Culture Crash And Cultural Capital Analysis

Compare the different approaches that Timberg in Culture Crash and Hewison’s Cultural Capital take to a single aspect of the contemporary culture industry.

In this essay I will discuss the different approaches that Timberg and Hewison used in their respective books Culture Crash and Cultural Capital.

Scott Timberg discusses the ever growing threat to the creative class. Which he defines as “anyone who helps create or disseminate culture,” this includes musicians, librarians, artists,architects, graphic designers as well as “their often-mocked supporting casts- record store clerks, roadies, critics, publicists and supposedly exploitative record label folk… deejays, bookstore clerks, theater and set designers, people who edit books in publishing

Many of which have been forced to participate in the “gig economy” to be able to have a livelihood by taking low paying freelance jobs. In this day and age we are all used to change. Everything is constantly moving and changing and we must all learn to adjust quickly. Though to creative artists, it is not that easy to adjust to these changes if they are making it impossible to do your job and earn a living. Between economic recession, technological changes and social shifts have put musicians, journalists and graphic designers and so on out of work. In Culture Crash Timberg delves deeply and extensively into the root cause of this crisis in America’s creative sector. Scott Timberg considers the human cost as well as the unintended consequences of shuttered record stores, decimated newspapers, music piracy and a general attitude of indifference. He discusses the artist's place in today's society as well as identifying social tensions and contradictions concerning the artist's place that “have plunged the creative class into a fight for survival.” Timberg focuses on writers, dancers, artists, musicians, architects and graphic designers, but not ones who are household names. It’s not the Beyonces or JK Rowling's that he is concerned with. He

The argument is that New Labour government offered the arts a Faustian pact after 20 years of Thatcherite parsimony. After the Department for Culture, Media and Sport received £290 million in a Government grant, they would have to contribute to a post-Thatcherite agenda of marketised public services pursuing the government's economic and social objectives. Such as redefining of the cultural sector as part of the creative industries and a rebranding embarrassingly dubbed “Cool Britannia”. Institutions such as the Arts Council were to reach target at a low cost. Hewison argues that the strategy of targets is what caused the catastrophe of the Millennium Dome. During the 00’s there was a minor revolt in the form of the culture secretary Tessa Jowell writing a personal essay to criticise the instrumental approach to the arts. James Purnell who was her successor in 2007 proclaimed an end to targets. Hewison notes that the New LAbour objective of widening social access to the arts had not succeed.Through the 00s, the DCMS and its clients had commissioned increasingly sophisticated surveys of arts participation and attendance. The most comprehensive, the Taking Part survey, found that, between 2005 and 2013, the arts audience increased by 2%, to 78.4% of the population. Though the arts increased research discovered that there wasn't much diversity as the arts audience still remained older, educated white