Book: British Muslim Women in the Cultural and Creative Industries

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.

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).

Table Contents

1. Introduction
2. Muslim Women in Britain – A Changing Landscape
3. Cool Britannia? British Cultural Industries and Diversity
4. Muslim Women, Education, and Art School
5. Muslim Lifestyle Media
6. Modest Fashion and Textiles
7. Visual arts and the Art World
8. Creative Activism: Tackling Islamophobia, Racism and Sexism
9.Conclusion

Bibliographic Information

Title: British Muslim Women in the Cultural and Creative Industries

Author(s): Saskia Warren

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Length: 352 pages

ISBN: 978-1474459310

Pub. Date: May 31, 2022

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