‘There’s a lot of luck involved’: Sustaining hope labour amid workplace inequality and precarity as a creative worker

Abstract

The challenges of building and sustaining a creative career are well-established, as is the degree to which opportunities are either opened or foreclosed through the complex intersectionality of inequalities. Yet creative aspirants persist in pursuing creative work, sustaining themselves through survival strategies variously theorised as ‘hope labour’ and ‘aspirational labour’. Drawing upon data from an arts mentoring programme, this article explores how ideas of ‘luck’, ‘chance’ and ‘opportunity’ are implicated within such labour as sense-making resources for managing difficulties and justifying persistence in the face of precarity. It argues that the take up of these resources can function as a valuable discursive tool that also contributes to an enabling ‘repertoire of shared myths’ which sustains the career work of artists and many creative workers.