Career Histories and Life Course Events, Phases and Transitions in the Digital and Creative Industries for Over 35s, 2020-2021

Thomas, Benjamin (2024). Career Histories and Life Course Events, Phases and Transitions in the Digital and Creative Industries for Over 35s, 2020-2021. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-857241

Attaining and sustaining a career in the digital and creative industries is hard. Training that is often expensive and difficult to navigate, informal hiring practices, precarious employment, and long, intense, and inflexible hours, all come together to limit access and progression for many people. Moreover, as these conditions interact with people’s changing priorities and needs over the life course, the ability to sustain work is often not possible, reflected in the high rates of worker attrition (Carey et al., 2020; Steele, 2022). With a critical labour shortage in these industries, tackling the loss of older workers by addressing the challenges of digital and creative work is important. While there is much recent literature which speaks to the challenges (for example Brook, O’Brien and Taylor, 2020; Wallis, van Raalte and Allegrini, 2020), less is said about those people who have managed to sustain their careers in the face of these challenges, whose circumstances present examples of the conditions which are needed in order not to be ‘filtered out’. This thesis addresses this gap, exploring the strategies that older workers in the fields of Video, Games, and Websites have been able to use in order to sustain their careers.

Data description (abstract)

As part of an ESRC funded PhD, this data consists of 21 out of 30* total interviews with 'older workers' (over 35) who work in the fields of 'Video' (film, TV, YouTube), 'Games' (computer games), and 'websites' (front and back end, content creation and UI/accessibility). The overarching research goal was to understand how, in the face of many challenges (related to training, accessing work, precarity, and long hours), which are compounded by life course events, people manage to sustain their creative careers. Interview questions were informed by a review of creative industries literature which paints a picture of challenging working conditions (e.g., precarity, long hours) which are also sites of 'inequality regimes' (Acker, 2006), meaning the industries studied are designed by and for white, middle-class men.

The data reveals interesting detail about the three fields of study, making it useful as a snapshot of the creative industries in the early 2020s. It is also filled with references to the Covid-19 pandemic lock downs, as this is when the interviews took place.

There is rich detail of 'inequality regimes' - particularly with reference to social class, gender, and age.

*The other 9 interviews are not included as participants did not give permission for them to be deposited with the UK Data Service.

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