News and Events in Cultural and Media Policy Studies

Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value launched

Yesterday, 23^rd January saw the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value meet for its first working day exploring how we invest in our cultural life. High profile Commissioners drawn from the arts, business and academia are working together with their Chair, Vicky Heywood (Chair of the RSA) and Warwick academics to develop new thinking around cultural value, and to start a national conversation of the role of the arts and culture in contemporary society, and the ways in which the richness and diversity of the cultural ecosystem can be preserved and nurtured in difficult economic times.

The Centre is proud to be heavily involved in this exciting and bold new project, which is led by Dr Eleonora Belfiore, together with Prof. Jonothan Neelands of Warwick Business School. Dr Chris Bilton, Centre Director and Prof. Oliver Bennett, founder of the Centre are members of the Commission’s internal academic reference group, which supports the Commission with specialist expertise.

Fri 24 Jan 2014, 23:26 | Tags: News, Research news

Warwick Creative Exchange - Time to Connect!

Warwick Creative Exchange is a network of Warwick University researchers, cultural practitioners and producers looking for new ways to collaborate. The Warwick Creative Exchange website went live on 6^th December. And on 5^th February the Exchange will be running a Building Partnerships Workshop in which participants will identify and work with partners from academia and the arts to create viable collaborative projects (development funding will be offered to the most promising projects). See more...

Tue 10 Dec 2013, 16:57 | Tags: Events, Research news

The Cultural Currency of a Good Sense of Humour

On Wednesday 20th November, the Centre will be hosting the second of this term's research seminars. Dr. Sam Friedman of City University will be talking about his forthcoming book Comedy and Distinction: The Cultural Currency of a ‘Good’ Sense of Humour (Routledge, 2014).

The seminar will be at 5.30-7pm in G50, Millburn House. Refreshments will be provided. Please e-mail Paula Watkins on p.watkins@warwick.ac.uk if you wish to attend.

Abstract:

Traditionally considered lowbrow art par excellence, British comedy has grown steadily in legitimacy since the ‘Alternative Comedy Movement’ of the early 1980s. Yet while there might be evidence of a transformation in British comic production, there is little understanding of how this has been reflected in patterns of consumption. Indeed, there is a remarkable absence of studies probing comedy taste in British cultural sociology, most notably in Bennett et al’s (2009) recent and otherwise exhaustive mapping of cultural taste and participation. This paper aims to plug this gap in the literature by examining contemporary comedy taste cultures in Britain. Drawing on a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews carried out at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it argues that comedy now represents an emerging field for the culturally privileged to activate their cultural capital resources. However, unlike previous studies on cultural capital and taste, this research finds that field-specific ‘comic cultural capital’ is mobilised less through taste for certain legitimate ‘objects’ of comedy and more through the expression of rarefied and somewhat ‘disinterested’ styles of comic appreciation. In short, it is ‘embodied’ rather than ‘objectified’ forms of cultural capital that largely distinguish the privileged in the field of comedy.

Bio:

Sam Friedman is lecturer in Sociology at City University London. He has published widely on class, culture, elites and social mobility, and is the author of Comedy and Distinction: The Cultural Currency of a ‘Good’ Sense of Humour(Routledge, 2014). He is also a comedy critic and the publisher of Fest, the largest magazine covering the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Thu 07 Nov 2013, 17:10 | Tags: Research Seminars, Events, Research news

Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies

Cultural and Media Policy Studies News and Events

Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value launched

Warwick Creative Exchange - Time to Connect!

The Cultural Currency of a Good Sense of Humour