In 2024-25, a group of Junior Honours students took the newly developed Cultural Work Alternatives module, supported by the scca.partnerships project.
Adopting a critical approach to work and working practices in the cultural industries, the course examines and explores alternatives to exploitation and exclusion in cultural work. It does this by looking at how workers organise via unionisation, campaigning organisations and co-operatives, and their links to wider social movements. Building on students’ existing knowledge of cultural labour issues, the course develops essential skills pertaining to working in a professional context and, crucially, promotes critical reflection on alternatives to precarity in cultural labour markets, while developing an in-depth understanding of co-operative ways of working. By critically reflecting on the conflicts and tensions in cultural labour markets, students learn to sustain arguments on a variety of forms of worker organisation in the cultural sectors, including on the strengths and weaknesses of worker-led alternatives.
The module was delivered in partnership with two Glasgow-based co-ops, Jangling Space and Media Co-Op. These organisations were involved in the design of the module, hosted visits by the students, and provided speakers for the seminar sessions. In this way, through partnership working, the hope is to offer a genuine alternative to the focus on competition and entrepreneurship that can tend to characterise a lot of education on the cultural industries.
