The arts and culture sectors are often thought of as vehicles for social mobility, but unpaid internships, low-paid entry-level work and nepotism all make these industries prohibitive to people from low-income backgrounds. This is borne out in numbers: according to one 2018 study by the arts organisation Create London, only 18.2% of people working in music and performing and visual arts grew up in working-class households. In publishing, the figure is a pitiful 12.6%; in film, TV and radio this falls to 12.4%. Take race into account and the figures are even worse: only 4.8% of employees in music, performing and visual arts come from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, while in museums and galleries this figure plummets to 2.7%.
After the 2008 financial crisis, we saw how cuts to arts funding created a cultural climate that was starkly misaligned with the reality of many people living in austerity Britain. Smaller theatres and local libraries were forced to close, eroding many people’s access to forms of culture. As the labour market contracted, the number of unpaid internships soared. Today, some 48% of people under the age of 30 who are working in the arts have completed an unpaid internship, according to the Create London study. These jobs are only feasible for people who have the financial safety net to work for free – meaning many people from low-income backgrounds can’t afford to consider a career in these industries.
The impact of coronavirus will likely exacerbate this already skewed situation. Precarious freelancers have been among the least sheltered from the economic shock of the pandemic. Despite the government’s £1.57bn support package for the arts, the National Theatre recently announced that it would be laying off its 400 casual workers by 31 August. Many freelancers worry that the government bailout will be spent on institutions and management staff while lower-paid creatives leave the sector in droves. For people without family connections, freelance work can be crucial to getting a foot in the door. But without financial support, it’s doubtful that freelancers without financial safety nets will be able to stay in the sector.
Dave O’Brien, co-author of the 2018 Create London report and chancellor’s fellow in cultural and creative industries at the University of Edinburgh, recently provided evidence about this to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee. “There is already a crisis in the cultural and creative industries,” he said. “Covid-19 will unquestionably make these issues worse.” O’Brien described how the loss of cultural organisations, fewer jobs, fewer projects and an intensification of competition for jobs and funding would shape Britain’s cultural landscape after coronavirus. The winners, he said, “will be those who already have economic, social and cultural resources”.
In an article for the Evening Standard that accompanied the announcement of the government’s support package, culture secretary Oliver Dowden referred to the benefits of going to West End shows as a schoolboy – and how every child should be nourished by the same experiences. It’s a noble message, but one that makes few concessions to the small local and grassroots organisations that rely overwhelmingly on government funding, or the forms of culture that don’t support the tourism industry.
What about culture that brings in little financial return? The Arts Council only supports non-profit organisations, and has recently started to collect data on the socio-economic background of employees at its portfolio organisations, in addition to the data it already collects about gender, ethnicity and disability. But when it comes to the government bailout, Dowden has said that organisations will have to prove how they contribute to economic growth – a condition that will deal a blow to grassroots cultural projects that can be a lifeline to their communities, particularly those outside London and other major cities.
“If you’ve got a turnover of less than £25,000 [per annum], you can forget about it,” Nicholas Okwulu, founder of two local arts outreach organisations in South London told me of the government’s bailout. Through PemPeople and the Livesey Exchange, Okwulu helps elevate the voices of local people, particularly young black people from working-class households, through regular events such as the Southwark Untold series of workshops, exhibitions and performances at Tate Modern.
When I asked Okwulu if the government bailout would help him, he laughed: “That’s not going to reach us.” While the arts establishment made overtures to racial diversity, he said, many larger institutions effectively ended up pocketing the cash that could go to smaller, more targeted organisations. “We hear people saying Bame this, Bame that, but it’s a gesture to attract funding and support, while organisations like mine, that are really embedded in the community and a network of young people, are struggling to survive.”
The pandemic has dealt a grim blow to precarious workers in the arts and media sector and people from low-income backgrounds hoping to break into these industries. The impact of this will be twofold: in the short term, thousands of people who contribute to the UK’s creative life stand to lose their livelihoods. In the longer term, Britain’s arts and culture sector risks becoming further skewed towards a wealthy minority. Unless culture strives to represent a broad cross-section of society, what case does it have in asking for financial support?
As the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu put it in a 1996 series of lectures about television, journalists – and by extension TV presenters, artists, writers, actors, directors and musicians – are “reality makers”. They have the power to create a world that the rest of us consume. As long as market imperatives prevent the arts and cultural sectors from reflecting the interests of the public in their commissioning and hiring practices, it can make no claim to be representing reality. To protect Britain’s cultural landscape, we need to reconsider what and who culture is for – and challenge the notion that it’s only valuable if it generates a profit.