I am also talking at the Cultural Studies Association of Australia Conference . My presentation is called ‘Creative Subject(s): reflections on the history of Media Studies’ and considers the wider role of Media Studies as a subject/discipline and its ‘effect’ on developing particular kinds of subjectivity. The talk first looks at early Media Studies as the product of an activist teacher-workforce racially exploring questions of contest and pedagogy – a mode of operations that has become reinvigorated by Web.2 technologies. This approach received formal (if contradictory) mandate by societies concerned with the effects of mass media and current attempts to define media literacy as a form of self-regulation in concert with the current educational-isation of media culture. Finally the talk will consider the paradox of how media studies works along with other creative industries subjects to produce forms of precarious labour -the defining feature of the creative workforce. Final directions reflect of the politics of this ‘incorporation’. The paper is available on the proceedings of the conference website.

In December I am speaking in the Office for Youth’s week long programme, Involve in Adelaide. My talk is called ‘How can we Transform Creative Cultures into a Creative Economy? ‘ and reflects on some of the changes in popular culture that support young people to become media creators and producers ‚Äì the myspace generation. It will then describe the impact of initiatives around the world, of which the Northern Sound System in Playford, S.A. is one example where Government and education policy have tried to offer young people more structured training in the cultural industries. The talk will look at these changing trends and opportunities and explore how Adelaide might build policies to develop a broader and more sustainable creative economy for young people in the future.

As part of my adjunct role at the University of South Australia, I am speaking at the Hawke Institute for Sustainable Societies at an event called, Place , Space and Text. The flyer for the event is attached here

Space,Place and Text

This month saw the final conference for The Last Mile ( an EQUAL project). I was involved in putting together the programme for the day and facilitating the narrative for the panel discussion.

The London Development Agency have commissioned me to write a provocation essay reflecting on how or whether we can establish a framework for the role of the Non Formal Learning Sector (NFLS) as part of the overall ’ecology’ of education and training in the creative and cultural sector. I will review the history, reach, and effect of the NFLS and analyse the mixture of qualifications/regulation, skills and training policies and market trends in order suggest a rationale, and objectives for the continuation of national or regional support. I am aiming to offer the LDA a clear coherent and co-ordinated role if the LDA is to continue to work in this area.

In September I led a delegation from Creative Partnerships to speak at Network 2007, a conference of US Arts educators in Oakland. We described research exploring the effect of Creative Partnerships on school change and also on the cultural sector. Comparing and contrasting an initiative like CP with other similarly motivated but differently imagined creative education projects was challenging and will result in the development of a few comparative projects.

Creative Partnerships have just published a piece I wrote for them comparing CP to other New Labour initiatives in Education and outlining some of the difficulties inherent in the challenge of defining the impact and effect of large scale education reform programmes.

I am working at the University of Oslo with the research grouping TransAction. The group is bringing together research about learning, knowledge and identity and aims to develop a better understanding of the relationship between formal and informal learning processes and learning arenas among children and young people with special reference to knowledge devlopment and identity construction. I am working with the group to develop a research bid to investigate these ideas in practice.

I spoke at a session of the ESRC Seminar Series – Play, Creativity and Digital Cultures. I explored how the notion of informal learning is mobilised in discussion about learning, play and educational policy especially in relation to the ways we talk about new technologies and learning outside the school – in the home and in peer culture. I surveyed some of the ways that the notion of Informal Learning has been defined and used in research about children and media culture as well as discussing problems in defining the term. I ended up by describing how Informal Learning is used in debate about changing sites of learning in educational policy, in the consumer marketplace and in learning theory and concluded by drawing parallels in the way Informal Learning is used to how the idea of the new literacies were developed with similar strategic and political aspirations.

I am working with Kate Oakley on a project aiming to characterise the nature of creative work. As a result of being involved in a number of research initiatives which imagine creativity as output of the education system and, to an extent a property of individuals, I am exploring the reverse idea: whether it might be better to think of creativity more as a product of the work process. This project is very much a pilot project and aims to get us to reflect on how we can actually research creativity at work and what this might mean. What would we look for and how can we capture it?

I am attaching a 1 page PDF which describes the project to date and there will be more to follow
Creative_workforce.pdf