Creative Production in the UK Music Industries

Creative work is thought to offer a model for the future of all work as we move into a knowledge economy. But in what sense is creative work, itself, creative? This is the central concern of this thesis. Many have argued that our ability to be creative has, ironically, decreased with the rise of creative work. Researchers have suggested that the precarious labour conditions typical of creative work along with the growing role of large corporations in the creative labour market make it all but impossible for creative workers to be experimental and innovative – that is, to be truly creative. However, marking a distinction between creatively producing something and producing something creative, I argue that organising creativity is now an important creative activity in its own right and is intimately related to various ways of representing work. Drawing on ethnographic empirical research and my own experiences as an amateur musician I describe the ways in which working helps a specific group of people to creatively make music and provide an analysis of how positive and negative images of work help to structure and inspire this creativity.