“Hopeful work” and the creative economy

Abstract

This chapter draws on research and scholarship into the experience of creative labour to reflect on the place of hope in understanding the creative economy. The policy imaginary of the creative economy synonymizes creativity with innovation. The creative industries themselves are claimed to have unleashed some much-needed dynamism into sluggish post-industrial economies. At the same time, the kinds of jobs created in these economies and their ability to underpin and sustain the lives of the workers engaged with them have been the subject of much debate, as the creative economy has come to depend on and stand for a precarious and exclusionary labour market. Despite this, work in these industries remains attractive to many young people, and researchers continue to identify enthusiasm for creative work, alongside recognition of its iniquities. This chapter examines this paradox by drawing on conceptions of “hope” into accounts of work from the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, concluding that the assumed distinctiveness of the creative workplace and creative workers can redirect important critical attention to debates about the characteristics of “good” and “bad” work.