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The career-building strategies of individual creators: A meta-analysis of qualitative research funded by CREATe

CREATe Working Paper 2016/06

Ealasaid Munro

2016-06-coverAbstract

This working paper presents a meta-analysis of CREATe-funded research relating to the activities of individual creators. The paper outlines the career-building strategies of individual creators, and assesses how creators’ practice is changing in relation to advances in technology. The paper also provides insight into how individual creators understand copyright, and IP more generally. The paper argues that building a career in the creative industries remains a precarious venture, despite some twenty years of policy attention and government intervention. The paper also questions received wisdom regarding the primacy of intellectual property production as a measure of individual success, and as a driver of economic growth. Due to the centrality of copying to the functioning of certain creative sectors, creators sometimes copy others, and expect to be subject to a degree of copying themselves. The current copyright framework was seen as doing little to discourage infringement, as the cost of pursuing restitution was prohibitively high, and the returns that could be expected in the event of a successful claim were low.

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