Cultural Work And Transformative Arts

The model of cultural work undertaken by the Amber Film and Photography Collective represents a radical challenge to the insecure and de-politicised world of cultural work that has long been the norm within the arts. Our paper, which explores the collective's diverse forms of cultural work, including paid labour, collective labour, gift labour and creative labour, argues that cultural work can be imbued with moral commitments and egalitarian ideals. The Amber collective functioned as much like a social movement organisation or a social economy enterprise as a cultural group: it was dedicated to creating alternative cultural networks and a new material foundation for cultural work. We emphasise how these shifting forms and strategies of cultural work underpinned substantial transformations within the Amber group itself.