Cultural Industries and Cultural Value
It is widely accepted that culture enriches our lives and produces enormous social and economic benefits. Measuring, understanding and articulating these benefits, however, is an immensely complex task.
At a time when the value and 'purpose' of culture is fiercely contested, it is also an extremely important one.
Researchers in the Faculty of Arts are responding to this challenge through projects that examine the forms and impact of culture, as well as investigating the role and broader influence of culture in contemporary society. Research engages with and explores a diverse range of cultural industries, including museums, galleries, libraries, theatres, film, television, publishing and heritage organisations. Our researchers examine traditional and newly emerging ideas related to the cultural industries, creativity, communication, taste and cultural value. This research has taken the form of traditional outputs as well as exhibitions, screenings, commissions, policy documents, archives and networks.
Managing the cultural industries
Researchers across the Faculty are concerned with the processes and practices that relate to cultural organisations. The Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies, for instance, addresses leadership, creativity and management in the media, cultural and creative industries in the UK and beyond. Researchers engage and collaborate with local and national organisations, and draw on opportunities that the digital humanities and other non-digital approaches open-up for working with cultural heritage collections for research and impact.
Historical studies
Researchers across the Faculty also embark on historical studies of the cultural industries. In Theatre and Performance Studies, one AHRC-funded research project is exploring the relationship of popular forms of theatre to visual culture and on spectacle and spectatorship amidst the nineteenth century's commercial and technologically innovations. In Film and Television Studies, another AHRC funded project is examining how Italian producers shaped global film production and distribution between the late 1940s and the mid-1970s through specific business practices and the foundation of international markets.
Making an impact...
In Film and Television Studies, the Ghost Town Project, a collaboration between the University of Warwick's Centre for Television Histories and a number of partners, including the Media Archive of Central England, Coventry Cathedral, and Coventry Libraries is tracing how the city’s history persists as ghostly traces in the television archive. This project uses archive television as a catalyst for a series of critical conversations about Coventry’s past, present and futures, and asks ‘What is the cultural value of the television archive for this (and other) cities?’
