Call for Papers

Helsinki – culture-rich, flavorful, and dynamic – is a great meeting point for the inaugural edition of a Standing Working Group that zeroes in on the creative industries. We want to celebrate this new format of encounter for our vibrant community by engaging in a discussion on meaning.

In particular, we invite contributions that can inspire conversations within two areas of meaning: meaningful questions and meaning making.

• First, we seek papers that articulate and address meaningful questions in the study of creative industries. Traditionally, important part of the discussion has focused on the paradoxical relationship between the worlds of art and commerce, both of which are indispensable for the expression of creative vision in works of art that seek to reach an audience, and how it has been addressed in careers and through organizing. What other paradoxes (e.g. creative freedom in inter-dependent art worlds, local cultural products for a global consumption, traditions as novelty) can bring in new insights to the study of creative endeavors? What un(der)-explored intersections (e.g. of art with social entrepreneurship or social media) could open up exciting avenues for exploration?
• Second, we invite examinations into meaning making as a process of encoding ideas by artists and their art worlds, and their subsequent decoding by interpreters and experts, as well as by audiences at the time of consumption. In that, we expect work that takes into account the symbolic, material and relational aspects of encoding, as well as the co-creation of meaning by producers and audiences, or by representatives of different domains (e.g. art, design, technology, or science). What roles do power and identities play in the creation of meaning and its expression in works of art? How do meaning makers convert deviant, peripheral ideas into a recognized and valued avant-garde? In that area, we seek to attract work on the discursive context of artistic endeavors, as well as how well meaning travels across geographies and different channels. We also hope for contributions that employ semiotic, discursive, rhetorical and other approaches that help to capture meaning.