Building an institution with emotional labour: Analysis of a post-industrial art centre, beyond the creative industries

Abstract

Once established, institutions become systems that imply the naturalness of their political and cultural dynamics. But how are institutions produced? This thesis presents an analysis of the Sydney post-industrial art centre Carriageworks. I argue that Carriageworks’ institutionalisation is enabled by social investment – specifically, the emotional labour of those separately involved in establishing, managing and working at the centre, as well as its publics. Given its location in a former industrial railway workshop adjacent to Redfern, a suburb famed for its Indigenous political activism, the establishment of Carriageworks would typically be read either as a welcome answer to urban decline, tied into place competition; or critically, as displacement in the name of cultural regeneration. However, I shift the focus from these creative industries formulations to argue that the establishment of Carriageworks was by no means a historical given. Ethnographic detail of this centre’s formation reveals the crucial role of emotional labour (a term I adapt from its beginnings in Arlie Hochschild’s work), in allowing this institution to exist and subsequently thrive. In presenting diverse instances of Carriageworks’ development, from instantiation to policy formulation, I also emphasise the affective power of its building in not only establishing the centre as an institution, but broadening the terms on which places like it can be valued. In the process, I explore how we can ‘deal with’ middle-class success, without immediately slapping it down with all analysis suspended, to consequently question the complex ways in which people relate to creative place.