Culture is Bad for You: Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries

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Vaccinating Britain investigates the relationship between the British public and vaccination policy since 1945. Our social mobility work looked back, from people born in the 1950s to people born in the 1980s, early 90s, and for each decade, looked at what proportion of people from different social class backgrounds got into creative jobs. Carnivals are a good example: there’s similar fractions of people from different social classes, similar fractions of men and women, and similar fractions of White people and people of colour.

We work with advertising partners to show you personalised ads for events and services you might be interested in, such as open days. So culture can be bad for you if you’re working in the cultural industries and you don’t fit that stereotype of a middle-class, White, male person. I triangulated all that data – pupils on free school meals, their attainment levels and the proportion going on to higher education, and creative work – and mapped that against universities to help them identify where would be good places to focus their efforts and try to expand. But occasional crises showed that faith in the system was tied to contemporary concerns about the medical profession, the power of the state and attitudes to individual vaccines. There has been a big shrinkage in people from working class backgrounds in creative jobs but the chances of someone from a working-class background getting a creative job have not changed.

Social Class, Taste and Inequalities in the Creative Industries, and the 2020 book – Culture is Bad for You. In a period when there is growing interest in inequality in the creative sector and beyond, it provides both an accessible and comprehensive overview of what inequality looks like in cultural fields. It is experienced differently according to social class: for those from middle class origins, with the most economic, social, and cultural resources, unpaid work is an investment in their career.

An important read and resource or everyone working in the creative sector, particularly those working on access and equality. Report was produced in collaboration with Create London, Arts Emergency and the Barbican but involved more than 100 CCI organisations in the UK. A cornerstone of Arts Emergency’s work has been encouraging young people to access creative and humanities education. I think there is that understanding from within the organisational level but, what I was hearing, is that it’s still very much seen as a completely normal and desirable thing by the universities because of the need to get real world experience. One of the organisations Dr Brook worked most closely with is Arts Emergency, an award-winning mentoring charity and long-term support network that works with young creatives.This is a persuasive book, demonstrating the gentrification of the arts across the past forty years as the opportunities have required more upfront investment from culture-makers.

Culture is bad for you is a sweeping, empirical investigation of what it takes to "make it" as a British culture producer, but also of the forces that "break it": unequal access for people with fewer resources. Not everyone can afford to do them and it is very excluding for people who don’t have family connections or the sort of background necessary to get into internships that are of value to them.

Q. The usual mainstream assumption is that culture is good for you – that it’s enjoyable, keeps you healthy, socially connected, inspiring etc. The perception of social inequality in creative work was that it must have got worse, as there used to be more people from working-class backgrounds in creative jobs, so they must now be being excluded. There’s also more younger people than older people, which is the reverse of the pattern that we see for a lot of activities).