“If you have an undying passion for something, why not make money from it?” that’s Liam’s opinion, a young entrepreneur working in the creative industries. But Liam’s passion is not only a personal asset, it’s a national asset. If young people are regarded as emblems of the future then it’s no surprise that their passion to make money is now considered to be nationally important. The current political message is ‘Let’s harness young people’s natural drive and ambition to help rescue the nation from economic distress – after all they are our greatest resource!’ In this guest post, Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn question the values driving the growing convergence between education, enterprise and popular culture.

After a lot of work finding schools, we have begun fieldwork and carried out six focus groups in two schools. In this post, we (Kim and Heather) share some of the things that surprised us in our 14 to 17 year-old participants’ talk about celebrities – from arguments about diver Tom Daley to animated discussions of classic Hollywood and Bollywood film stars.