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Miranda Campbell, author of Out of the Basement: Youth Cultural Production in Practice and in Policy was featured on Illa Fabulis this week. The following is an excerpt from her interview with Angela MacKenzie.
Miranda Campbell recently published her first book, Out of the Basement – Youth Cultural Production in Practice and Policy with McGill-Queens University Press. Originally from Vancouver, Miranda fell in love with Montreal during graduate school and has been calling it home ever since. She actively supports the arts and creative entrepreneurship in her community and sits on the board of directors for Rock Camp for Girls Montreal.
Angela: Your background is in English Literature but your PhD was in Education. What took you in that direction?
Miranda: I started teaching at Dawson College after my MA and I teach there still. While I was teaching I started to think about some pedagogical questions that I wanted to explore further. I wanted to go back to school, which sounds pretty nerdy, like I was having grad school withdrawal. I decided to do a PhD in Education and the interesting thing about the program at McGill is that it’s pretty interdisciplinary. Eventually, I started to shift my focus more on youth culture than the questions about classroom pedagogy that I came into the program for.
Your dissertation basically became the basis for your recently published book?
Yes. With the book I wanted to spotlight some of the work I see all around me in my community. Young people who are trying to start their creative careers by doing their own small-scale projects. The book maps out the process of how a lot of people are turning what once may have been a hobby into their line of work. I think that’s very challenging and I argue that it’s a process that’s not getting enough attention, and is not very visible. I see it as very visible because it is all around me and I know a lot of people doing that kind thing. When I talk about my book to people they tell me their own stories about young people they know trying to kick start their own creative projects.
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Have you done any speaking engagements since it came out?
I did an interview recently on CBC and this winter I’ve been invited to keynote at a conference in Belgium about youth subculture becoming youth culture. My keynote is about youth entrepreneurship and employment so I’m very excited that I get to travel and do that.
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What’s next for you in terms of projects? Do you have anything on the horizon?
I’m still thinking about some issues from the book that I want to explore further. I’m really interested in spotlighting and profiling what people do. I don’t think it gets enough attention. When I was in Thunder Bay I did an interview with someone who runs an art collective and I wrote about that. One thing I’m interested in exploring further is the idea of unpaid labour and the poverty that surrounds artistic work. I’m also interested in the assumption that the people who are doing creative work are privileged. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. There’s an assumption that these people are taken care of by trust funds and parents, which may be true in some cases but definitely not in all cases. So I’m looking at poverty and privilege and how they inform creative work.
Click here for the full interview
Have you read Miranda Campbell’s guest blog series about privilege, poverty, and youth creative work? If not, here’s part 1 and part 2.
You can also check out her blog, Every Day We’re Hustling.
To learn more about Out of the Basement, or to order online, click here.
For media inquiries, contact MQUP publicist Jacqui Davis.
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