Reimagining the Creative Industries: Youth Creative Work, Communities of Care

This book documents the rise in youth creativity, entrepreneurship, and collective strategies to address systemic barriers and discrimination in the creative industries and create an expanded, more diverse, inclusive, equitable, and caring field. Although the difficulties of entering and making a living in the creative industries—a field which can often perpetuate dominant patterns of social exclusion and economic inequality—are well documented, there is still an absence of guidance on how young creatives can navigate this environment. Foregrounding an intersectional approach, Reimagining the Creative Industries responds to this gap by documenting the work of contemporary youth collectives and organizations that are responding to these systemic barriers and related challenges by creating more caring and community-oriented alternatives. Mobilizing a care ethics framework, Miranda Campbell underscores forms of care that highlight relationality, recognize structural barriers, and propose new visions for the creative industries. This book posits a future where creativity, collaboration, and community are possible through increased avenues for co-creation, teaching and learning, and community engagement. Anyone interested in thinking critically about the creative industries, youth culture, community work, and creative employment will be drawn to Campbell's incisive work.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Creative Industries as Discourse: Changing the Frame 2. Care Ethics for the Creative Industries 3. The "Diversity" Response 4. From Margins to Center: Building Inclusion through Pedagogical Encounter 5. Youth Creative Work and Community Arts 6. Collaborative Production, Communities of Practice, and Communities of Care 7. Inclusive Spaces for Cultural Production Conclusion: Towards a Collaborative Future

About the Author :
Miranda Campbell is an Associate Professor in the School of Creative Industries at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. Her research focuses on creative employment, youth culture, and small-scale and emerging forms of creative practice. Her book, Out of the Basement: Youth Cultural Production in Practice and in Policy, was shortlisted for the Donner Prize for the best public policy book by a Canadian. Her involvement with creative communities includes coordination and Board of Director roles with Rock Camp for Girls Montreal, a summer camp dedicated to empowerment for girls through music education, and with WhipperSnapper Gallery, an artist-run center focusing on emerging artists in Toronto.

Review :
"This book represents an important and fresh contribution to critical scholarship on labor in the creative industries. It boldly aspires to move beyond critique to point towards concrete ways in which the cultural and creative sectors can become genuinely more inclusive. I am thrilled to see a feminist ethics of care approach being explored for the first time in a book-length study of the creative industries, this is certainly a milestone for the field." Eleonora Belfiore, Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Loughborough University, UK "This book is both very timely and essential reading for anyone involved in learning more about the institutionalized and systemic hurdles that youth confront in terms of employment, education, livelihood and the positive ways that that they are tackling to these barriers. The focus on ‘care ethics’ highlights the much needed changes to educational and governmental policy on youth worldwide, more closely aligning the goals between community and the broader economy." Geraldine Bloustien, Associate Professor, University of South Australia, Australia