Geoforum 31 (2000) 453±464
www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
Risk and trust in the cultural industries Mark Banks a,*, Andy Lovatt a, Justin OÕConnor a, Carlo Rao b a
Manchester Institute for Popular Culture, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester M15 6LL, UK b Post 16 Studies Unit, School of Education, Manchester Victoria University, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
Abstract Preliminary claims have been made that working practices within cultural industries such as fashion, music, design and the night time economy may dier from Fordist or modernist arrangements. Cultural ®rms are often imagined to be more innovative, information-rich, dynamic, ¯exible, non-hierarchical and dependent on local clusters and networks than their Fordist counterparts (Lash and Urry, 1994). As their impact and signi®cance increase, understanding how creative and cultural industries actually work is of high priority. This paper presents preliminary ®ndings from an on-going ESRC funded study of cultural Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) within Manchester, England. Drawing on one element of the project, this paper considers the signi®cance of risk and the importance of social trust for the cultural entrepreneur. Following a discussion of BeckÕs development of risk as an analytical concept, and its intersection with GiddensÕ notion of Ôactive trustÕ, the paper examines how risk and trust are de®ned, experienced and negotiated by entrepreneurs in ManchesterÕs cultural industries. It is suggested that senses of risk are constitutive and often pivotal to the whole economic and social basis of cultural entrepreneurship ± risk being central to choices made not only in business but in the lifeworld more generally. The paper then investigates the importance of trust for facilitating as well as countering or osetting risk. Empirical evidence is presented to show how risk and trust co-relate and interact as constitutive elements within a wider set of shifting relationships between work, leisure and lifestyle in the Ôcreative cityÕ. Ó 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Risk; Trust; Cultural industries; Entrepreneurship; The city
1. Introduction An integral feature of the transformation of cities is the economic and symbolic value brought to them by the cultural industries.1 In turn, the city, and especially the city centre and city fringe, acts as a complex of resources which cultural entrepreneurs readily utilise in their everyday working lives and in their pursuit of leisure and pleasure. This group demonstrate the consolidation of a new set of urban relationships, deriving opportunities and possibilities from ÔriskÕ, individualisation and plurality. Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) in the cultural industries are embedded in risk; they need to be innovative, ¯exible, creative, ideas driven, constantly changing and, in this capacity, they
*
Corresponding author. Cultural entrepreneurs we understand as those directly involved in the production of cultural goods and services: products whose principal value is symbolic, derived from their function as carriers of meaning ± in images, symbols, signs and sounds. 1
could provide useful guides and indicators for a wider set of transformations impacting upon post-industrial city economies. This paper will examine how the city contributes to cultural entrepreneurs' business practice and how they use it in their everyday operations. Drawing on the work of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens we will look at the emergence of new forms of work and learning associated with more re¯exive and risk oriented life and career trajectories. Through analysis of a single case ± cultural entrepreneurs in the city of Manchester ± we show how cultural entrepreneurs' immersion in risk, and the way they deal with this risk through notions of trust, both draws upon and consolidates recent post-industrial economic and cultural transformations in the city of Manchester. Our intention is that the processes and relationships that we identify may generate hypotheses for similarly interested observers analysing cultural production in other postindustrial cities. It has frequently been asserted that the cultural industries sector is a harbinger of a new set of subjective rationalities that may be illustrative of new ways of
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working and living, especially in cities (Crewe, 1996; OÕConnor, 1997; Pratt, 1997; Scott 1996, 1997). It is argued that this sector is innovative, entrepreneurial, ¯exible, creative, ideas driven, mixes the local and the global and, as such, is placed at the leading edge of the new post-industrial, informational economy (Lash and Urry, 1994; Scott, 1997). Furthermore, the ability of such a sector to thrive in a city could be an important indicator of an innovative capacity in other sectors of the city and for the wider regional or national economy (Landry and Bianchini, 1995). The ways in which cultural ®rms ± in multimedia, music, art, fashion, design, clubs and cafes, symbolic specialists of all kinds ± impact on the city economy have begun to attract sustained academic, political and popular attention (Bianchini and Parkinson, 1993; Brown, 1998; CLES, 1988; Crewe, 1996; Crewe and Beaverstock, 1998; Landry and Bianchini, 1995; OÕConnor, 1997; OÕConnor and Wynne, 1996a; Pratt, 1997; Scott, 1996, 1997; Smith, 1998; Zukin, 1991, 1995). Previous research has demonstrated that cultural industries are attracted to the city and in particular the ÔalternativeÕ (i.e. cheap) workspaces in and around the city centre; the city fringe.2 As such, cultural businesses thrive in the milieus, networks, clusters, embedded knowledge and informal infrastructures of the city, and, we argue, demonstrate new and perhaps important understandings and practices of both risk and trust. We argue that the cultural industries stand in unique relation to aspects of risk and social trust because they exhibit distinctive forms of motivation, organisation and working practice, that are guided by, and constitutive of, characteristic forms of risk management and trust development identi®ed as central to social transformation in the late modern period. To enable us to do this we ®rst set the scene by examining the theoretical notions of risk and individualisation and their links to the city and cultural industries. This is then followed by an examination of trust within the context of risk and how this, again, can be applied to cultural industries. The substantive part of the paper draws out these arguments in the context of empirical data gathered from interviews
with 50 entrepreneurs in ManchesterÕs cultural industries.3 We conclude by suggesting that these new understandings and relationships oer the opportunity to more fully develop theoretical accounts of both risk and trust in the contemporary city.
2. The problem of risk The concept of risk has come to ®ercely divide the social and the natural sciences (Adams, 1995). Until recently, social and cultural determinants of, and responses to, risk have often been subsumed beneath the hegemonic weight of an ÔobjectiveÕ and scienti®c/rational approach to risk assessment and management. Lash and Wynne, in their introduction to Beck's Risk Society (1992), assert that within this scienti®c sphere, any accommodation of conceptual pluralism or subjectivity is done under suerance. Furthermore, the debate which has focused on Ôrisk compensation and managementÕ of modern technological society, has been constrained by its cultural heritage (that of scienti®c rationalism) and by its unre¯ective idiom (Beck, 1992, p. 4). In the social sciences, analyses of the social meanings and management of risk have recently come to the fore, given the emphasis placed on uncertainty, instability and insecurity in explorations of the mooted transition from modernity to post-modernity. Such an approach attempts to account for the ways in which risks impact, or are perceived and handled, on a day to day basis, by dierent social groups. John Adams (1995) asserts that ordinary people develop systematic ways of dealing with the hazards and insecurities induced or introduced by social modernisation. Employment risks, ®nancial risks, family and relationship risks, health risks, environmental risks are all conceptualised and dealt with in personally and culturally distinctive ways, a fact hitherto overlooked by the Ôscienti®cÕ approach. Adams asserts that risk is culturally constructed and that: . . .where scienti®c fact falls short of certainty we are guided by assumption, inference and belief. In such circumstances the deterministic rationality of classic physics is replaced by a set of conditional, probabilistic rationalities. (Adams, 1995, p. 9).
2
A city fringe is a transitional zone where MSEs can take advantage of the value of centrality without traditionally high city centre rents. Such areas are by nature ephemeral but include the Northern Quarter in Manchester, Duke Street/Bold Street in Liverpool, the Lace Market in Nottingham and Shoreditch, Hoxton, and Clerkenwell in London. Its marginal status is both its weakness and its strength. These areas are crucial to the local economy because as well as providing a refuge for smaller, marginal businesses they act as incubators for new economic activity. Cheap rents, short contracts, lots of sub-letting are accompanied by dense networks that allow both old and new businesses to survive and grow.
The ways in which individuals and groups handle different forms of risk can tell us much about late modern societies. Within the social sciences risk is a concept 3 This research is part of the two year ESRC investigation of the cultural industries in Manchester ± Cultural Industries and the City: Innovation, Creativity and Competitiveness ± and is part of the ESRCÕs Cities: Competitiveness and Cohesion Programme.
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which straddles disciplines and discourses concerned to address the meandering ÔcrisisÕ of modernity and industrial-technological society, and is intimately tied to concerns with trust (Giddens, 1990, 1991), individualisation4 (Beck, 1992) and of re¯exive modernisation (Beck et al., 1994). And, for us, the ways and means by which cultural entrepreneurs negotiate a sense of ontological security and the choices they make in order to articulate a set of alternative futures for themselves and for the wider city, have to be bound up with this wider debate about risk and the renegotiation of social structure.
3. Risk society Translated into English in 1992, BeckÕs Risk Society ties social risk implicitly to the concept of re¯exive modernisation 5 and argues that the concerns of industrial society ± the redistribution of wealth and resources ± have been replaced by another form of modernity now dominated by a quest for safety. This is safety from the uncertainties of life in late modernity ± the wider social and environmental risks which are a product of technoscienti®c modernisation and for which modernisation seeks the answers and solutions.6 The paradox Beck notes is that many of the dangers and uncertainties we face today have been created by the very growth of human knowledge, rather than resolved by it. Knowl4 A resultant eect of the decreasing in¯uence of the binding structures of industrial society ± such as those rooted in class, gender, ethnicity, the family, generation and so on ± forcing individuals to become more autonomous, responsible and self-re¯exive in the determination of their life paths; what Beck calls a Ôbiography of choiceÕ. Individualization is not about alienation or detachment, but rather about the need to actively establish new securities and certainties for oneself as traditional structures and institutional forms dissolve. 5 Beck understands this as a dis-embedding and re-embedding of industrial social forms with Ôanother modernityÕ ± a maturation of the modernization process that is characterised by the self-monitoring or self-re¯exivity of individuals and new collectives, partially freed from constraints of traditional structure, critically re¯ecting upon and working to change social conditions. Modernity has Ôbecome its own themeÕ, as the foundations of science, economics, the family, politics and so on are increasingly questioned and new possibilities, and problems, envisaged. 6 BeckÕs argument, in very general terms, is that industrial progress and techno-scienti®c modernisation has led to the proliferation of risk rather than safety and security. For instance, food scares, global warming, nuclear accidents, acid rain are all examples of how ÔprogressÕ has exposed the globe to new, unforeseen and barely calculable risks. In the world of work the end of the era of mass production with its attendant social structures and securities places risk management and self-determination squarely within realm the of individuals who must now map out their own lifecourses, taking active responsibility for their career trajectory, ®nancial security and personal and social development.
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edge accumulation has had a destabilising rather than stabilising in¯uence, as we become more aware of the contingency, partiality and vulnerability of institutionalised knowledge and authority: Key institutions (such as political parties and labour unions, but also causal principles of accountability in science and law, national borders, the ethic of individual responsibility, the order of the nuclear family and so forth) all lose their foundations and their historical legitimacy (Beck, 1994, p. 176). The powers of governments or state institutions to manage or counter risk are in fact lessened as modernisation and globalisation proceed, and risk management becomes more fully embedded within the domain of individuals, or new forms of social collective, who must actively seek to lessen the impact of social ÔbadsÕ ± both realised and potential ± upon their lifestyle and status. In terms of employment and work, the diminution of large scale primary and manufacturing industries, the end of dreams of full (and full time) employment, the dismantling of union power, and a general sense of job insecurity and unease are the consequences of modernisation ± handling these ÔbadsÕ becomes imperative. As we will show, cultural producers are well equipped to manage these risks. In cultural industries the primary value of goods is symbolic and short lived; it is lodged in ephemeral signs, meanings and senses of style. Here, the market is well understood to be volatile and subjective and prone to rapid and apparently illogical transformation. Small, medium and large scale cultural producers, have always been more Ôinnovation intensiveÕ (Lash and Urry, 1994), even under Fordist conditions, and are thus better placed to navigate the complexities of post-industrial, risk based economies. According to Beck, then, risk management is a de®ning characteristic of our age, realised in all domains from family and interpersonal relationships and employment insecurities, to environmental hazards and scienti®c practices. Risk Society is dominated by a narrative of the dark side of modernisation and the Enlightenment and, in particular, the constitutive role of science and knowledge within it. Littered with messages of foreboding Risk Society rede®nes the challenge for the individual as Ôno longer concerned with attaining something ÔgoodÕ, but rather preventing the worstÕ (Adams, 1995, p. 182). A more optimistic approach is provided by Anthony Giddens (1991, 1994) who shows how a distinctive form of individual and Ôinstitutional re¯exivityÕ has developed under the conditions of late modernity. Developed from his previous work around Ôontological securityÕ ± Giddens questions how risk and trust are negotiated in an increasingly fragmented and
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uncertain world and how identity formation and biographical narratives are pursued amid the breakdown of modern institutions and support mechanisms. As with Beck, the key here is that it is the individual who assumes responsibility for his or her lifecourse. But, crucially for Giddens: . . .this society is not only a Ôrisk societyÕ. It is one where the mechanisms of trust shift ± in interesting and important ways. What can be called active trust becomes increasingly signi®cant to the degree to which post-traditional social relations emerge (Beck et al., 1994, p. 186). The de-traditionalisation which modernisation implies has led to the increasing ÔindividualisationÕ of society. Beck and Giddens both acknowledge that individualisation implies a degree of ÔliberationÕ with all its inherent ambiguities ± freedom from the constraints of class status and hierarchies but dependence upon an increasingly mobile and volatile market economy, and oneÕs ability to map out a lifecourse without any obvious or reliable templates. This is especially acute within the context of what is still largely a dynamic but diuse cultural industries sector. As our cultural entrepreneurs will show, in the absence of any formal business infrastructures, state recognition or history of public visibility, personal life becomes increasingly determined by what Giddens refers to as the Ônecessity of choiceÕ. Today, in many situations, we have no choice but to make choices; ®ltering through shifting forms of expert knowledge, becoming more self-reliant and self-re¯exive. In such circumstances, new forms of organisational solidarity tend to replace the old (Giddens, 1994, p. 187). The notion of society becomes open to the necessary choices of the individual, whether this be in the domain of leisure, work, or the ways in which all these choices are spatialised in the city. As Beck argues: The individual. . .becomes the reproduction unit for the social in the lifeworld. . .and individuals inside and outside the family become the agents of their livelihood mediated by the market, as well as of their biographical planning and organisation. . . Furthermore: . . .[b]iographies too are becoming more re¯exive. People with the same income level. . .can or must choose between dierent lifestyles, subcultures, social ties and identities. (Beck, 1992, p. 131). Under these conditions Beck makes it clear that biographies themselves become more self-re¯exive and in
turn ÔsocietyÕ is opened up to individual manipulation and interpretation; it becomes more variable and open to the Ôarticulation of alternativesÕ [lifestyles, careers, work practices, spaces]. We argue that, for ManchesterÕs cultural entrepreneurs, pursuit of these possibilities has enhanced diversity and competitiveness in the city, enabling some degree of side-step from the supposed homogenising and coercive colonisation of global capital upon urban space (Harvey, 1989). These entrepreneurs show how the experience of modernisation is ®ltered or refracted through the individual and how the Ônecessity of choiceÕ, experienced by the individual, can shape both the perceptions of uncertainty and risk but also an alternative lifeworld of possibility. These choices entail risks of varying proportion which eect the individual concerned and the social world in which they act. Clearly the way people deal with something is inherently tied to the way that they perceive it.7 The response by the individual is both re¯ective and cultural in that it depends upon internalised meaning based upon the lived experience of the individual. Adams states that ÔThe cultural ®lters through which we perceive risk are formed by our experience of dealing with itÕ (Adams, 1995, p. 180). Risk therefore involves a process of dealing with a perceived hazard or problem. The action taken depends upon the perception which in turn is shaped by our experience. That experience is continually shaped by the processes [risks] deployed or taken to deal with a perceived problem: Thus the perception of the probability and magnitude of some future adverse event [business failure, market volatility] is shaped by our previous experience and undergoes continuous modi®cation as we act upon the problem. (Adams, 1995, p. 180). As we will see later, the ways in which individuals from ManchesterÕs cultural industries respond to problems is indeed shaped by grounded and situated, re¯exive, hands-on learning experience; the individual cognitive re¯ection alluded to by Giddens.
7
In Re¯exive Modernization, Beck, Giddens and Lash oer alternative understandings of re¯ection and re¯exivity in the context of social change. Beck highlights a distinction between a cognitive, knowing re¯ection and an unknowing, (re¯ex like) re¯exivity, the former based upon ÔknowledgeÕ the latter upon Ôself-applicationÕ and adjustment ± it is this sense of self-application that lies at the heart of the transition to a ÔriskÕ society. Giddens places more emphasis on cognitive re¯ection, the conscious and active process of making oneÕs own biography, as the driving force of current social change. Lash is concerned with an aesthetic-subjective re¯exivity, more ¯uid and less ego-driven and instrumental than cognitive re¯ection.
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4. The problem of trust At the tail end of Re¯exive Modernisation, Anthony Giddens points out that, as Beck has shown, the present Ôglobal societyÕ is uni®ed in a negative way by the industrialised worldÕs generation of generic or Ôcommon risksÕ, social, political and environmental in character. Yet he also asserts that this commonality of risk can be countered by new and dynamic Ômechanisms of trustÕ, and it is the intersections of risk and trust that have signi®cant impact upon the conditions and experience of late modernity; including, as we will show, that which is experienced by cultural entrepreneurs. Giddens asserts that Ôactive trustÕ is increasingly important with the emergence of new social relations in the Ôpost-traditionalÕ society. With the emphasis on active, he asserts that new forms of social solidarity have to be dynamically and energetically sustained amid increasing pressures from processes of individualisation and new forms of community and association. Giddens is clear also that these new relations are, or may be, less dependent upon physical locality or place than previous relations and that as a consequence of social ÔdisembeddingÕ, new Ôimagined communitiesÕ (Anderson, 1991) can be developed and sustained across inde®nite stretches of space-time (Albrow, 1997). What is clear for Giddens is that new relations of active trust are predicated on an Ôopening outÕ of the self to the other, which now includes a process of mutual narrative and emotional disclosure. Mutual narrative here is not a priori predicated on class or social status but rather by the combination of choices in convergence. As Martin has previously pointed out, alternative lifecourses are not necessarily mapped through the choices of the consumer but may involve: . . .all the underpinning taste and styles, modes of feeling, styles of understanding ± including self understanding ± and presentation of identity which are involved in Ôlifestyle constructionÕ (Martin, 1991, p. 127). In Manchester these mutual narratives have, to a greater or lesser extent, converged in and around a regenerated city centre as it has been subject to some of the Ôalternative articulationsÕ of popular culture. OÕConnor and Wynne have argued that the reclamation of parts of the city centre by individuals and networks of Ôpop cultural entrepreneursÕ is dependent upon a wider and concurrent commodi®cation of culture. They suggest that: . . .it is this commodi®cation together with a pervasive liminality which is primarily responsible for the destabilisation of cultural hierarchies and taste distinctions such that, not only is the game of distinction threatened, but that also such a collapse invites
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the emergence of an articulation of alternatives. As a result, social identities . . .exist as a combination of choices, articulated around a series of possible alternatives made available by this collapse. (OÕConnor and Wynne, 1996b, p. 81). This milieu of Ôpossible alternativesÕ ± the subjective decisions of consciousness and identity formation of individuals and groups ± is crucial to BeckÕs notion of individualisation and Risk Society and to GiddensÕ understanding of social relations in the post-traditional society. It is also crucial to those of us interested in gaining a fuller understanding of the transformative capacity of cultural industries in contemporary urban contexts; and of the subjective and Ôculturally ®lteredÕ choices relating to risk and trust of cultural producers and intermediaries, now considered by many to be a key sector in the post-industrial urban economy. We have intimated some possible intersections between risk, trust and the cultural sector. However, as their impact and signi®cance increase, understanding how the cultural industries actually work is of high priority. We need to address how entrepreneurs themselves negotiate these choices; how their biographies evolve and converge; how the social and spatial contours of lifecourse and identity are mapped and understood especially in relation to cities in transformation. While we do not wish to over-estimate the Ôemancipatory potentialÕ (Crewe and Beaverstock, 1998) of a thriving small cultural sector, fetishise local production regimes (Amin and Thrift, 1992), underestimate city impacts of global political economy (Castells, 1996; Harvey, 1989) or gloss over the fact that cultural industries may be host to inequality or discrimination (Milestone and Richards, 1999), we would maintain that an evaluation of current and key, lead producers in local cultural sectors can oer pertinent insights that have both local and potentially wider scale salience. Such inquires are central, not only to debates surrounding re¯exive modernisation, but also to the future of the post-industrial city per se. 5. Handling risk, building trust: Manchester's cultural entrepreneurs 5.1. Handling risk As we have argued, conditions of re¯exive modernisation, highlighted by Beck and Giddens, have brought to the fore possibilities for more individualised and selfre¯exive lifestyles, ones driven by the Ônecessity of choiceÕ. Cultural industries operate within subjective and volatile markets, where product value judgements are primarily aesthetic, where business goals are not singularly concerned with the pursuit of pro®ts or
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shareholder return but with the need to remain cutting edge and creatively ÔrelevantÕ (Crewe and Beaverstock, 1998; OÕConnor, 1997). They invest in the ability to spot and exploit the limited shelf life of trends, styles and symbols, to access and create new knowledge, to make gambles on possible future markets. It is this volatility, changeability and instability which places risk so centrally within the biographies and practices of the cultural entrepreneur and makes their work so adaptable to, and indicative of, the Ôrisk societyÕ. At this point we should highlight the relatively low ®nancial risk involved in the start-up of many cultural businesses. As Bell (1976) has previously emphasised, the real investment comes from the subjective (personal) knowledge which they are prepared to commit to the project. Their negotiation of risk therefore operates at a distinct and distinctive level. Initially we can see how risk was perceived in terms of starting out and setting up in business. Here, one respondent shows how occupational stability can just as readily be pursued by the individual as in a collective: Just prior to starting up, I did work for a company about two and a half, three days a week and [they] made me redundant at the Christmas, I had other work as well [but] I thought itÕs as unpredictable working for other people as working for yourself (. . .) thatÕs when I started ®nding premises and setting up in business (Interviewee 25, Fashion Designer). For many of our respondents in the fashion sector, setting up their own business was a way to maintain a level of personal and creative control. It was also a process of carving a distinctive niche in a market characterised by Ôvolatility and polyvalenceÕ (Crewe and Beaverstock, 1998, p. 295), launching an idea and working it towards conclusion. Respondents did in fact often have clear ideas that particular products or even businesses should be of limited shelf life, the trick being to develop ideas and take them as far as they would go, thus minimising risk in terms of time and resources committed and invested. In industries that are innovation-led, laws of diminishing return ± ®nancial and aesthetic ± may cut in much sooner. For our interviewees, production was about single ideas, short runs, small batches and, crucially, knowing when to stop: [I]tÕs typical of a creative business in this type of city, where you can do something, can get loads of publicity, you can have a good run on an idea, then it goes thatÕs it. I can admire and appreciate people who do that, coming up with something, working it to death and saying right thatÕs it. (Interviewee 43, Fashion Designer).
Awareness of both self, product and market become central resources for the cultural entrepreneur. . . . you are aware just through lifestyle you can separate yourself. . ..so itÕs a constant process of renewal and, essentially, itÕs a cliche, youÕre only as good as your last promotion; that is so true. ItÕs very ®ckle, itÕs very liquid, it moves on. If you rest on your laurels and donÕt progress and slightly stay ahead. . ..you have to be obsessed about whatÕs going on everywhere and be original and be leading. (Interviewee 40, Night-club promoter/DJ). While built in product obsolescence is to be found in other ÔformalÕ industries, it is usually accounted for and accommodated within business plans, cost-bene®t analysis or market research (Harvey, 1989; OÕConnor, 1997). In the small cultural industries insurance is more likely to be provided by investment in oneÕs intuitive sense of remaining cutting edge, culturally relevant and, as Beck notes, creatively self-re¯exive. For some, the risk of becoming stale, or creatively unproductive was suciently great to encourage more drastic action, such as closing down the business altogether: We set it up when everybody was buying clubwear around 1993, we just did that for twelve months had a very nice time doing it, the bottom was starting to fall out of the market and I think we knew that before we started so it was not a long term venture, we only sold to the UK. Anything in the clothing business ± because itÕs allegedly ÔfashionÕ± you don't look at it in a long term way. WeÕre doing very nicely with the [new] business at the moment but itÕs incredibly ®ckle. . ..thereÕs no logic to it. YouÕre no longer ¯avour of the month, so you donÕt go into anything too long term (Interviewee 35, Fashion Designer). We see this compulsion for control and self-management, compressed into short-term projects, as a valid response to a society where employment risk is perceived to be Ôlargely unforeseeable and barely calculableÕ (Allen and Henry, 1997, p. 183). While a number of critics see such opportunistic responses as both short-term and insubstantial, and unable to compensate for longer term structural decline in urban industrial economies (Harvey, 1989; Sorkin, 1992), we should not disparage or disregard the determination with which these entrepreneurs are taking steps to shape their own destiny. Further, as a supposedly short-term, insubstantial response to the inexorable eects of economic Ôtime-space compressionÕ (Harvey, 1989), cultural entrepreneurship has proved remarkably pro®cient at establishing city competitive advantage, inspiring creativity and allowing its practitioners to achieve high levels of personal and
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social ful®lment (Crewe and Beaverstock, 1998; OÕConnor and Wynne, 1996a). As Lash and Urry note, in a risk society Ôpeople are more obliged to take control over their more ¯exible work livesÕ (1994, pp. 36±37), in the cultural industries this obligation becomes an imperative, almost to the sense of being only the only way forward (Beck, 1992). But if ®rms do survive and begin to expand, new elements of economic and what we might call infrastructural risk are introduced. This may lead to an increased ®nancial investment, employment of extra sta, developing skill and resource bases, marketing, networking and so on. Some ®rms were keen to avoid the risk and were quite clear in their intent to remain small or medium sized; sometimes because of anticipated problems in cost or administration and management procedures, but more often because they felt that the integrity of the product, creative element or the design could be put into jeopardy: I donÕt think youÕre going to see [us] becoming a weekly mainstream [club night], there wonÕt be a market for it when Richard Branson is opening clubs in London and itÕs free in, cheap beer prices, itÕs essentially money, money, money and if we are seen to do that in our environment it would completely undermine [it], it would just lose its credibility (Interviewee 41, Night-club promoter/DJ). While such decisions could be seen as the product of economic adjustments to market forces as much as cultural adjustments to risk, cultural, creative and lifestyle considerations did tend to have more impact upon decisions about investment, planning and infrastructure. In general, what made work worthwhile was the culture and lifestyle that working in a cultural ®rm allows and indeed demands: Deb who I work with, sheÕs very Zen, she says I refuse to let something like money get to me. . .talking with her eases me through [problems]. Sometimes itÕs really awful, because all your friends are in fabulous jobs. . ..really secure. . ..and you just think. Then you remind yourself that you actually like what youÕre doing. . .I have a fabulous lifestyle. . ..IÕd say my life was unbeatable (Interviewee 43, Fashion Designer). I was caught on camera at the Northern Quarter Festival, being mouthy, and the camera swung round and they said ÔWhat do you think about the festivalÕ? And I was like, Ôsame old people same old barbecueÕ ± which seemed a little trite but I meant it in a fun way. But thatÕs the whole thing it is very small and itÕs just packed full of talented people, all on the same level, and itÕs fab really. We all
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moan about it ± how small our lives are ± but there are so many things doing the same thing but theyÕre all dierent and everyone does network. It really cross-pollinates massively, music, fashion, art. . ..(Interviewee 34, Night-club Promoter/Stylist). Part of the motivation to stay small and localised was to take advantage of the cultures of creativity and spaces of leisure and pleasure cultural industries inhabit. In fact, living the lifestyle furnished entrepreneurs with social resources that could directly be used to oset or manage economic and cultural risk. A blurring of work and leisure meant that living a full social life becomes a strategy for knowing oneÕs market and picking up work opportunities: Manchester, although itÕs a big city, itÕs got like a village atmosphere and thereÕs certain places where people naturally congregate, socialise, particularly since. . .I think the cafe bar cultureÕs been very important in that because it produces an environment which is a forum for debate and places like Atlas [a cafe bar] where people who work in the cultural and media industries tend to bump into each other and as a course of habit thingsÔll get discussed and stu like that. I can just go out on a night out with friends, IÕll end up bumping into someone. . ..and you end up talking to someone, itÕs quite often some work can be done, even though you werenÕt expecting it to be, you just bump into someone and go: ÔOh do you know weÕre doing thisÕ? ÔDo you fancy getting involvedÕ? Or, ÔweÕve had this ideaÕ (Interviewee 16, Journalist). Minimising risk through the use of word-of-mouth, social networks, clusters, knowledge specialists and relied upon customers and clients was one way of ensuring that (®rst) cultural and (then) economic value could be added on particular products or projects. For promoters, DJÕs and musicians, taking advantage of friendship and collaborative networks enabled events to proceed with some guarantee that success-both creative and ®nancial ± would be achieved, as two promoters noted: Our convictions [were] that the discerning nature in a club would be. . ..intimacy, knowing each other, having a safe environment was important. . .gangsterism, scallies we wanted to keep out. . .. They were able to do this by developing networks, regulars and friends into client bases: On a tactical level we know how to use [networks]. What you ®nd is the people who go to [our nights] itÕs a scene, a lot of them know each other, yeah itÕs a little bit elitist if you like. . ..itÕs a bit more of a
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way of life, much more that people know each other, they socialise with each other as well (Interviewee 40, Night-club Promoter/DJ). This close knit collaboration extends into other subsectors: ThatÕs it, everybody feeds. . .it can get really hard but the bottom line is that everyone is extremely supportive of each other. In every sector. Everybody crosses with each other, theyÕre all linked really on the creative side of things, the whole lot. If you want a photographer, somebody to write, somebody to light, gallery space. . .(Interviewee 34, Night-club Promoter/Stylist).
needs, but, also, to have nothing directly (apart from money) to oer. Any alliances between our respondents and ÔexpertsÕ were often fragile and uncertain, precluding the development of strong ± mutually determined and negotiated ± plans and working relationships. In the cultural industries this lack of trust, and personal risk, is more marked than in other industries because of the lack of any formalised career trajectory commensurate with the linear, learning stage models of business development embedded within banks, enterprise agencies, training programme and other support institutions (Hyland and Matlay, 1997; Storey, 1994). Amongst our interviewees there was a palpable desire to resource and develop new and informal alliances, associations and individuals to oset or help manage risk. Correspondent with this desire was an expressed need to develop informal and social networks of trust.
It was the sense of tempering or spreading risk ± in the absence of more formal or mainstream support structures in terms of advice, training, mentors, talking shops and commerce chambers ± that helped sustain a cultural economy in the city. By resourcing and developing networks ± simultaneously social and professional ± cultural entrepreneurs safeguard existing initiatives, clients and projects while opening up the possibility for the forging of new cultural and economic opportunities ± social ties in many ways drive the productive potential of the culture. As Giddens argues, trust in formal knowledge based Ôexpert systemsÕ and in active social networks become crucial in the absence or retreat of consolidated state, welfare, party or class support structures. It is noted here, that, for cultural entrepreneurs, formal Ôexpert systemsÕ ± the ocial business support structure, banks, loan agencies, grant makers even social welfare services ± are not only ill equipped to deal with their needs, but may actually be hostile to them:
As previously highlighted, the primary value of cultural product lies in its symbolic resonance. Thus, for the cultural entrepreneur, cultural literacy, creativity and possession of Ôsymbolic knowledgeÕ are principal assets. When this knowledge is recontextualised into a style or product it can be ± and frequently ± is copied. Intellectual property is a primary concern for small scale cultural businesses; their ideas being their most valuable, and sometimes only, economic resource. Within this context notions of trust become crucial, not just to their business, but to their whole lifeworld. Our sample of cultural producers often spoke of their understanding of trust, usually within the context of some recollection of being compromised, mis-led or plain cheated:
We were refused funding from the PrinceÕs Youth Business Trust, not initially when we ®rst applied, but later pretty much when weÕd done the business plan and everything. We were very close to the end of the business plan so a hell of a lot of work had [been] spent on that, PYBT refused to fund us because we had ÔJesusÕ in the title of the business (Interviewee 35, Fashion Designer).
I lost twelve thousand pounds in the ®rst three years to bad debt, basically because we were fairly naive and we didnÕt understand the paperwork that had to be implemented to ensure that if there was a dispute it wasnÕt just our word against theirs. We were naive, wet behind the ears and they decided to take advantage of this (Interviewee 44, Graphic Designer).
I had a lot of problems with the banks in Manchester, their attitude was that if youÕre opening a hairdressers or a shop they could understand that concept, but you know if you come along wanting to change the world with a computer support company, theyÕre just not ready for you (Interviewee 37, IT/Web Entrepreneur).
The only problem I had was mistrusting accountants who were negligent and I do regret not suing them (Interviewee 21, Fashion Designer).
For many of our respondents such ÔexpertsÕ were not only seen to be ignorant of their personal and sub-sector
5.2. Building trust
WeÕve only learned by doing business with people perhaps [we were] being a bit too trusting at ®rst and actually letting people take an order and accepting a cheque and the cheques bounced and weÕve chased them and theyÕve disappeared (Interviewee 30, Fashion Designer).
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This lack of experience, or ÔnaiveteÕ as one interviewee called it, had cost a number of our respondents dearly: cheated by business partners, owed money by clients, misled by accountants or designs copied wholesale, a litany of misfortune that has left some questioning the very possibility of developing relationships of trust in business: I basically donÕt trust anybody anymore! [laughs]. To be completely honest with you I really donÕt, IÕve had it knocked out of me (Interviewee 44, Graphic Designer). But in a sector characterised by the need for dense social relationships, information transactions and ÔnetworkingÕ, relations of trust are paramount to the solvency and creativity of the ®rm. The ways in which trust could be negotiated were thus crucial. As mentioned, a characteristic of the cultural sector is its lack of connectivity with enterprise and training agencies, organisations that are equipped to deal with orthodox delivery, but ill suited to the more subjective and contextual resources demanded of the cultural industries (OÕConnor, 1997). Because accessing trust in the formal sector is problematic, often trust must develop in informal, social ways. In terms of advice and starting out, many ®rms talked of having to seek out ÔmentorsÕ; trustworthy, knowledgeable individuals, experienced in the cultural sector who could oer advice, contacts, market information and so on: key ®gures contacted through friends, word of mouth or networking. Through this method, various ®rms had brought in management consultants, PR and marketing advice, bookkeepers, accountants, agents and designers ± many of them drawn from local social networks and businesses in the local cultural sector. In terms of client relationships, whereas noncultural ®rms often counter risk by extending or consolidating legal and administrative procedures, our respondents ± lacking the resources or volition to ÔbureaucratiseÕ their operations ± were more likely to concentrate upon developing the qualities of interpersonal relationship with their clients, making sure they found people they felt comfortable with: When you deal with [us] you deal with the designers, thereÕs nobody in-between. The communication between the clients and the designers is a clear line, thereÕs nothing in there that can get in the way and that does make for a smoother job, smoother relationship and happier people all round (Interviewee 33, Graphic Designer). We do try and say that we wonÕt work for people that we hate, I mean we quite often walk out on people just because theyÕre loathsome people to deal with and we like to think that mostly here is
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good fun, occasional bad bits, but . . ..we did it for it to be fun, not for it to be a drudge (Interviewee 17, Graphic Designer). Providing the client with a personalised service, and cultivating relationships, also helps to re®ne knowledge about competitors and competitive practice: We get an awful lot of enquiries from competitors which weÕre getting used to spot[ting] and theyÕll come to you and say Ôoh weÕve got a client who wants thisÕ, and they just want your ideas.....you live and learn! Unless we know the company name now....we donÕt tend to work with other agencies other than a handful of [advertising] agencies that we know...because thereÕs an awful lot of them trying to get into this market place and theyÕll use you any which way we can, weÕve had a couple of ideas stolen. . .(Interviewee 26, Graphic Designer). Trusting mentors and clients is crucial in a sector where protecting new ideas and resourcing knowledge are instrumental to success. Similarly, the need to be able to trust employees was also often remarked upon by our respondents. I trust [my sta] 110% and I donÕt think you can work with people unless you trust them 110%. I mean like in an emotional as well as a practical way (Interviewee 37, IT/Web entrepreneur). Yeah, we did have other machinists as well. One ripped us o and starting setting her own label up, doing our designs. . .she worked for us ± self employed again ± for a good few years and then we found out that sheÕd opened up her own place. . .she was doing loads of work for herself and ripping us o and I donÕt know whether she was ripping o other designers that she worked for. . .(Interviewees 29/30 - Fashion Designers). It is clear that the cultural industries may be more reliant upon networks of Ôactive trustÕ than other sectors. Not only do they deal in products whose value is both symbolic and ephemeral, and thus dicult to safeguard through formal procedures of product protection, their lack of ®nancial resources, support structures and legaladministrative protocols, make them further vulnerable to exploitation: they must rely upon personal relations of trust. We observe that relations of Ôactive trustÕ, the cultivation of close and personally tailored support networks, clients and mentors is a tactical response to the ÔdetraditionalisedÕ or ÔriskÕ society, where employment insecurity is the norm rather than the exception and the Ônecessity of choiceÕ enables or enforces
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entrepreneurs to more fully determine the stakes of their own work, leisure and life projects. 5.3. Spaces of risk and trust management While the negotiation of trust and the management of risk take place within dense networks of social and interpersonal relations, we now wish to elaborate a little further on how such relations are also rooted and reproduced in spatial contexts, and how, in the Manchester milieu, particular creative spaces have emerged that serve to contextualise and actively help shape the contours of risk, trust and creative practice. While risk can be managed, and trust negotiated, through social integration, it can be further oset through spatial interaction. As mentioned earlier, small cultural ®rms often ®rst occupy ÔalternativeÕ, cheap workspace, a ready supply of which is central to the development of a cultural industries sector. In Manchester, privately converted industrial/warehouse retail premises such as AeckÕs Palace, The Corn Exchange and the Coliseum, as well as streets and shops of ManchesterÕs Northern Quarter, have in recent years been developed or reclaimed for mixed use culture-led enterprise and regeneration. Small scale workspaces have been developed at Ducie House, 23 New Mount Street and Knott Mill, speci®cally serving small (speci®cally cultural) MSEs. The constellation of a rich culture of small entrepreneurs and traders, sharing knowledge and expertise, paying low rents within ¯exible leasing arrangements has been crucial to dissolving or diminishing the problems associated with start up and development in the cultural sector.8 AeckÕs Palace is located at the heart of ManchesterÕs ÔNorthern QuarterÕ, an area that has shown the ability to attract and nurture cultural ®rms (OÕConnor and Wynne, 1996a). Here, the feeling of belonging to a shifting, but essentially cohesive, cultural or creative network was seen to be a powerful attractor for our cultural entrepreneurs: And I thought where is a good place try something out? Because it was quite risky, didnÕt have any money, didnÕt really know how to run a business, you know? Where can I try this out thatÕs not going to be too risky? So I was from Manchester anyway and I decided that I wanted to be in AeckÕs Palace because I perceived that to be a kind of hip happen8
This is not to under-estimate the on-going tensions between these ÔvernacularÕ local ®rms, corporate capital, partnership and local government agencies over the meanings and uses of ManchesterÕs business spaces. The complex relationships between capital, culture and urban change in Manchester are explored more extensively in OÕConnor and Wynne (1996): see also Taylor et al. (1996), Tickell and Peck (1997) and Young and Lever (1997).
ing place, full of young people. . .that was my judged market, young people . . ..in a kind of slightly wacky environment. And also they operated a sort of. . ..you didnÕt have to have a lease, you had a weekly licence to trade, so you could move in, youÕd give two weeks notice if you wanted to move out, or equally they could give you two weeks notice to move out. I realised that there [was] a kind of commonality of interest in this area . . ...it was basically a kind of weird feeling that people like it here but it was very run down, impoverished, dicult economy (Interviewee 15, Cafe owner/ Entrepreneur). Yes. . .we have become involved in the Northern Quarter Association which has been great and thatÕs good because itÕs not just talking to other designers. . ..the gratifying bit is encountering people from other businesses, knowing more people in the Craft Centre or architects. . .(Interviewee 33, Graphic Designer). This sense of place could be found not just in the Northern Quarter, but across the city more generally: ManchesterÕs youth cultureÕs very important at this stage in its history and I think that cafe bars provide a sort of forum to allow that to breed because itÕs the only place where a lot of sort art graduates now ®nd that their ®rst art exhibition is, not in an art gallery you know, itÕs in a cafe bar. (Interviewee 16, Journalist). Some of my closest friends live on my doorstep, some of closest friends live in my building. ItÕs a bit ÔTales of the CityÕ round here! It de®nitely is. . . here is de®nitely community, . . .it does have its own things, a launderette, pubs, a cross section of people, that to me is a community (Interviewee 34, Night-club Promoter/Stylist). In Manchester, we have found that the possibilities for cultural ®rms to manage or circumvent risk is enhanced through such dense social and spatial matrices of internal and external, social and professional ties situated within a small area of the city centre and city fringe that encourages networking and cross-sector fertilisation through a series of consumption spaces (bars, cafes, restaurants), events (festivals, trade initiatives) and alliances (for example the Northern Quarter Association). Private sector and public sector initiatives to create workspaces have also been instrumental in cementing the productive, creative industry culture. For one journalist interviewee, such places were seen as Ôidea factoriesÕ, places where work and play could ferment to produce new initiatives and collaborations. The fabric of
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the city appears to exert some ÔcausativeÕ (Shields, 1991) or enabling forces, facilitating particular forms of creative interaction. 6. Conclusions The cultural industries have long been oered as a model of new forms of industrial organisation and practice but rarely have those practices been scrutinised in qualitative detail. The city is no longer in¯uenced solely by the vertically integrated institution or corporation but is open to the in¯uences of cultural entrepreneurs working in micro or small enterprises in clusters across the city. We can see the emergence of new creative communities which, are hidden, rhizomic and quintessentially urban. The city, and in particular cheap rent districts of the city fringe, are seen as an indispensable resource and base from which to develop ideas, projects and markets. This sector, and consequently the areas of the city populated by this sector, provides an opportunity for creative and often collective initiative. A complex and contingent appropriation of personal and professional risk (in common with signi®cant like minded others) has led to the establishment of new relationships of trust and local collaboration. We suggest that the presence of such relationships is indicative of the potential for urban economies to avoid serial subjection to the Ôuniversal force of capital circulationÕ (Harvey, 1989, p. 351), providing culturally speci®c and economically signi®cant production bases that may help secure and nurture wider creative networks and alliances, enhancing a city-wide potential for future cultural and economic development (Crewe, 1996; Crewe and Beaverstock, 1998; Pratt, 1997; OÕConnor, 1997). We have shown BeckÕs notion of risk and GiddensÕ ideas on active trust to be of particular signi®cance to the cultural industries. Both risk and trust are embedded within the unique working practices and forms of (dis)organisation characteristic to the fashion, music, design and promotions industries. We have shown how risk is managed and trust negotiated in informal contexts, social networks and social spaces ± outside of the formal sector. It has been illustrated that new ties of trust, whether they be strong or weak, help break down industry boundaries and themselves becomes part of the creative process leading to unforeseen collaborations and/or new cultural product. Active and passive networking is now seen as an integral part of business and socialising in the city and may oer an insight into new ways of doing business and re-organising social and cultural life. These new forms of ÔcommunityÕ based on professional or personal ÔassociationÕ can, when spatialised in the city, invest new meanings into urban space. Whether in local Ôcreative quartersÕ or in speci®c buildings, that meaning can equally become recognised by
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others in possession of the appropriate social or cultural capital, enabling its transformation and the possibility for wider social impact. Amongst our Manchester entrepreneurs the individual choices taken under the construction and management of biography and life projects occur within the context of an accelerated and increasing intersection of cultural and economic value in a post-industrial, regenerating city (Zukin, 1995). Within this matrix, notions of risk, in terms of management and perception, are central. Through the accommodation of risk and the incorporation of networks of trust into their everyday working practices, MSEs in the cultural industries would appear to be well placed to navigate the more Ôpath based lifecoursesÕ oered up under conditions of re¯exive modernisation. If this creative potential can be mobilised within the context of urban economic development and more explicitly tied to notions of the city learning, knowledge development and intersections of cultural and economic policy, then, in the cities in which they are located, the cultural industries may oer some potential to create employment and help consolidate new productive bases so essential for restructuring urban economies. References Adams, J., 1995. Risk. UCL Press, London. Albrow, M., 1997. Travelling beyond local cultures: socioscapes in a global city. In: Eade, J. (Ed.), Living the Global City: Globalization as Local Process. Routledge, London, pp. 37±55. Allen, J., Henry, N., 1997. Ulrich BeckÕs Risk Society at work: labour and employment in the contract service industries. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 22 (2), 180±196. Amin, A., Thrift, N., 1992. Neo-Marshallian nodes in global networks. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 16 (4), 571±587. Anderson, B., 1991. Imagined Communities: Re¯ections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, London. Beck, U., 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage, London. Beck, U., 1994. Replies and critiques. In: Beck, U., Giddens, A., Lash, S. (Eds.), Re¯exive Modernization; Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Polity Press, Cambridge. Beck, U., Giddens, A., Lash, S., 1994. Re¯exive Modernization; Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Polity Press, Cambridge. Bell, D., 1976. The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. Penguin, London. Bianchini, F., Parkinson, M., 1993. Cultural Policy and Urban Regeneration. Manchester University Press, Manchester. Brown, R., 1998. Why Looking After the Luvvies Turns the Wheels of Commerce. Scotland on Sunday 7th June. Castells, M., 1996. The Rise of the Network Society. Blackwell, Oxford. Centre for Local Economic Studies (CLES) 1988. City Centres, City Cultures: The Role of the Arts in the Revitalisation of Towns and Cities. CLES, Manchester. Crewe, L., 1996. Material culture: embedded ®rms, organizational networks and the local economic development of a fashion quarter. Regional Studies 30 (3), 257±272.
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