Lecturer in Management for the Creative Industries
Dr Sarah Scarsbrook is an artist, researcher, and Lecturer in Management for the Creative Industries, in the Business School for the Creative Industries.
Bio
Her artistic, research, and teaching interests include; artists’ identities, myths, professional development, and careers; pathways into the creative industries; museums and galleries management; understanding arts marketing and audiences; cultural policy, policymaking, and its relationship to arts management; and qualitative research methods and methodologies.
Sarah holds a BA in Fine Art from Kingston University (2004), and an MA in Arts Policy and Management from Birkbeck College, University of London (2011). In 2021, she completed her PhD at Birkbeck, with the thesis, Artists and The Art School: Experiences and Perspectives of Fine Art Education and Professional Pedagogies in London Art Schools, 1986-2016. Sarah’s professional experience spans over fifteen years working as an arts manager across London’s arts and cultural sector, including at the Saatchi Gallery, ICA, and Barbican Arts Centre. For eight years she worked as a freelance arts marketing manager, building bespoke campaigns for a wide range of arts and cultural organisations and individual artists, spanning all art forms from theatre and classical music to visual arts and spoken word. She has extensive industry knowledge of audience engagement and arts marketing practices.
Read more about Sarah, and see her work here
Research statement
Sarah’s research centralises visual artists’ voices, perspectives, and experiences of educational pathways into the creative industries. Her work furthers understanding of artists’ identities, myths, professionalisation, and careers in relation to arts education and creative pedagogies. Sarah critically examines class and access to the creative industries through higher arts education, and highlights artists’ central roles in arts and cultural policymaking processes. She uses qualitative methodologies, including grounded theory, which she innovates through creative interpretation using arts-based/informed methods developed through her arts practice. Sarah regularly exhibits, presents, and publishes in the UK and internationally.
Research outputs:
- Scarsbrook, S., 2022. Artists Shaping Policies Through Higher Art Education: How Visual Artists Develop Policies that Affect their Lives, Practices, and Careers. In S. Wesner and J. Woddis (eds.) Journal or Cultural Management and Cultural Policy, Special Issue: Artists’ Narratives in Cultural Policy and Management Research, 8 (2). pp. 175-192. ISSN 2701-9276. https://doi.org/10.14361/zkmm-2022-0208
- Scarsbrook, S., 2022. Professionalisation and Identification in UK Higher Arts Education. In P. Powell and B. S. Nayak (eds.) Creative Business Education.: Exploring the Contours of Pedagogical Praxis. Palgrave Macmillan: London. pp. 273-304. ISBN 978-3-031-10928-7 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10928-7
- Scarsbrook, S., 2022. ‘The Coding Cave & the Performative Fishbowl & Analytic Drawings’. Exhibition, Film Screening, and Presentation at Birkbeck Postgraduate Research Showcase, June 28th, 2022. Institute for Contemporary Arts, London, UK.
- Scarsbrook, S., 2021. Artists and the Art School: Experiences and Perspectives of Fine Art Education and Professional Pedagogies in London Art Schools, 1986-2016. [Thesis] (Unpublished), Available at: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/46286/1/SScarsbrook_Artists%20%26%20The%20Art%20School_PhD%20Thesis%20Submission.pdf
- Scarsbrook, S., 2021. ‘Culture is Bad for You’ book review. Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy. doi 10.14361/zkmm-2021-0210
- Scarsbrook, S., 2019. The Coding Cave and the Performative Fishbowl. Arts & International Affairs 3.3 / 4.1 • Winter 2018–2019. pp. 47-62. doi: 10.18278/aia.3.3.4.1.4
- Scarsbrook, S., 2015. Education & Beyond: Shaping & Locating Identity - Unwrapped. Dandelion Postgraduate Arts Journal & Research Network, The Artist Identity, Vol. 6, no. 1, 2015. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/ddl.332
- Scarsbrook, S., Solomon, R., & Zanti, N., (Eds.) 2015. Editorial: The Artist Identity, Dandelion Postgraduate Arts Journal & Research Network, The Artist Identity, Vol. 6, no. 1, 2015. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/ddl.333