Bethany Rex

Description

What do business models [in the arts and cultural sector] do?
Dr Bethany Rex (University of Warwick) presented findings from the ‘Creative Lenses’ research project, which investigated the possibilities and limitations of using the tools and language associated with the ‘business model’ in the context of arts and cultural organisations. The talk’s title ‘What do business models do?’ refers to the practical value of thinking with the business model idea as well as to its performative role. With the language of business models continuing to live on in policy, Arts Council England’s recent 10-year strategy ‘Let’s Create’ being one example, adopting a critical perspective on this seemingly innocuous concept helps us to think through some of the ways contemporary policy disavows the part it might play in solving the systemic issues which continue to haunt the sector.

Bethany Rex is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies, University of Warwick. She has been a Research Fellow on Creative Lenses, a 4-year collaboration project funded by the European Commission and has undertaken an AHRC Creative Economy Engagement Fellowship. Her background spans museum and heritage studies and cultural policy, with a particular interest in exploring the processes and politics of organisational change in state-funded arts and cultural organisations in the UK prompted by twenty-first-century austerity.

Period	19 Apr 2021
Visiting from	University of Warwick (United Kingdom)
Visitor degree	PhD
Degree of Recognition	Regional