It was the most high-profile moment of New Labour’s “Cool Britannia” campaign: a celebration of a modern, outward-facing Britain with a new kind of industry, and a new kind of workforce.
“We saw it as a chance to redefine what the UK’s economic future would be about,” recalls John Newbigin, then a government special advisor on culture, of Tony Blair’s garish Downing Street reception for the great and good of the UK’s creative industries, held 20 years ago this month. “Not just factories or pinstriped bankers, but creative entrepreneurs drawn from across society.”
Ever since, the creative industries have been a favourite of the British government and media. Successive prime ministers, including Theresa May, have hosted receptions for the entertainment and fashion industries, and lauded the UK as a “cultural powerhouse” that generates jobs and wealth for the country.
“One of the UK’s little-known export successes in recent years has been creative industries policy,” says Newbigin. “Countries hire British consultants and academics to develop their own strategies for the sector.”
According to Unesco, this sector now accounts for more than $2tn worldwide, or 3% of the world’s total economy. But who, precisely, is benefiting from this growth of Britain’s creative industries? For behind the glamorous events and economic clout, there remain profound issues of inequality, exploitation and lack of opportunity.
The 2015 Oscars were notorious for the lack of ethnic diversity among nominees, and the controversy was echoed at this year’s Baftas, which revealed how top British actors were overwhelmingly drawn from wealthier homes and fee-paying schools. In the music industry, there was a high-profile spat in 2015 between Labour MP Chris Bryant and singer James Blunt, after Bryant complained the industry had become dominated by those from privileged backgrounds. Blunt, who attended Harrow School, responded by calling Bryant a “classist gimp”.
Such flurries of indignation tend to focus exclusively on those in the public eye. People may notice that their favourite actors, comedians and singers live in Primrose Hill and have upper-class accents, without appreciating the industry and networks they operate in. Whether it is television commissioners, newspaper editors, art curators or casting agents, the people who actually produce our national culture and sell it around the world are drawn from an astonishingly small demographic pool.
As Newbigin acknowledges, “We have to accept that, despite 20 years of government attention, Britain’s creative industries still fail to reflect the country as a whole.”
A pathway for the privileged
The chronic lack of diversity, equality and social mobility throughout the creative economy is borne out by the latest research. A forthcoming academic article in the journal American Behavioral Scientist analyses official employment figures to present a bleak picture of diversity in the UK’s sector.
In particular, the data shows how much the middle classes now dominate the workforce. In publishing, for example, 63% of employees have parents from Social Economic Classification groups 1 and 2 (the two highest of eight social-economic categories, comprising those with higher managerial and professional occupations). By contrast, just 13% of those in publishing are drawn from families in SEC groups 6-8 (unskilled or unemployed).
In film and television, the figure is 54% for those with parents in SEC Groups 1-2; in music and the performing arts, it is 49%. By way of comparison, the average for the British workforce overall is 29% from SEC groups 1-2, and 35% from groups 6-8.
The figures for ethnicity and gender are similarly dismaying. Women make up 52% of the UK workforce, but no more than a third of employees in the creative industries, while ethnic minority employment in industries such as film, television and music is less than half the national average.
More surveys undertaken by creative industry bodies and sector skills councils indicate that diversity levels are significantly lower for the more senior jobs. Only 14% of UK film directors are female, while the proportion of black and minority ethnic executives in film production, statistically speaking, stood at zero in 2015 – which is why actor-turned-executive producer Idris Elba has been praised for giving young black actors a chance to work both in front of and behind the camera of the TV series Guerilla.
“The creative sector likes to portray itself as tolerant, meritocratic and diverse,” says Prof Kate Oakley, one of the report’s authors. “But this image is starkly at odds with the facts. The types of people who make so much of the culture in this country bear little resemblance to the people who consume it.”
While many of the factors stifling access to the creative industries reflect general trends – the cost and barriers to studying at university, rising housing costs and low levels of union representation – Dave O’Brien, Oakley’s co-author, argues there are also structural inequalities that are distinct to the creative sector.
