Crash and Burn: Towards another kind of creative industry

This Professional Doctorate project investigates the mental health crisis impacting contemporary creative workers—including designers, freelancers, and agency professionals—navigating precarious employment conditions. The creative industry is characterised by chronic stress, unstable job security, housing insecurity, and financial instability, all exacerbated by the rise of generative AI. Despite these challenges, many workers feel isolated, lack union representation, and often struggle to articulate their experiences.
The research focuses on key questions: What are the mental health challenges faced by contemporary creative workers, what conditions cause them, and how can collective practices of care and solidarity provide spaces of reprieve and imagination for alternative futures?
Utilising artistic research methodologies like ethnography, auto-ethnography, interviews, and participatory workshops, the project encourages workers to collaborate creatively—through textiles, zines, and collages—while sharing their stories. This approach, termed "Deep Hanging Out," emphasises collaborative knowledge production and prioritises embodied experiences over extractive methods. A significant innovation is the use of experimental publishing, particularly zines, as a research method and communication tool to share accessible knowledge within creative communities, thereby circumventing traditional academic barriers.
Over four years, the project’s trajectory begins with listening to and mapping the challenges faced by creative workers. It includes a residency at Switzerland's Living Museum, exploring art therapy techniques, and transitions toward speculative practices, co-creating alternative visions for the industry. The researcher adopts multiple roles: as a professional embedded within the creative field, an innovator developing methodologies, a researcher generating accessible knowledge, and a change agent connecting research to practice.
Rather than seeking straightforward solutions, the project "stays with the trouble," documenting hardships while exploring how conviviality, humor, and collective creativity can help restore agency and imagination, ultimately promoting a supportive and joyful creative industry.