Get Up, Stand Up? Theorizing Mobilization in Creative Work

Abstract

This article concerns individualism, collective awareness and organized resistance in the creative industries. It applies the lens of John Kelly’s mobilization theory (1998), usually used in a trade union context, to “TV WRAP,” a successful non-unionized campaign facilitated through an online community in the UK television (TV) industry in 2005, and finds that Kelly’s prerequisites to mobilization were all present. It explores previously unpublished questionnaire data from a 2011 survey of over 1,000 UK film and TV workers, which suggests that such prerequisites to mobilization are still present in the TV workforce. Finally it examines recent and ongoing mobilization by video game workers as a modern comparison, updating the relevance of Kelly’s theory to explore and consider potential models for a new politics of resistance in the digital age.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: Class Inequalities within the British Documentary Film Industry

“…Finally, one might add to this list of (top-down) recommendations the importance of building (bottom-up) organised labour and mobilising collective solidarities with which to resist exploitative work conditions in the creative industries (Percival and Lee 2022;Percival and Hesmondhalgh 2014;Saundry et al 2007). Doing so might also advance what Mark Banks rightly identifies as the cause of 'creative justice', that is to say, 'to raise consciousness of injustice and to help connect the creative economy -and the cultural work it contains -to some normative principles that might make work more progressive and equalitarian, as well as fairer and more just' (2017: 9).…”

COVID-19 pandemic as a catalyst of art workers mobilisation and unionisation: the case of Greek actors

“…And the turn was to organise ourselves towards something else. Indeed, it is perhaps precisely this 'enforced inactivity', the closure of workplaces and a shared sense of individual isolation -a characteristic that is seen as an obstacle to worker collective action (Percival & Lee, 2020) -that has provided fertile ground for collectivisation.…”

“…In the light of the peculiarities of artistic labour markets, unionisation is not a given (Gill & Pratt, 2008). Like the difficulties regarding the unionisation of contingent workers, there are ideological and structural barriers to the unionisation of artists (Ertan et al, 2021;McRobbie, 2011;Percival & Lee, 2020). Specific features of artists' working conditions and mindset -individualisation, looking out for the self (McRobbie, 2002) turn them into a 'nightmare' for union organising (Staunton, 2020), while getting them to see themselves as workers and what they do as work is a challenge for unions, as Simms & Dean (2015) point out in their work on actors in the UK.…”