Devaluation and disrupted goals: Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic on UK musicians
James, Lara Claire (2025) Devaluation and disrupted goals: Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic on UK musicians. PhD thesis, University for the Creative Arts.
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This thesis seeks to investigate the many impacts wrought by 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns on Britain’s professionally trained freelance musicians. 2020 was a year in which British society questioned both value and values at every level; as our lives were turned upside down by biological, societal, economic and cultural forces. Like many professions, musicians form a network that encompasses 1/ individuals, 2/ groups, and much is contextualised by 3/ the media. I use the event of COVID-19 as a form of natural experiment to understand the multifaceted nature of value at these three different levels. On the understanding that value can be thought of in terms of economic, ethical, social imaginary or as an intrinsic property of a thing, I will undertake a review of value in all its variety and as related to musicians, considering that political decisions both
leading up to, and in the wake of, COVID-19- have adversely affected the lives, careers,
finances, and mental wellbeing of almost all freelance musicians in the UK. I ask how
Goal Disruption Theory (Siegel., 2004, 2011, 2013, Siegel et al. 2014) can be applied
to discover what these events, and the psychological responses of individuals to such
events, have done to the various aspects of value we find in music, and to musicians
themselves?
To comprehend how different members of society may understand value
according to own values and hence apportion perceived viability to both music and
musicians, this research refers to findings resulting from my own qualitative research
methods, to analyse the financial, psychological, artistic and cultural impacts of the
COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns on professional musicians in the UK. I include
interviews, a questionnaire and essays; photographs, social media text extractions and
both qualitative and quantitative literature review to understand changes to the
individual musicians and wider group.
iii
A constructivist grounded theory framework uses a model deriving from Goal
Disruption Theory to analyse and define a radically altered musical landscape in the
UK. I explore whether this model can be used to analyse behavioural and desired end-
state outcomes of musicians living through the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
This research finds that financial stability affects every aspect of being a musician,
that value is strongly linked to appreciation, and that the meaning of value has changed
going forward in our digital/AI era. Consequently, musicians are enduring heightened
levels of purposive challenge or even harm in pursuit of their careers. I investigate
what it means when a radically new context throws not only identity into question; but
professional, artistic and financial survival.
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