BRITAIN’S CREATIVE INDUSTRY HAS APRIVILEGE PROBLEM. IT HAS NEVER BEEN HARDER FOR AWORKING-CLASS ARTIST, WRITER OR DESIGNER TO MAKE IT. HERE, ELLEINVITES LEADING VOICES IN THE ARTS TO EXPLORE HOW TO SMASH THE CLASS CEILING
The landscape
When was the last time you consumed art that felt like it truly reflected you? When you finished a book, or watched a TV series, that so effectively synthesised your own life – your experiences, outlook and cultural predilections – that it felt almost as though someone had created it specifically for you?
If you’re middle-class, chances are that this happens with some regularity. But for working-class Brits, that sense of uncanny resonance is vanishingly rare, possibly because – per the Office of National Statistics – the proportion of working-class creatives in the UK has more than halved since the 1970s. Though opportunities for working-class creatives in the UK have never been plentiful, these days they’re even fewer and farther between. When the Oldham Coliseum Theatre near Manchester closed after losing its Arts Council funding in March last year, Christopher Eccleston –who grew up going to see plays there – said it would be ‘impossible’ for him to become an actor today.
And our creative output – one of the UK’s greatest exports – is poorer for it. As fewer working-class actors, musicians, writers and film-makers get the chance to produce work that reflects their lives, stories with working-class narratives increasingly disappear from the mainstream. Charlotte Regan, writer and director of last year’s critically acclaimed coming-of-age movie Scrapper, has spoken of her desire to create a film centring on ‘happy and joyful’ working-class characters. There’s often considerable pressure from the (largely white, middle class) gatekeepers of industry – TV producers, or publishers for example – for the working-class stories that do make it through to conform to stereotypical ‘poverty-porn’ narratives.
Then there’s the money side of things. Having parents who can pay your way while you do an unpaid internship can make the difference between persevering or calling it a day. When I graduated over a decade ago, I found that entry to many industries I was interested in – journalism, the arts – was reliant on an indeterminate period of unpaid work. Even as someone whose parents live in London, I couldn’t afford to entertain the prospect of working for free. Instead, I found a reasonably paid, chronically unfulfilling job, and manoeuvred my way into a writing career in my late twenties. These unpaid roles remain all too prevalent. Asurvey by the European Youth Forum in April 2023 found that 52% of respondents had done at least two unpaid internships before securing a job.
The advantages of the middle class
