ABSTRACT
Introduction A few miles from London’s major financial districts, the inner East London boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney still contain pockets of deep poverty. This is despite years of regeneration and redevelopment, including the development of creative hubs such as Tech City, which runs from the boundary of the City of London at Old Street to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Nevertheless, for most young people in these boroughs access to good quality jobs and training is scarce. In a world where accreditation is of paramount importance for entry into work and further education, young people find themselves in a ‘low pay, no pay’ cycle (Shildrick et al. 2010), inhabiting low-income jobs that do not offer a living wage or coming under the auspices of an increasingly punitive welfare benefits system. Work is a rite of passage into adulthood; however, structural economic changes since the 1980s have contributed to increased levels of youth unemployment. This is compounded by an education system that is continually being adjusted, ‘improved’ and remade. Within this system, those who fail to achieve the required levels of qualification often become classified as NEET. The activities of those who inhabit this category of deficit are rendered invisible by a discourse that is racialised and classed. What these young people are doing, in terms of work, education and training is rarely recorded; this is therefore my main focus in this chapter. I also introduce the concept of the artist-entrepreneur to describe someone who resides in ‘the ends’, or poor neighbourhoods, with very few resources, and who creates work for themselves or others, or both. Through observation and interview, I foreground the working lives of artistentrepreneurs in the urban music economy as they utilise their creative practice to make a place for themselves.
