Creativity is a skill that everyone has’: Analysing creative workers’ self-presentations

This paper discusses the research use of creative workers’ publicly available self-presentations such as documentaries or social media posts. In so doing it contributes to our understanding of how creative workers might fruitfully be researched. The paper, firstly, argues that self-presentations can provide valuable and rich insights into creative workers’ self-understanding, and thus can be of interest to creative industries researchers. Secondly, using the example of a film produced by Austrian product designers, the paper then demonstrates why researchers need to consider the processes through, and contexts in, which self-presentations are generated. The paper explains why self-presentations may not be treated in the same way as the first person accounts traditionally generated for social science research, and presents recommendations for how self-presentations might form parts of rigorous research designs.