“Micro and small enterprises (MSEs) are embedded in risk; they need to be innovative, flexible, creative, ideas-driven and constantly changing”
Banks et al. (2000:453)
I’m looking at a card my friend designed as part of an MSE she runs with two friends called Cross Centred Scribbles (CSS):
In a creative democracy where everyone has free access to produce and consume, the new heroes are the innovators, the workers who combine creativity with production know-how and action.[1] Yet despite their heralding, new creatives experience a toss-up between doing what they love and having a job where they can earn enough, one of the many ‘wicked problems’ of creative labour.[2] To be a labourer in this industry includes voluntary self-exploitation – time, knowledge and skills spent with no return – and “marginal subsistence and episodic migration into other parts of the economy”.[3]
While the individualisation brought by the Risk Society opens up a plethora of opportunities in the Free Market previously not open to people like Inez, my mixed-race, young and female friend, it can also mean individuals become slaves to those markets.[4] The romanticised image of the genius artist, like Michelangelo, self-supporting, self-driven and successful through talent alone is in conflict with our postmodern industry which labels single actors as ‘inefficient’[5], unable to grow and expand in alignment with Capitalism’s claims on compound growth.[6]
So micro enterprises like this one are defined by risk, the improbability that they’ll be able to grow in the way the market wants them to. The owners of CSS sharply feel this risk. They’ve each entered other areas of the creative industry – that episodic migration – because they can’t support themselves on the income generated by the business alone. They intentionally shift their costs away from financial output towards emotional and temporal investment and the application and development of their creative skills.[7]
In fact, mitigating risk is very much part of the business, the bulk of work. From deliberately only making small batches which are time specific – for example, for Christmas only – to reaching out to other creative Christians to make designs, thus extending their promotional reach through new social circles.[8]
“What people are willing to pay is way less than the amount of time and money I’ve put in, so I need to enjoy doing it because you put a lot in that you don’t get back. But I think the stage it’s at now is the most established it’s been so I’m more motivated to put in the time to promote it etc. because I believe it’s good quality and worth the time I’ve put in.”
Personal Interview with Inez
Only the entrepreneur can dictate whether the imperfections of risk have a chance in being ironed out.[9] For Inez, affective labour in this micro business is high, but so is the hope (not assurance) that innovation and hard work will pay out.
[1] Pang 2019
[2] Murray and Gollmitzer 2011
[3] Murray and Gollmitzer 2011:419
[4] Banks et al. 2000
[5] Pang 2019
[6] Brand 2017
[7] Banks et al. 2000
[8] Banks et al. 2000
[9] Usai et al. 2018
References
Banks, M.; Loratti, A.; O’Connor, J. and Raffo, C. (2000), Risk and trust in the cultural industries, Geoforum 31, 453-464
Brand, R. (2017) Marxism On The Rise – Can It Really Defeat Capitalism? Under The Skin with Russell Brand, published 23rd September 2017, YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL7zEVhPHQU [accessed 13/4/20]
Murray, C. and Gollmitzer, M. (2011) Escaping the precarity trap: a call fro creative labour policy, International Journal of Cultural Policy, vol. 18, issue 4, pp 419-438
Pang, L. (2019) The Labour Factor in the Creative Economy, Social Text 99, vol. 27, no. 2 pp 55-76, Duke University Press
Usai, A.; Scuotto, V.; Murray, A.; Fiano, F. and Dezi, L. (2018) Do entrepreneurial knowledge and innovation attitude overcome “imperfections” in the innovation process? Insights from SMEs in the UK and Italy, Journal of Knowledge Management
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