Discrimination against working-class people in arts highlighted in new report

Discrimination against working-class people in the UK arts industries has been highlighted in a new report. 

Produced by Nazir Afza, Chancellor of the University of Manchester, and the National Education Union’s General Secretary Avis Gilmore, Class Ceiling: A Review of Working Class Participation in the Arts is based on qualitative and quantitive research. 

Using surveys, interviews, and focus groups held in Greater Manchester – home to the UK’s second largest regional arts and culture economy – the paper paints a troubling picture of declining social mobility, and states that discrimination against working-class people should be made illegal.

It also emphasises dismal realities for arts professionals from lower income families. Just 43% are earning enough to make a living and 51% have experienced discrimination due to their background.

A number of factors were identified as contributing to a rapid decline in participation and engagement in arts education and training amongst this demographic. A lack of financial safety net, the high cost of university and college courses – capped at just under £9,800 per annum for the forthcoming academic year – and lack of guaranteed income after graduation were particular causes for concern. 

However, problems are presenting before young people even consider higher education options — between 2010 and 2024, the number of students choosing a GCSE arts course in high school dropped by 42%. Although, conversely, there has been an increase in pupils taking creative subjects in the years leading up to that point.

For school leavers, a lack of apprenticeships is also a major problem. Only 0.5% of new apprenticeships covered in the study belonged to artistic and cultural fields. This means competition is incredibly high. For example, when five trainee positions were advertised at Co-Op Live, Britain’s largest indoor music arena, 2,304 people applied, equating to 460 per role. 

All this aside, wider economic challenges facing the arts are also having an impact, and the report flags music as a field which is struggling in particular. The demise of grassroots venues, which not only act as entry points for musicians but also production, administration and management staff, was understandably cited. 

According to the assessment, North West England — Greater Manchester’s geographical region — is now home to more permanently shuttered small stages than anywhere else in the UK. So-called pay-to-play policies at larger events and festivals were also flagged as unfairly impacting those who can’t afford to buy a place on lineups, or work for free. 

Warning of more working class artistic potential being lost, ‘Class Ceiling’ goes on to identify the failings of diversity initiatives which largely overlook economic backgrounds. This is now felt most severely at senior levels and is in turn reflected in programming – less than 18% of respondents said they saw their own lived experiences in art form. 

You can read the full report here.

In 2022 the universities of Edinburgh, Manchester and Sheffield published their own findings on this subject. At the time, the proportion of people from lower income backgrounds working within the creative industries had halved since the 1970s. 

Three years earlier, DJ Mag published a feature exploring the dominance of the white middle class in dance music. In 2020, journalist and author Matt Anniss published an in-depth look at how club culture and its mythologies regularly write out contributions from working class and people of colour.