Conjunctions of resilience and the Covid-19 crisis of the creative cultural industries

Abstract

This article compares the conjunctions of emergency resilience and ecological resilience that underpin the creative cultural industry (CCI) crisis. It first introduces three characteristics that socially construct the CCI crisis and its hegemonic practice of emergency resilience (time, disaster discourse, and the adaptation of aesthetic digitalization) and exposes multiple discourses – from the technologies of cultural statistics to corporate financial modelling – that construct an ideology of ‘resilience-as-deficit’. In contrast to this approach, the article develops three characteristics of ecological resilience: a focus on transition and the long term; resilience as a decentred strategy and networked resource; and aesthetic digitization as a radical praxis of adaptability. Examining arts impact and cultural policy reports, drawing on ecological, feminist and cultural resilience studies, and analysing a digital cultural event in Asia (the Singapore LGBT cultural festival, Pink Dot), the article argues that ecological resilience offers new capacities towards a cultural ecology that can nurture fair work, artistic innovation, economic growth and cultural vitality.

Exploring everyday resilience in the creative industries through devised theatre: A case of performing arts students and recent graduates in Ghana

“…The cultural and creative industries have been an important site for resilience scholarship (Comunian and England, 2020; Frauts, 2019; Jennings et al, 2016; Khlystova et al, 2022; Newsinger and Serafini, 2021; Pasquinelli and Sjöholm, 2015, Yue, 2022). Pratt (2017: 136) argues that ‘the cultural field is “born resilient’” because ‘radical market uncertainty and risk … characterizes the cultural field’.…”

“…Scholars have recently began to turn from the ‘emergency resilience’ framing that has dominated the creative industries and instead focus on other facets of resilience (Yue, 2022). Yue (2022: 2) offers a conceptualization of ‘ecological resilience’ in the creative industries, for example ‘long-term adaptability through creative iteration and transformation’. Here the focus is on what makes resilience sustainable, durable, and continuous.…”

“…Here the focus is on what makes resilience sustainable, durable, and continuous. This perspective sees ‘resilient capacities as creative (rather than reactive) in ways they open up new practices and spaces of change’ (Yue, 2022: 9). This perspective aligns with that of Gandini and Cossu (2021: 435) who suggest, in the case of coworking spaces, that ‘resilient spaces embrace innovation and change, looking to set out practices of organisation that adapt to the context they inhabit and exist in harmony with it’, where developing social and communitarian relations are central.…”

Arts and culture in transformation: A critical analysis of the national plans for the European Recovery and Resilience Facility

“…The outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic tested the resilience of state institutions (Colfer, 2020) and made the scientific community gradually shift toward approaches of “ecological resilience” (Arts Council England, 2018; Frigotto et al, 2022). As a property of an entire system, rather than a quick mitigation of emergencies, resilience becomes related to a longer term, transformative process in which capabilities such as a willingness to learn, perseverance, the ability to innovate, and flexibility at the system's level come into play (Yue, 2022).…”

“…For example, Pratt (2017) showed that the arts and cultural sectors were among the few sectors that were able to overcome the financial crisis of 2008/2009 in the United Kingdom, because of its multifaceted, complex forms of organization and finance (“nonnormative organizational structure”; Pratt, 2017, p. 136), but it “has been achieved by the socialisation of risk through temporary and unpaid labour, and through outsourcing innovation and training” (Pratt, 2017, p. 137). Further, resilience has been considered to be emergent (not emergency), iterative (not rebound), and transformative (not back to normal), entailing a promise to build “a wholistic cultural ecology that can nurture fair work, artistic innovation, economic growth and cultural vitality” (Yue, 2022, p. 362). The reawakened importance of resilience in the cultural domain during the pandemic conveys an image of resilience as “emergency preparedness” (Yue, 2022, p. 352).…”