Book related news:

Book talk about culture and the creative industries

On April 15 at 15:15-17:00, we invite you to an exciting book talk around three newly launched books that all touch on aspects of the creative industries. The talk is held in English.

Welcome for a book talk with Katja Lindqvist (Department of Service Studies, Lund University), Lizette Gradén and Thomas O'dell (both from Division of Ethnology, Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University), Lund (location to be announced shortly), and Erika Andersson Cederholm (Department of Service Studies, Lunds University) and moderator Chris Mathieu (Department of Sociology, Lund University). For more information about the book talk, see the following page.

NEW BOOK Creative Work. Conditions, Contexts and Practices

The new anthology - Creative work - Conditions, Contexts and Practices, where several of CROCUS network members has contributed, features case studies from the European context, contributors tap into the experiences and practices from creative workers, demonstrating their attempts to navigate a changing environment which affects spaces, identities, and professional roles. Providing an opportunity to expand our conception of what creative work is, the book draws on studies of a range of activities, practices and sectors that are usually included in the cultural and creative industries as well as ones that are more untraditional. See link for more information about the book.

The collection's broad spectra of case studies and examples will surely be able to provide new knowledge to any student, practitioner or scholar with an interest in the creative industries, says Erika Andersson Cederholm (Department of Service Studies, Lunds University) one of the editors of the book Creative Work Conditions, Contexts and Practices

Read the interview with Erika Andersson Cederholm (Department of Service Studies, Lunds University) one of the editors of the book Creative Work Conditions, Contexts and Practices and one of the chapter contributor Charlotte Østergaard (Malmö Theatre Academy, Lund University) below.

Erika Andersson Cederholm, you are one of the editors of Creative Work. Conditions, Contexts and Practices that was recently published by Routledge. Could you please tell us a little bit about it? 

Creative Work. Conditions, Contexts and Practices is a cross-disciplinary anthology that brings together insights from different disciplines on how creative workers work. It features case studies from the European context that tap into experiences and practices from creative workers and how they navigate a changing environment.

What makes this book different from previous publications within the field? 

First of all, I would like to point out the book's cross disciplinary point of departure. The volume entails 18 different texts from the perspectives of artistic research, the humanities, policy research and social sciences. This is rare. Second, our focus on the mundane activities that must be carried out in the field of art and, thirdly, the multifaceted view of creative work where we include a multitude of activities such as managing, supporting, enabling, mediating and enterprising creative work.    

Who should read this book? 

Hopefully anyone! The collection's broad spectra of case studies and examples will surely be able to provide new knowledge to any student, practitioner or scholar with an interest in the creative industries.

Charlotte Østergaard, you have written a chapter in Creative Work. Conditions, Contexts and Practices. Could you please tell us what your contribution is about and why it is important? 

My contribution is called “Performing Creative Work in Public” and builds on the artistic project Community Walk from 2020. Community Walk was a performative project where I walked through the central area of Copenhagen for twelve hours, wearing or dressed in a costume that connected me to twelve different participants – one participant at a time for one hour. In the chapter I unfold how the costume (that I call connecting costume) provoke different orientations, for example a sense of being exposed and vulnerable in the public environment. At the same time, the sense of being connected with another person through the stretchable connecting costume fostered a playful attitude between us towards other people and towards different elements in the environment. My chapter explores how the costume became a tool that invited us to explore ourselves and the environment in a way that differed from our daily life – a material-discursive tool that made us see, approach and experience the environment “in a different light.” A light that illuminated things that we might take for granted and therefore don’t pay attention to and/or that we had not noticed in our daily affairs.

I have written this contribution to expand the concept of costume or co-costuming beyond the “traditional” theatre context, beyond the perception of that a costume’s “job” is to serve a dramatic text and a specific character. Placing the experience of a connecting costume in a public setting fosters a relational awareness and/or attention between the co-wearers – a relational encounter between humans and non-humans. I suggest that co-costuming is a co-performative-experience and/or a playful co-exploration that invites us to become creative and inventive in the way that we engage with and encounter the world. Moreover, I suggest that artistic research contributes with embodied and tactile knowledge that is essential. In an era where we are caught up in digital platforms, where we sometimes forget to look up from our screens to sense our surrounding, I find that its critical to develop and explore creative and playful practices that activates our bodies. We must sense ourselves and each other, not “just” as an intellectual, but also as a physical material-discursive exercise that triggers our relational awareness of, our care for and our negotiation with that that surrounds us.

To read more about the book and the other contributors, see the following link for more information.

Erika Andersson Cederholm, Katja Lindqvist, Ida de Wit Sandström, Philip Warkander (Eds.) (2024) Creative work - Conditions, Contexts and Practices, London: Routledge. 

Publications:

Below you will find selection of publications that researchers within the CROCUS network have published that discusses subject areas that CRCOUS focuses on, as well as within CROCUS-based projects. Additional publications can be found on Lund University Research Portal.

Books and anthologies:

• Andersson Cederholm, E., de Wit Sandström, I., Lindqvist, K. & Warkander, P. (Eds.) (2024) Creative Work. Myths, Conditions and Contexts, London: Routledge.
• Lindqvist, K. (2023) Utvecklingsarbete kring kulturella och kreativa näringar Drivkrafter, processer och samspel, Nordic Academic Press.
• Severinsson, E. & Warkander, P. (Eds). (2021) Modevetenskap, nya perspektiv på mode, stil och estetik, Stockholm: Appell förlag.
• Ledendal, M. & Warkander, P. (2020) Danius and fashion, Gothenburg: Hoc Press.