Creative industries in flux – a critical investigation into the challenges, agency and potential of cultural and creative workers in Hong Kong

Abstract

The cultural and creative industries (CCI) have proven to be a driving force of economic growth in today’s globalized economy. In light of the rising importance of the “knowledge economy”, the SAR government has in the past decade emphasized creative industry development as a new and significant pillar of the Hong Kong economy, which can be seen through extensive coverage of its inclusion in annual policy addresses and continual allocation of budgets since 1999. With an annual growth rate of 9.4% (compared to 5.6% of general growth), the creative industry contributed 4.9% to the GDP in Hong Kong in 2012. From 2011 to 2012, the GDP generated by the creative industry increased by 9.2% to HK$9.78 billion, and sustains approximately 200,000 creative jobs across a range of sectors from media, fashion to the animation industry. The future of Hong Kong’s creative industries seems to have great potential for economic growth and generating jobs given the favourable work conditions of creative labour that are increasingly attracting a considerable amount of young, educated individuals to enter the field. Beneath this ideological optimism, however, the real conditions facing creative workers globally often contradict popular assumptions. Cultural industries scholars Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2010: 18) have observed that the realities of this creative sector are not so positive as large proportions of creative industry workers often struggle with the levels and quality of work. These problems appear to reside in feelings of “self-exploitation”, a blurring of work and leisure, feelings of isolation and anxiety, lack of solidarity, autonomy, job security plus a perceived lack of social recognition (Gill 2002; Ross 2003; Ngai, Chan and Yuen 2014; Chan, Krainer, Diehl, Terlutter & Huang 2015; Tse 2015). There is a critical need to undertake a rigorous qualitative investigation into the creative industries policy discourse aiming to boost the local creative economy and to match this up with the actual experiences and working conditions of creative workers, in addition to the resulting impact on future sustainable development for the creative industries. Starting in May 2016, the study will generate in-depth, qualitative findings to complement the previous quantitative research focused on deriving economic values of the industries. An ethnographic study of the industries drawing upon subjective experiences of creative workers will identify areas that will aid in formulating policies of higher relevance and applicability. By investigating the professional and social lives of industry workers, crucial structural measures may be suggested, such as those that mitigate the exploitative nature of work conditions to retain a substantial and capable pool of creative labor. This project is expected to inform the direction of the rapidly evolving creative business environment, and signal the most appropriate government policy response to ensure equitable creative labor management. By focusing on three selected industries – public relations and advertising, television and print media, qualitative research methodology including interviews will elicit ethnographic narratives of work experiences, to generate research data for analysis resulting in future policy recommendations.