This article investigates the aesthetic advice posted by temporary employment agencies on their websites. These agencies organise a substantial part of the Dutch labour market and they are known to apply exclusionary practices in their strategies of recruitment and selection in order to meet employers’ preferences. This article sheds light on (1) the content of the advice; (2) how it legitimises the importance of aesthetics for finding work; and (3) in what ways the advice serves the purposes of the agencies. An in-depth content analysis illustrates how the advice has the potential to reproduce exclusions, thus helping employment agencies adhere to employers’ exclusionary requests. Creating online content that generates traffic to the websites in this case causes a circular logic in which the importance of aesthetics is self-reinforcing. The study illustrates that the seemingly neutral and empty advice posted on websites may enforce exclusions in the temporary work labour market.
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The report from Inholland University is dedicated to the impacts of data-driven practices on non-journalistic media production and creative industries. It explores trends, showcases advancements, and highlights opportunities and threats in this dynamic landscape. Examining various stakeholders' perspectives provides actionable insights for navigating challenges and leveraging opportunities. Through curated showcases and analyses, the report underscores the transformative potential of data-driven work while addressing concerns such as copyright issues and AI's role in replacing human artists. The findings culminate in a comprehensive overview that guides informed decision-making in the creative industry.
MULTIFILE
There is an urgent need to engage with deep leverage points in sustainability transformations—fundamental myths, paradigms, and systems of meaning making—to open new collective horizons for action. Art and creative practice are uniquely suited to help facilitate change in these deeper transformational leverage points. However, understandings of how creative practices contribute to sustainability transformations are lacking in practice and fragmented across theory and research. This lack of understanding shapes how creative practices are evaluated and therefore funded and supported, limiting their potential for transformative impact. This paper presents the 9 Dimensions tool, created to support reflective and evaluative dialogues about links between creative practice and sustainability transformations. It was developed in a transdisciplinary process between the potential users of this tool: researchers, creative practitioners, policy makers, and funders. It also brings disciplinary perspectives on societal change from evaluation theory, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and more in connection with each other and with sustainability transformations, opening new possibilities for research. The framework consists of three categories of change, and nine dimensions: changing meanings (embodying, learning, and imagining); changing connections (caring, organizing, and inspiring); and changing power (co-creating, empowering, and subverting). We describe how the 9 Dimensions tool was developed, and describe each dimension and the structure of the tool. We report on an application of the 9 Dimensions tool to 20 creative practice projects across the European project Creative Practices for Transformational Futures (CreaTures). We discuss user reflections on the potential and challenges of the tool, and discuss insights gained from the analysis of the 20 projects. Finally, we discuss how the 9 Dimensions can effectively act as a transdisciplinary research agenda bringing creative practice further in contact with transformation research.
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This project aims to contribute to the transition from proprietary smart city software to the design & employment of ‘public software’ that can be deployed by cities in their operational and policy processes, in order to better safeguard public values. With the advance of smart city technologies, software deployed by municipalities can no longer be understood as just a productivity tool. The mechanics and algorithms operative in the software and the data it collects have become key elements in the execution of urban policy and have started to become a resource for decision making processes. That means that transparency and data-ownership are becoming important public values in software deployment. Most proprietary software systems that cities are currently using in their operations do not fulfill these requirements. Therefore a transition is needed to the deployment of what we call public software. To bring this transition about, for municipal governments it is important to learn more about the process in which public software can be procured, deployed and shared between cities. For creative industries players such as developers and creative agencies, it is important to gain further knowledge about what role they can play in this process and learn more about possible business models to sustain the production and upkeep of public software. This project addresses these knowledge gaps through three workshops in which the most important issues for this transition will be identified, leading to a Guide for the Deployment of Public Software as well as a research agenda and an international network of stakeholders.
