Everything is in My Hands. Creative Subjectivities in Privileged Art School Students

Abstract

How do privileged young people engage in artistic fields? Are the arts classified and classifying for educational paths? To examine these questions, I propose observations and reflections from a study of secondary art schools in Italy. Artistic education has received focused but limited attention from sociology, as part of an increasing interest towards cultural labour. However, Italian artistic schools remain a neglected research theme. The proposed study on secondary art schools aims to examine certain early dynamics of creative fields in Milan. This article interrogates the educational experiences of privileged students at art schools. The research is based on discursive interviews and focus groups with these students. Students’ class culture is investigated focusing on diverse scholastic dispositions and different outlooks on the future. The Bourdieusian notions of cultural capital and habitus allow certain dynamics of the aspiring young creatives’ process of self-formation to be examined. The analysis reveals privileged individuals who are ambitious, self-confident and with great forward-thinking skills, but who are also academically negligent. The trust in individual enterprise and success is deeply interiorised by interviewees. These neoliberal and entrepreneurial ideas are infused with moral, and often tacit, considerations on class boundaries. The analysis reveals some aspects of the symbolic boundary-making; dynamics in which a meritocratic ethos plays a key role in legitimating social divisions.