Valuations of diversity: the role of marquee quotas in creative industries

Abstract This article examines how creative industry workers engage with diversity, absent a formal organizational mandate to do so. Through in-depth interviews with independent music industry personnel (N = 50), the article identifies how marquee quotas—racially diverse representation on rosters and festival bills—are used to pursue and implement diversity. Such quotas are justified via four distinct valuations of diversity: aesthetic, economic, reputational and moral. Both people of colour and white participants justify the importance of diversity on moralistic grounds. By contrast, white participants more often justify the value of diversity by making claims about the aesthetic, economic and reputational benefits of marquee quotas. The deployment of these more self-serving valuations has consequences for the extent to which people of colour can feel authentically included. The analysis contributes to critiques of the socio-economic role and consequences of diversity valuations, within the context of a creative industry.