<CN>Chapter 14:</CN> <CT>‘It’s Our Property and Our Passion’: Managing Creativity in a Successful Company – Aardman Animations <AU>Andrew Spicer <NP>It has become a cultural and commercial necessity for media firms to promote themselves as dynamic and innovative ‘creative companies’ and therefore attractive to potential employees, associated companies or funders. Although the concept of creativity has been extensively discussed, as Philip Schlesinger argued a decade ago in his critique of the ‘doctrine’ of creativity, the central question for critical empirical research is ‘in what form ideas about creativity and innovation become organizationally embedded and to what extent they shape the actual management of creative practice […] how ideas about creativity are actually interpreted in the practice of production’ (2007: 387, original emphasis). A central problem, which Mark Banks argues ‘is the distinctive feature of cultural production’, is the tension between the rational, accumulative and standardising logic of capitalist production and the irrational, unruly, unpredictable and potentially disruptive demands of the creative worker who values her autonomy (2007: 30, original emphasis). Although creativity and commerce are often polarized, in modern media firms they are always ‘intermingled and interfused’ in an unstable and shifting interplay that evolves over time (Negus and Pickering 2004: 46–67). <TEXT>This chapter develops an extended analysis of the management of creative practice in one of the most successful UK film and television companies, Aardman Animations, which has evolved from a hand-to-mouth two-person operation in 1976 to a medium-sized firm with a £22.3 million turnover in 2014 and over 150 employees, a number that rises to more than 600 when two films are being produced simultaneously (Baker 2014). My account is based on several observational site visits to its offices and the critical interpretation of extended interviews with six of its employees and freelance staff, including Aardman’s Executive Chairman and co-founder, David Sproxton (see table of interviews); all unattributed quotations
<CN>Chapter 14:</CN> <CT>‘It’s Our Property and Our Passion’: Managing Creativity in a Successful Company – Aardman Animations <AU>Andrew Spicer <NP>It has become a cultural and commercial necessity for media firms to promote themselves as dynamic and innovative ‘creative companies’ and therefore attractive to potential employees, associated companies or funders. Although the concept of creativity has been extensively discussed, as Philip Schlesinger argued a decade ago in his critique of the ‘doctrine’ of creativity, the central question for critical empirical research is ‘in what form ideas about creativity and innovation become organizationally embedded and to what extent they shape the actual management of creative practice […] how ideas about creativity are actually interpreted in the practice of production’ (2007: 387, original emphasis). A central problem, which Mark Banks argues ‘is the distinctive feature of cultural production’, is the tension between the rational, accumulative and standardising logic of capitalist production and the irrational, unruly, unpredictable and potentially disruptive demands of the creative worker who values her autonomy (2007: 30, original emphasis). Although creativity and commerce are often polarized, in modern media firms they are always ‘intermingled and interfused’ in an unstable and shifting interplay that evolves over time (Negus and Pickering 2004: 46–67). <TEXT>This chapter develops an extended analysis of the management of creative practice in one of the most successful UK film and television companies, Aardman Animations, which has evolved from a hand-to-mouth two-person operation in 1976 to a medium-sized firm with a £22.3 million turnover in 2014 and over 150 employees, a number that rises to more than 600 when two films are being produced simultaneously (Baker 2014). My account is based on several observational site visits to its offices and the critical interpretation of extended interviews with six of its employees and freelance staff, including Aardman’s Executive Chairman and co-founder, David Sproxton (see table of interviews); all unattributed quotations
Aardman%20SiFTI%20final.docx