Researching cultural work and creative biographies:
A half-day data analysis workshop
Tuesday afternoon, 2 June 2009
Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
From 1.30 p.m.
Organisers:
Stephanie Taylor, Centre for Citizenship and Governance (CCIG), The Open
University
Mark Banks, Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC), The Open
University
Rosalind Gill, Centre for Citizenship and
Governance (CCIG), The Open University
Academic interest in the contemporary cultural industries and creative
sector has converged recently on the workers themselves, with a
corresponding shift to empirical work using practitioners? and novices? own
accounts of their creative work and their experiences and expectations. This
biographical material includes talk and writing. It is a rich source of
illustrative quotations, but how else can it be analysed? What is its status
as research evidence? And can creative works themselves become an additional
form of data?
This half-day workshop will begin with presentations from three researchers
who make different use of biographical materials: Linda Sandino (Camberwell
College of Arts/ V&A), Maria Tamboukou (UEL) and Stephanie Taylor (Open
University). They will describe their empirical work in this broad area,
focussing on the data collection and analytic approach, the premises and
broad purpose of the research and empirical issues which it raises.
Groups will then discuss data extracts which have previously been
circulated. A plenary session will be led by Prof. Rosalind Gill (Open
University), as discussant. The workshop is for academics and postgraduates
with an interest in empirical research on creative work and its
practitioners. One purpose is to encourage dialogue between researchers and
promote future research contacts. Workshop participants will be invited to
indicate in advance any areas of interest for possible collaborations.
There will be a nominal charge of £15 (lunch and tea provided). Please
contact Kelly Weekes ((k.weekes /at/ open.ac.uk)) .if you wish to register for this
event.
Researching cultural work and creative biographies:
A half-day data analysis workshop
The speakers:
Linda Sandino is the Camberwell College of Arts/V&A Senior Fellow in Oral
History currently working on an oral history of curating at the Museum
documenting changes in curatorial practice over the last thirty years, a
period of significant changes in museum management. The presentation will
focus on how oral history interviews with curators might be used to
understand the shifting positions of curators as cultural producers in a
Museum in which artistic hierarchies have structured both producers and
consumers since the founding of the South Kensington museums in the mid-19th
Century.
Maria Tamboukou is Reader in Sociology and co-director of the Centre for
Narrative Research at the University of East London. Her current research
focuses on an AHRC funded project on writing genealogies of the female self
in art. An issue that has arisen from this on-going work is the problematic
way that artists' biographies are constructed in the publishing industries
and then of course used as 'data' in current research in the social
sciences, art histories and visual studies. Challenging unified
representation of the self, the presentation will consider questions arising
from Foucauldian and Deleuzian approaches to narrative analysis of texts and
images, particularly in the context of exploring power/desire connections in
the interface of fin-de-siècle women artists' letters and paintings.
Stephanie Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Social Sciences at the
Open University. Her research on creative identities analyses interview
transcripts following a narrative-discursive analytic approach. She will
discuss material from two projects with students and practitioners for whom
HE study in art and design provided an entry point into creative careers.
Her analysis centres on speakers? ?identity work? in talk and the resources
which enable such work, including established understandings of creative
work and the prospects which it offers for earning and employment, and more
local discursive resources given by personal life contexts.
The programme:
[12.45 1.30: Lunch]
1.30 Welcome and introduction
1.45 - 2.45 Three presentations (Each 15
minutes plus 5 minutes for questions)
2.45 Tea
3.00 Data session 1: Group discussion of previously circulated data extracts
3.30 Data session 2: Group discussion of previously circulated data extracts
4.00 Break
4.15 Plenary led by Prof. Rosalind Gill as discussant on responses to the
data extracts and the more general implications for research in this area.
5.00 - Drinks
