The intense and accelerated political shifts that have marked the global political landscape in recent years have been met with a rise of voices from the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs). Celebrities, singers, actors and industry representatives have spoken out against—or for—the rise of far-right and conservative leaderships encouraging people to incite social and political change. For example, this has been visible from mainstream movie stars and pop singers bandying together (‘Holy sh*t (You’ve got to vote)’, ‘I will survive’); grime artists backing #Grime4Corbyn to remixers like Cassetteboy; celebrities standing against Trump (Save the Day, Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, Jesse Williams, etc.); César Awards, l’ARP, and Luc Besson, the French filmmaker, standing against Le Pen and supporting Macron; Podemos using music and the discourses of Game of Thrones during their campaign; Italy’s Five Star Movement being started by a popular comedian and blogger; Syriza being supported by a number of creative industries’ unions before their election in 2015; game developers producing games that deal with contentious issues that ignite social change, to name only a few examples.
The convergence of these diverse populist tactics in the CCIs has created new modalities, leading to a point whereby CCIs are more than ever shaping the public agenda. The multi-dimensional role the CCIs play in ‘going political’, as well as the ways that this is shaping current political movements, warrants further academic attention.
We invite working papers for a one-day workshop held on Friday 8th June 2018 at the Idea Store in Whitechapel, London, which aims to explore the links between recent modes of populism and the cultural and creative industries.
Topics could include but are not limited to:
• Commodifying resistance
• Political consumerism
• Corporate activism
• Celebrity activism
• Grenfell and grime
• Hollywood and Trump
• Games4change
• Representing social inequalities
• Representing and producing woke nation
• Cultural and creative industries and populism
• Histories of the cultural and creative industries and populism
Please send a short bio and a 100 word abstracts to photini.vrikki@brunel.ac.uk, sara.debenedictis@brunel.ac.uk and mariza.dima@brunel.ac.uk by 14th May. Notifications of acceptance: 25th May.
This workshop offers a small budget for ECR travel. If you would like to be considered for a travel bursary please indicate it in your bio.
This event is kindly funded by the Global Lives Research Centre.