Working-class creatives don’t stand a chance in UK today, leading artists warn | Inequality
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/feb/21/working-class-creatives-dont-stand-a-chance-in-uk-today-leading-artists-warn
Posted by toe_tappingly_tragic
19 Comments
This similar article from almost 13 years ago stuck with me in a similar vein. [Once we had anarchy in the UK. Now all we have is monarchy in the UK](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/08/julie-burchill-queen-diamond-jubilee)
As a screenwriter I’ve really chosen the worst possible time to build a career haven’t I?
I find entertainment in this country, especially comedy, much harder to relate to nowadays because it’s mostly just nepo babies with no real understanding or experience of the real world. For every talented working class person breaking their back trying to enter the industry there will be like ten of these nepo babies just strolling in due to their connections.
It depends on what field it is. It’s never been easier to get into music, literature or games to be honest. You can publish your own shit online and create your own audience.
If you are an actor or an artist though I think it’s fucked yeah.
Seeing as nobody from the working class has read the Guardian for at least a generation this feels more like a group wank for rich sods than a genuine attempt to decry the lack of working class accessibility in the arts.
Entertainment and culture could be the UKs primary export if we locked in.
We have the best artists, storytellers, and musicians on the planet. Half of all Hollywood movies are filmed in our studios. We punch above our weight in both classical and contemporary art.
Stifling opportunities like this is massively shooting ourselves in the foot. The next Elton Johns or Edgar writes could be stuck mindlessly stacking shelves in a warehouse for the rest of their lives.
If I were pm there would be MAJOR investment in media education. There should be a direct pipeline that gets working class kids into music, tv, movies, and even video games. Our country has a lot to offer and a lot of creative resources.
That’s weird because access to creative art tools has never been cheaper than anytime before. You can literally run a digital studio out of your bedroom on a £13 subscription.
I got the full suite of coral art professional software for £5 on humble bundle.
Equipment in general has never been cheaper and the notion of a bedroom internet star never more common. (See Billie Eilish and Capaldi as some examples).
It all comes down to the fact that the supply of art and artists/creatives vastly exceeds the demand, so the only artists/creatives who can establish a viable career are either heavily advantaged, extremely lucky, or both.
Loads of people want to work in the arts because it’s a “fun” career that lots of people are passionate about and enjoy as a hobby. But there aren’t nearly as many financially viable positions in the sector as there are wannabe professional artists, which means that gaining a career in the arts becomes extremely competitive, favouring those who already have plenty of advantages and can survive doing unpaid or poorly paid work to build experience.
A chance to do what, have their creativity sapped by bloated companies?
True artists must remain independent and self-owned. When they sell out, they tend to stop being artists and just become content producers.
One thing this article mentions that I want to highlight is the drop in interest in arts subjects in school. The guardian frames this as a “creativity crisis”, but what it actually is is kids today having as much online artistic guidance as they could ever need and a perception that taking arts classes would only hamper their creativity by preventing them from focusing on the styles and subjects they’re interested in.
The other major point the article makes is “we should have a welfare state that lets people not have jobs and just make art”, which is nuts. Maybe in a hundred years we can have that, but it’s not unreasonable to expect the artistically-inclined to still pull their societal weight.
Reminds me that about 15 years ago the Guardian took on their editor‘s daughter. Her writing was so bad she was grilled relentlessly. I think she eventually changed her surname due to the heat.
Much as I like a lot of people who came out of it the Cambridge foot lights seem to be one of the few ways into that career. This entrenched old boys network of the entertainment industry. I’m sure they still had to work hard but not as hard as people without that sort of leg up.
I’m just watching the new Wallace and Gromit, I’m so proud of Aardman being such a great British animation studio pioneered by a hugely ambitious student film, but there’s much less chance of anything else like that nowadays.
How many UK bands signed on before they made it? Or if they didn’t sign on, how many managed to live for sweeties while they worked on their craft?
Both paths impossible now. Only the rich can risk the failure or fund the time it takes to give a creative career a proper go. And that doesn’t even include the nepotism that has given pretty much every successful British actor or musician under 35 their success.
I luckily have tickets to see Black Sabbath for their last show. It makes me think how likely it is again that four working class people from a poor and unfashionable place in the UK could have the success or influence that they’ve had. It’s not likely. It’s impossible.
Because the Who had it easy in the 60’s……. Meanwhile The Rolling Stones had zero connections or rich parents to help them through
It’s the circle of life
The problem is investing in people when you won’t see any return for years. The way that used to work was going on the dole. I don’t see any fair options today. Spend thousands on the guy that says he wants to be the next Peter Kay? Literally thousands of kids would try if you were offering free money and probably 0.5% would be good enough. Creative industries have always been about the top 0.5% or so getting 99% of the rewards
Fuck the noise, support your local music venues if you still want them to exist in the future.
What are the working classes doing within the creative sector?
No, really. The creative sector, as a London dweller, is the sector of the middle and upper class wives and girlfreinds of people who are successful within other sectors in my experience. They do not work, and their actual success is irrelevant. The creative sector is a supplemented sector by more successful people.
I am not saying that is a good thing, more an observation of how things are. The creative realms are for the middle classes or partners thereof upwards.
Not a question of fair, or right. More an acknowledgement of centuries old precedent.
Telling people they can enter the realm of “awaiting marriage to a suitable candidate” is unfair, because it is a closed club.
To be honest when have the arts ever been led by working class people? Loads of creatives in the public eye claim to be working class and they’re anything but
This is largely a tangent on a pet-peeve, but I despise the description of people as “creatives”.
It’s a nonsense self-aggrandising term for people who don’t want to admit to themselves they work in marketing.
Everyone’s creative, it’s a trait that’s just part of being alive. The whole point of the term is to divide it into a term to look down on people as a pushback to the cultural shift in placing more value into technical careers and to punch-down on people who’re doing regular jobs stacking shelves or working in call-centres (in a “temporarily embarassed millionaire” way sometimes, it would seem).