So many modes of culture that are essential to artistic communities are missed when research and policy focus primarily on economic success stories in the so-called creative industries. What about the non-profits, the volunteers, the temporary and non-commercial spaces and groups? And what about the glorious failures? Making Worlds and the book series it initiates, Cultural Production and Everyday Life, correct these oversights by spotlighting the small-scale cultural production of amateurs, hobbyists, autodidacts, and various countercultural scenes.   

Miranda Campbell and Benjamin Woo advocate for an ecological view of the grassroots forces that sustain and develop cultural and artistic activity. The authors ground this book in examples from their own involvement in and research with cultural communities such as comics creators, game players, music scenes, zine-makers, artist co-operatives, and fan cultures. Serving as a response to some of the early twenty-first century’s gig-economy boosterism, this is also a book that seeks to document how culture is not only consumed but produced in everyday practices.

Broadening the field of cultural studies and understandings of what constitutes culture, Making Worlds recognizes and celebrates the work of the chronically unsupported, underfunded, and the precariously situated in spaces at risk of eviction and gentrification.