Creative and Cultural Industries in Times of Crisis

A half-day symposium

Location: 1.17 and 1.18, Clothworkers Building North

This half-day symposium brings together six speakers to explore the contemporary crisis facing the media, creative and cultural industries in the West. At the heart of this crisis is a growing backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion—one that is being amplified by reactionary forces across politics, media and digital culture. Topics will include the rise of reactionary feminist discourse in anti-EDI debates, the shifting landscape of digital activism and cancel culture post-BLM, and the influence of online masculinist spaces on the values and attitudes of early-career male creatives in the UK screen industries.

Speakers

• Hannah Curran-Troop (University of Manchester) - Calling out or calling in? Feminist CCIs negotiate BLM, cancel culture, and activist selves online
• Rosalind Gill (Goldsmiths, University of London) - From critiquing ‘diversity’ to diversity under attack: inequalities and injustice in the creative sector in a new conjuncture?
• Akane Kanai (University of Warwick) - Everyday feminist reactivism in times of crisis
• Jilly Kay (Loughborough University) - Feminism in the digital mirror-world: reactionary feminism, post-liberalism, and “left” arguments against equality
• David Lee (University of Leeds) - Ambivalent Masculinities: Digital Culture, Precarity, and Disaffection in the UK Screen Industries
• Anamik Saha (University of Leeds) – The Crisis of ‘Diversity’: Race and the Cultural Industries in Authoritarian Times

Dr Hannah Curran Troop is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Manchester

Rosaland Gil is a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at Goldsmiths, University of London

Akane Kanai is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Warwick                                                                                         

Jilly Kay is Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media at the Loughborough University

David Lee is an Associate Professor in Media and Communication at the University of Leeds

Anamik Saha is a Professor of Race and Media at the University of Leeds