Risk and trust in the cultural industries

Preliminary claims have been made that working practices within cultural in dustries such as fashion, music, design and the night time economy may diff er from Fordist or modernist arrangements. Cultural firms are often imagine d to be more innovative, information-rich, dynamic, flexible, non-hierarchi cal and dependent on local dusters and networks than their Fordist counterp arts (Lash and Urry, 1994). As their impact and significance increase, unde rstanding how creative and cultural industries actually work is of high pri ority. This paper presents preliminary findings from an on-going ESRC funde d study of cultural Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) within Manchester, E ngland. Drawing on one element of the project, this paper considers the sig nificance of risk and the importance of social trust for the cultural entre preneur. Following a discussion of Beck's development of risk as an analyti cal concept, and its intersection with Giddens' notion of 'active trust', t he paper examines how risk and trust are defined, experienced and negotiate d by entrepreneurs in Manchester's cultural industries. It is suggested tha t senses of risk are constitutive and often pivotal to the whole economic a nd social basis of cultural entrepreneurship - risk being central to choice s made not only in business but in the lifeworld more generally. The paper then investigates the importance of trust for facilitating as well as count ering or offsetting risk. Empirical evidence is presented to show how risk and trust co-relate and interact as constitutive elements within a wider se t of shifting relationships between work, leisure and lifestyle in the 'cre ative city'. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.