Cultural Work and Higher Education

Over the last few decades, policy-makers have been busy in the fields of cultural industries and higher education (HE), as both undergo significant changes in an era of globalization, economic instability and austerity agendas. However, there has been a marked difference in the ways in which both these spheres have responded to the opportunities and challenges that they currently face. Despite ambiguities in their definition (Galloway and Dunlop, 2007), the cultural industries, or more accurately their partial political successor, the creative industries, have emerged as one of the most celebrated sectors of the UK economy (Confederation of British Industry, 2010). With strong, albeit controversial (Garnham, 2005; Tremblay, 2011), growth figures reported, these industries have been reframed and endorsed as part of a new knowledge economy for a digital society.1 As a result, the sector is often framed as a panacea to numerous and often disparate financial and social ills, including economic development, urban regeneration and remedying social inequalities. At this moment, HE in the UK seems to lie on the other end of the spectrum of political taste.