Livetweets from ‘Cultural work and cultural value’

Last week, I was lucky enough to attend Mark Banks’s AHRC-funded seminar, ‘Cultural work and cultural value‘. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for the whole thing, missing most of Daniel Ashton’s talk (which was shaping up to be very interesting by the time I had to run off) and all of Kate Oakley’s (which was guaranteed to be interesting, but which I missed every second of). So there was one fewer tweeter for their contributions. But there was a lot of tweeting overall, indicating the excitement and enthusiasm of the event. See below; that’s the point of this post. You will, I hope, find some hints of what was said by Mark himself on the value of work, Calvin Taylor on the history of the economic/aesthetic/ethical value trichotomy, Christina Hughes on valuing in the campaign to save Birmingham’s jewellery quarter, David Hesmondhalgh on the neo-Aristotelian conception of aesthetic/cultural value, and the aforementioned Kate Oakley and Daniel Ashton on, respectively, cultural policy and the training of cultural producers.

Sadly, it was to be the last event Mark would organise at the Open University, where I’ve been very fortunate to be his colleague. Next week, he takes up a full professorship at the University of Leicester. Congratulations, Mark – and good luck!

Introduction

‘What is work worth?’

Mark Banks (Open University)

N.B. Proud to teach at the Open Universe.

N.B. ‘Cultural’, not ‘creative’. Significant difference.

N.B. That was the third way.

‘Cultural value: between ethics and economic regulation’

Calvin Taylor (University of Leeds)

N.B. Not sure that was actually a livetweet from the symposium, but – it’s a job! Sounds interesting too. Apply for it, somebody!

N.B. Calvin acknowledged that Keynes was not an advocate of the labour theory of value.

N.B. But see livetweets from Susan Luckman’s talk on Etsy at the ‘Placing cultural work‘ event she co-organised with Mark last autumn.

N.B. I did not tweet these three points from Arvidsson in the order that Calvin cited them. The second above was the last; the last above was the first.

N.B. The above is a summary of Mark’s response to an audience question about why he didn’t draw on Bourdieu.

‘Comparisons of value in the Birmingham jewellery quarter’

Christina Hughes (University of Warwick)

N.B. I could be wrong, but I think there might be a ‘no’ missing from the above?

‘Cultural, aesthetic and economic value: the case of music’

David Hesmondhalgh (University of Leeds)

N.B. Wish I’d kept my eyes open for people ‘popping out’ – then I might have figured out who Jon W is. This was the second event we’ve livetweeted ‘together’. Practically an introduction.

N.B. Thanks, Jon. I missed the third one while I was, uhm, tweeting.

N.B. Note to self: if you want lots of tweets, play Candi Staton. Wait, what am I saying? Even if you don’t want lots of tweets, just play Candi Staton anyway.

Daniel Ashton (Bath Spa University)

‘Cultural work and critical pedagogies’

‘Work, justice, and mobility: policy for cultural labour’

Kate Oakley (University of Leeds)

Coda