Background: Cultural projects are increasingly being implemented to help inmates cope with their situations. Nevertheless, research has been scarce in relation to the experiences of the cultural workers implementing the projects within the Prison and Probation Service (PPS). Objective: The study intends to explore the experiences of Skådebanan’s cultural workers in the implementation of cultural projects in relation to the Swedish PPS and the inmates. More specifically, the study addresses two research questions: (1) How do cultural workers experience the interactions with the inmates while implementing cultural projects? (2) How do cultural workers experience the relations with the Prison and Probation Service while planning and implementing cultural projects?  Method: Data was gathered from six cultural workers, working in five regional associations, through four surveys and one interview. These were qualitatively analyzed using a thematic approach. The themes found were then interpreted using Goffman’s theories on “total institution” and the “dramaturgical self”.  Results: The results showed how, according to the cultural workers’ perspective, their interactions with inmates and their relations with PPS were mostly positive, with the exceptions of few challenges. Conclusion: This study can give insights into the interactions that cultural workers have during the implementation of cultural projects with the inmates and the PPS, which might be helpful in the understanding of challenges and facilitators of the implementation process. Nevertheless, further research is needed.

For the past decades, culture has been given a role as a factor for local and regional development. But what is meant by development and in what ways culture can be of importance in this aspect can be unclear. This thesis examines the perception of the role for local and regional development of one specific cultural place and network – the cultural cooperative Not Quite in Fengersfors, Sweden. I study the way the role as developer is expressed and interpreted in the discourse of the cultural workers who are members of the network and in the discourse of public cultural policy in the region Västra Götaland and in Åmål municipality. The study shows that there are both similarities and differences between the discourses concerning how the role as developer is expressed. What differs is the focus on economic growth, which is expressed to be of great importance in the public cultural policy discourse. The cultural workers within Not Quite express a lack of interest in economic growth, or even a negative attitude towards it. They instead express a ”discourse of meaning”. For them, the main purpose of their artistic work is to create meaning and value for other people rather than economic growth. However, the practical effects of the differences seem quite small. There seem to be a balance between the different kinds of development Not Quite is expected to contribute to, and the cultural workers express a relaxed attitude to goals and expectations from the Västra Götaland region and Åmål municipality.

This dissertation looks at how teachers, unionists, and cultural workers used black history to offer new ways of thinking about racial knowledge from a local level. Numerous efforts to promote and teach this history demonstrated how dissident cosmopolitan political currents from previous decades remained relevant to a vibrant and ideologically diffuse African American public sphere despite widespread Cold War dispersions, white supremacist reactions, and anticommunist repressions. My argument proceeds by demonstrating how these public history projects coalesced around a series of connected pedagogical endeavors. These endeavors included the work of school teachers on Chicago's South side who tried to advance curriculum reforms through World War II and afterwards, the work of packinghouse workers and other union-focused educators who used anti-discrimination campaigns to teach about the history of African Americans and Mexican Americans in the labor movement and to advance innovative models for worker education, and the activities of important cultural workers like Margaret and Charles Burroughs who politicized urban space and fought for greater recognition of black history in the public sphere through the advancement of their vision for a museum. Collectively, these projects expressed important ideas about race, citizenship, education and intellectual labors that engaged closely with the rapidly shifting terrains of mid-20th Century civil rights and international anti-colonialisms. Ultimately, this dissertation offers a social history about how cosmopolitan cultural work in public history and similar forms of knowledge production were at the intersections of political realities and lived experience in U.S. urban life.

This study presents insights on career management in the creative and cultural industries in Scotland with detailed exploration into practices and strategies employed by cultural workers. Following a phenomenological approach, the study has used subjective data of individual career experiences and interpreted them into objective patterns of career management. Using qualitative research interviews and thematic analysis, the doctoral study explored the career management experiences of thirty six cultural workers and identified particular strategies adopted in the self-management of precarious and unpredictable careers. Employment in the creative and cultural industries is with precarious which constitutes a specific environment for career management and career progression. Not enough is known about the ways in which cultural workers manage their careers in these circumstances. The aim of this study was to understand the realities of contemporary career management in the creative and cultural industries and to identify particular practices and strategies in which creative careers might be managed. Beyond the scholars in this field, this research is of interest to cultural workers, policy makers in the creative and cultural industries more broadly and higher education institutions preparing graduates for work in the creative and cultural industries. The empirical evidence gathered can better inform cultural workers of effective career management strategies and propose policy interventions that would facilitate effective career management and career management education. Key findings focus on the use of online / social media within creative careers and how such activity takes place; the development of a new harmony between art and economic logics and the application of development based career strategies in creative careers, with cultural workers being more managerial than they even recognise themselves. The findings from this study offers confirmation to what is already known about careers in the creative and cultural industries, greater depth and detail to what is already known and extend understanding about the relationship disconnect between individual career Career Management in the Creative and Cultural Industries Abstract management strategies and the policies designed to support cultural workers – policies which focus on growth and development of the industry but not those individuals who make up the industry. Exploration of the phenomenon of career management in the creative and cultural industries requires further research, which could include: alternative methodologies to elicit perceptions based on the findings from this study, deeper exploration into both the difference in career management within the creative and cultural industries and the emerging relationship between art and economic logic.

Subject of this study is the evolvement of the radical art music scene in Sweden. In this development took the labour movement an active part during the 1960s. The purpose of this study is to examine how the relationship between the radical art music scene and the labour movement was constituted and what this relationship implied for the Swedish radical art music scene during the 1960s. During the 1960s radical music became an influencial part in the Swedish music scene of modern art music. In this development the artists’ society Fylkingen had a central position. In the early 1960s Fylkingen began to incorporate writers, engineers, scientists, sociologists, philosophers, economists, etc. in their work and a number of projects were initiated which interacted with common society. A proposal for a public record company was developed together with KSF (Social Democratic Association for Cultural Workers) and was presented to the Swedish parliament. In collaboration with ABF (Workers’ Educational Association) the first studio for electronic music was build in 1960 and the relationship between the labour movement and the radical art music scene was institutionalized as the Stockholm Electronic Music Studio Foundation. This thesis uses the terminology of Ludwik Fleck to examine the relationship between the radical art music scene and the labour movement. The concepts of Thought collective and Thought-style are used to draw conclusions about common values and objectives within the Thought-style. The radical art music scene and the labour movement are understood to be part of a common Thought collective with a common style of thought. Because of this relationship, projects initiated in the radical music scene came to emphasize the democratic and educational aspects of music. In the latter half of the 1960s it was conceived impossible to achieve these goals under the existing program, leading to the notion within the style of thought that technological advancement was a prerequisite for a democratic music scene.