Hit The North
Working-class creatives once sculpted UK culture, but today they are a dying breed. The Policy and Evidence Centre created a report tackling inequality, geography and the future of the arts.
The UK's creative industries have long been lauded as world leaders, whether in Film, TV, Music, Design, Writing, Visual Art or video games. But there is an unseen and growing divide (that said, if you're from the North of England, it will be immediately obvious to you). New research shows that working‑class creatives are at their lowest point in more than a decade.
New data has shown that working-class representation in the UK’s creative industries has fallen to its lowest level in over a decade — just 8-10% of those who work in Film, TV, Video Games and Writing across all the creative sectors are working-class. In particular, the North of England is losing some of its brightest working-class talent!
This is not just playing out as a national challenge, but a massive regional crisis, again, especially in the North of England, where deepening economic precarity and long-term underfunding of everything from basic infrastructure to culture means that working‑class talent can barely survive, let alone thrive.
Sheila Take A Bow
Not only is this the lowest figure in more than a decade, it is also considerably lower than the levels previously reported. Sixty per cent of those working across arts, culture and heritage grew up in a household where the main earner worked in a managerial or professional job, compared to 43 per cent of the workforce as a whole.
Those from working-class origins are four times less likely to make it, compared to those from privileged backgrounds. Creative careers are more exclusive than ever – increasingly, helped along by financial safety nets, available only to those who know the right people or can afford to work for free (or close to).
The report also looked at why the North of England is worst affected
Creative jobs are notoriously more centralised towards the south and within London & this is particularly true for more competitive sectors like film and television! As this is now considered the 'norm' for most creative industries right now, the life choices of working‑class creatives in the North are slowly and painfully being rewritten. Again, the biggest barrier to entry is chronic underfunding, even though creativity is something that the general public use en masse daily.... I often ask people who are negative towards public funds going to the arts or if they're reticent towards it - I always ask them this, could they go without TV, radio, books (printed/ebooks), music, videogames, the theatre, the cinema, the internet and such for a week? For a month? For a year? For life? And not one has said they could. Which begs the question, why is there such huge holes in funding, but also the ever present disparity in funds & opportunities between the North and South, a divide that has existed for as long as I can remember.
Creative arts in the North is already reeling from years of underfunding, and audience numbers are constantly shrinking. The small number of headline-grabbing investments in areas of the North do not have an impact on the vast majority of us – and by the time they arrive, local authority arts budgets have also been heavily cut.
While there is ample support for large publishers — the behemoths? — there continues to be limited support for independent, working-class creatives, artists and writers.
New research from the Working Class Creatives Database (WCCD) 2023–24 report shows that the majority of working-class artists do not feel supported. On top of that, they also battle financial hardship and lack of clear industry pathways.
The WCCD report highlights ongoing issues in arts education that mean talented and hardworking northern working-class creatives lack the important connections or access to funding that their privately educated peers and elders have used to progress their careers. Sadly, if I review the situation year by year then I feel that this article would remain relevant with everything limping along as usual, especially in the North.
NOTE: Reference and more reading HERE
One final thought. Historically I've tried financial support networks such as Kickstarter, Go Fund Me, etc, plus I've worked with and helped several independent creators, especially within the videogame space, to drive an awareness and an audiences to these, and in my experience the asset creation, copy/press releases and social media marketing effort put in very rarely reflects the amounts raised, admittedly there are anomalies, though these aren't usually independent writer/publishers.
I'd be very interested to hear what others think, so please feel free to leave any comments below, as this is a situation that's very close to my heart, as I have several books and plays in me, though I've never had the access to funding., support and encouragement - I'm trying to change this, though the tide certainly feels against me.
If you enjoyed this article and would like to support an independent content creator such as myself, please consider buying me a coffee HERE it would be greatly appreciated.
George :)
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