 with the final presentation totake place in the ICA Fall 2008.

For further information please contact:
Stefan Horn - Project Management & Artistic Direction estefan.horn@urbandialogues.de
Michael Raj Kunsmann - Semiotic and Educational Direction kunsmann@urbandialogues.de

The Art of City Making

by Charles Landry, ComediaThis is the new publication by the expert in urban regeneration, which folllows up onthe highly successful and influential The Creative City. A review of this new title willappear in Interchanges no. 31 in March 2007.

Interchanges is now published bi-monthly. Email alerts are sent to subscribers as soon as the latest issue is published. Interchanges is also available as a PDF, just click on the link at the top of this page. At the same time an Archive of past issues is another feature of this section. Visit the archive to read past issues of Interchanges and to download them as PDFs. Please email us at info@creativecommunities.org.uk to tell us what you think.