Here’s why culture is bad for you

Anyone reading this newsletter is surely into culture—books, art, theatre, movies, all that. We are too. So why, in 2020, did we write a book called Culture is Bad for You? And why have we released an updated version last week?

Mostly, it’s out of concern. Our arts, culture and creative industries face one of their most difficult moments in recent memory. Public funding is under huge pressure, at both the national and local levels. Specific subsectors, such as the TV industry, are going through a serious unemployment crisis. Organisations worry about declining audiences, both in person and online.

In this context, it might seem strange to focus on the substance and scale of inequalities facing our creative sectors. Yet the nature of inequality across the cultural industries, in both audiences and workforce, means that any sustainable settlement for culture will have to be one that tackles unfairness and exclusion.

Inequalities in the workforce are stark. In the 2020 edition of Culture is Bad for You, we mapped the lack of diversity and social mobility across the UK’s creative economy. Subsequent census and labour market data, which we’ve used for the new edition, shows that the crisis continues—and it’s especially bad in particular sectors. A full 72 per cent of musicians and 71 per cent of photographers, audio-visual and broadcasting equipment operators are men. This throws into sharp relief debates over sexism in the music and the film and TV industries.

Even where specific jobs are dominated by women—for example, artists (61 per cent) or dancers and choreographers (84 per cent)—this has not translated into gender equality among the most prestigious posi­tions. Nor are women dominating prizes, awards and other markers of cultural importance.

The census has also allowed for very granular analysis of particular occupations. Less than 1 per cent of managers and dir­ectors in the creative industries are black women. The same group also makes up less than 1 per cent of musicians and newspaper editors, and less than 2 per cent of artists, of arts officers, producers, authors, writers and translators.

We see these inequalities reflected in the demographics of audiences. Not attending the arts is the norm for the population. Only cinema sees over half of the population saying they have attended once or more in the past year. For artforms such as classical music (8 per cent of the population), ballet (5 per cent) and opera (4 per cent) the proportions are much smaller.

These proportions are themselves shaped by factors such as social class. There are large gaps between the proportions of middle-class people who have visited the cinema (69 per cent) and working-class people (49 per cent). For classical (13 per cent and 3 per cent) or opera (6 per cent and 1 per cent) the gaps are present even where the overall proportions of the population attending these artforms are small.

One question that flows from this analysis is why these inequalities exist. Another question is what to do about them. The reasons are complex, long-term and do not have a single simple solution. They reflect issues in our education system, access to culture for young people and low—sometimes no—pay in creative jobs. These broader social issues shape, but in no way excuse, implicit (and sometimes explicit) discrimination in commissioning and hiring. Our research demonstrates how some social groups are seen as “risky” hires and investments. Others are treated as the “norm” in the industry.

One prominent example of this is gender. Working in culture can be difficult for everyone. Most careers will not last for 20 or 30 years. However, there are significant differences in career longevity for men and women; more women are leaving the sector in their late twenties and early thirties. We conducted interviews with over 230 creative workers from all kinds of demographics, capturing their experiences and working lives. One subgroup stood out from this fieldwork—women with children. Their testimony revealed how embedded expectations of long working hours and assumptions about women’s roles combine to create a hostile environment.

Our creative sector is supposed to be a great British success story. It should be open to anyone with talent, irrespective of race, gender or class. But at least things can change. Transforming pay and hiring, properly funding organisations and ensuring creators are properly remunerated for their work are some starting points. On top of that, we might upend assumptions about what sort of people make good leaders and what kinds of cultural “products” will attract audiences.

Making culture good for you is possible—indeed, a moment of crisis is probably the best time for this to happen. It will need action from policymakers, creative organisations and audiences too. Otherwise, the patterns of inequality outlined by both editions of Culture is Bad for You will likely only get worse.