British Muslim Women in the Cultural and Creative Industries - by Saskia Warren (Paperback)

About the Book

Presents an intimate portrait of how Muslim women are transforming media, culture and the arts in contemporary Britain

Book Synopsis

Muslim women are opening up new educational and career pathways across the UK, pioneering roles in digital media, fashion design and visual art. However, their contributions to the economy and culture are rarely the focus of media and government reports. Now, Saskia Warren draws on in-depth fieldwork with British Muslim women working in these roles, taking a narrative approach to look at how they frame their own everyday labour experiences.
Drawing on interviews, focus groups, activity diaries, and online digital and visual analysis, Warren explores how Muslim womanhood is variously celebrated, contested, resisted and subverted. From negotiating family expectations to encountering prejudice from education providers and employers, and from founding businesses to finding ways to respect religion in their creative work, these personal insights bring the struggles and successes of British Muslim women creatives to life.

From the Back Cover

An intimate portrait of how Muslim women are transforming media, culture and the arts in contemporary Britain Muslim women are opening up new educational and career pathways across the UK, pioneering roles in digital media, fashion design and visual art. However, their contributions to the economy and culture are rarely the focus of media and government reports. Now, Saskia Warren draws on in-depth fieldwork with British Muslim women working in these roles, taking a narrative approach to look at how they frame their own everyday labour experiences. Drawing on interviews, focus groups, activity diaries, and online digital and visual analysis, Warren explores how Muslim womanhood is variously celebrated, contested, resisted and subverted. From negotiating family expectations to encountering prejudice from education providers and employers, and from founding businesses to finding ways to respect religion in their creative work, these personal insights bring the struggles and successes of British Muslim women creatives to life. Key features - Sets out an innovative agenda for the importance of faith and religion within the cultural and creative industries and the lives of workers - Reveals how creative work in fashion, digital media and visual arts fosters spaces of identity, belonging and exclusion - Uncovers real-life examples of experiences of Islamophobia, sexism and racism that Muslim women face at work - Reflects on how Muslim faith and gender intersect and are transformed by ethnicity, 'race' and racialisation, class and geography in working lives - Draws on 46 interviews including with Qaisra Shahraz, MBE, fiction author and festival producer; Deeyah Khan, award-winning film and magazine producer; and Zarah Hussain, visual artist and winner of Lumen Prize 2017 People's Choice Award Saskia Warren is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at University of Manchester. Her research focuses on inequalities, cultural production and cultural consumption, religion, gender and ethnicity, curating and co-production.

Review Quotes

An urgent and original contribution to the work on inequalities in creative and cultural industries.--Anamik Saha, University of Leeds "Cultural Geographies"

For anyone interested in British Muslim culture, marginalised women's education and employment opportunities, and faith-led creativity, this book offers an in-depth investigation of this relatively underexplored field.--Lezley George, Kingston University "Journal of Muslims in Europe"

What is especially impressive is that Warren avoids simply registering problems and instead develops meticulous narratives and analyses of the resistance to Islamophobia and racism and strategies for inclusion or for the development of an acceptable niche by artists.--Jonas Otterbeck "Religion, State and Society"

This detailed, substantive study will be of interest to academics in human geography, sociology and the arts, as well as to Muslim women in the cultural and creative industries, other leaders in these fields, administrators in schools of art, design, and communication, and political decision-makers at local and national levels.--Mary B. Vogl "EuropeNow"

About the Author

Dr Saskia Warren is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at University of Manchester. From 2017-2020 she held an Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellowship, Geographies of Muslim Women and the UK Cultural and Creative Economy. She recently co-curated the contemporary art and textile exhibition Beyond Faith: Muslim Women Artists Today, The Whitworth (2019-20). Her research interests are inequalities, cultural production and cultural consumption, religion, gender and ethnicity, curating and co-production. Her inter-disciplinary work has been published in leading international peer reviewed journals including Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Cultural Geographies and the European Journal of Culture Studies. She is co-editor with Phil Jones of the collection, Creative Economies, Creative Communities: Rethinking Place, Policy, and Practice (Routledge, London).

Qaisra Shahraz is a prize-winning and critically-acclaimed novelist, scriptwriter, peace and gender activist.