Frank Hartmann on Thu, 21 Feb 2002 21:38:02 +0100 (CET) |
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[Nettime-bold] entrepreneurial cultural worker |
This is a forwarded abstract of the EU study "EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE JOB POTENTIAL IN THE CULTURAL SECTOR IN THE AGE OF DIGITALISATION" Commissioned by DG Employment and Social Affairs Munich, Cologne, Vienna, Barcelona, 2001. Exploitation and development of the job potential in the cultural sector in the age of digitalisation Up until recently, the economic and labour market aspects of the arts and cultural sector were of secondary significance in the welfare state. Culture was seen as part of social policy and was not considered an area which could or should be subject to "normal" economic criteria, since these criteria were interpreted as incompatible with culture. In the last 10 years, the number of commissioned scientific studies and political programmes on the broad topical spectrum of "Cultural Economy and Employment" has increased dramatically. Both the current discussion on the theory of culture and current policy are characterised by two processes which are independent and affect each other’s further development: one speaks of the "economisation" of culture, on the one hand, and the "culturalisation" of economy, on the other hand. The cultural sector is characterised by a high share of freelancers and very small companies. A new type of employer is emerging in the form of the "entrepreneurial individual" or "entrepreneurial cultural worker", who no longer fits into previously typical patterns of full-time professions. Despite the unsatisfactory data situation, it was possible to carry out a practicable statistical demarcation of the cultural sector within the framework of this study. The most important quantitative characteristics of the cultural sector were ascertainable and were able to provide for an approximate solution. According to the broadest definition, there are currently 7.2 million workers in the EU cultural sector. This figure is significantly higher that assumed in previous studies. Continued employment growth in the creative occupations of the cultural sector is to be expected in the future since the demand for cultural products and services is strongly increasing, both from private households and from companies. Employment growth in the area of distribution will also increase, but not at the same rate as in the development of cultural "products". "Content producers" seem to be in greater demand than marketing and sales persons. Generally speaking, the rapidly increasing digitalisation of cultural products will result in "traditional" cultural media, such as books and printed matter, losing significance, while new media, such as Internet web sites, will come to the fore, also in terms of employment. The "digital culture" is the result of an interaction between "traditional" culture (content), the TIMES sector (technology) and services/distribution. The increasingly used term TIMES sector (Telecommunication, Internet, Multimedia, E-commerce, Software and Security) is used in this study to cover the whole audio-visual sector, i.e. the entire multimedia sector, including culture industry areas such as TV, publishing, and the music industry. The TIMES sector in the EU is characterised by very small companies. Only 13.2 % of the companies have more than 50 employees. There is a very high share of freelancers, with 1.3 freelancers for every regular employee. In contrast, at 30 %, the share of women is very low. The percentage of women employed in creative occupations is even lower, and when it comes to company start-ups, only 20 % of new TIMES companies are set up by women. Digital culture demonstrates enormous employment dynamics, particularly in the areas of multimedia and software. These two sub-sectors are those with the greatest demand for content and creativity and therefore represent the best employment opportunities for creative workers. There are currently approximately 1.5 million companies in the EU active in the areas of multimedia and software, representing a total of 12.4 million workers. Assuming a declining annual growth rate over the next 10 years from 10 percent in 2001 to just 3 percent in 2011, we can estimate 22 million jobs in the year 2011. Thus, approximately 9.6 million new jobs will be created in multimedia and software in the next decade. However, the TIMES sector is currently already experiencing great bottlenecks of personnel on an EU-wide level. This shortage of qualified personnel represents the number one hindrance to growth in the TIMES sector. In digital culture, completely new job profiles and qualification content are presently emerging which are extremely interesting for cultural workers. The rule of the thumb which can be applied to this sector is that the entire technical segment, including technology, infrastructure, hardware and printing, will undergo a period of relative stagnation or even decline (with regard to both jobs and contribution to the value adding process), whereas all content-oriented i.e. creative areas of employment will continue to show high growth rates (Web design, advertising, publishing, media, education, entertainment, etc.) A large number of good practices in the EU are related to the new job profiles within digital culture and offer corresponding qualification measures. However, In the light of the enormous need for qualification, they are still no where near sufficient in number. As a rule, the outstanding good practices are organised as public-private-partnerships. Company involvement has proven its worth, but can turn out to be problematic, namely if companies place too high a priority on their demand for short-term returns. Digital culture has acted as an employment motor in the past, and will continue to do so in the future, primarily based upon the strong demand within the TIMES sector for creativity and content. At the same time, dramatic personnel bottlenecks can already be observed in this sector today. Thus, policy makers must better orient their instruments of employment policy toward this area, both on the European and national levels. Within the framework of European Employment Policy, there is a still a widespread deficit of specific information, communication and funding tools, especially in the area of training and further education. Thus, within the context of subsidisation policy, the economic sector with the best prospects for growth and employment is being extensively neglected, is not being sufficiently recorded in employment statistics and its needs are not being adequately looked after. http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/news/2001/jul/digital_en.htm l _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold