‘Goodbye, foul year, and take your inequalities with you’
The Joe Must Go On, a column by Joe Hakim
A look at Arts & Culture, and not always through his rose-tinted monocle
I’ve never got on with this time of year. The triple-whammy of Christmas, New Year and birthday means the festive period tends to be a period of withdrawal and reflection for me.
And trying to earn a living as a freelance creative means that I view the year in much the same terms as a professional gambler – a spreadsheet of wins and losses; all the gigs and opportunities that came through, offset with all the: "‘Thank you for your submission, but unfortunately on this occasion…’
It’s like an existential Tax Return to go alongside the real one, a futile attempt to assign ‘value’ to the all the time I spend writing and creating work. Of course, beyond vaguely metaphysical questions around fulfilment and self-expression, the only real way of gauging ‘success’ is through cold, hard numbers: my financial earnings.
This leads to a single burning question that coagulates in my mind in between several glasses of wine sometime around the beginning of January. It’s a question that most, if not all, freelance creatives ask themselves at some point, a question I imagine will be ringing through the collective subconscious of everyone who works within the creative industries in this foul year of 2020:
How much longer can I get away with doing this?
I’ve always known that ‘making it’ as an artist, writer or performer is a difficult, close to impossible, task. And by ‘making it’, I’m choosing to define that vague notion as way of earning a living, as a job that pays the bills.
And I’ve always known on some deep, fundamental level, that my background – my social-class – would act as one of the barriers to carving out a space in the creative industries.
For the longest time, I didn’t have the vocabulary or capacity to understand or express this feeling. I experienced it as some sort of feeling or force that weighed down upon my ambitions and expectations. The very idea that someone like me from West Hull with a weird, foreign-sounding surname could somehow stumble upon a ‘career’ in the arts and culture sectors was absurd.
Unable to put my finger on it, this frustration, this anger that I felt at the injustice of it all – coupled with the absolute belief that if I expressed any interest in pursuing a career as an artist or writer to my teachers or peer group I would be ridiculed – formed into a very substantial chip on my shoulder which I carried from teens right the way through my twenties and into my thirties.
Depending on who you speak to, that chip is still on my shoulder.
Shove your ‘platforms’ and ‘exposure’.
‘Inequality creates massive insecurity if you’re the one being marginalised’
Of course, at the root of my ‘bad attitude’ is massive insecurity, a deeply held belief that there isn’t a space for people like me in the creative industries: that the only real way people from a working-class or minority background can participate in arts and culture is as an observer, a beneficiary of it.
One of the most destructive aspects of this insecurity is that it quickly forms into a horrible, psychological feedback loop: anticipating rejection, I lash out at perceived establishments to save further hurt down the line, causing insecurity to curdle into self-fulfilling prophecy on a few occasions.
I love being creative: writing and telling stories are the reason I get up in the morning, and I’ve spent the majority of my adult life trying to pursue a career in the creative industries.
I’m at the point where I genuinely don’t know how to do anything else other than type and talk rubbish. But as much as I love arts and culture, it’s been very easy over the years to convince myself it doesn’t love me back.
And so it was with mixed feelings that I recently read two reports, ‘Getting in and getting on: Class, participation and job quality in the UK’s Creative Industries’ from the Policy and Evidence Centre, and ‘Cultured Communities: The crisis in local funding for arts and culture’ from the Fabian Society.
Because for all the talk of the need for greater inclusion, diversity and representation in the arts and creative industries over the last few years, it seems that working-class and minority artists and producers still in exactly the same boat, albeit one that is that close to capsizing following the utterly devastating effects of the Covid pandemic.
Both publications make for interesting reading, particularly the Fabian report, which uses Hull’s year as City of Culture as one of the case studies. And it’s not all bad news in regard to Hull, as according to the report:
"‘Over the course of 2017, more than 5.3 million people attended over 2,800 events, exhibitions, installations and cultural activities which were delivered across Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire. More than 90 per cent of residents engaged in at least one cultural activity.’
Similarly, the impact of the ongoing volunteer programme was deemed to be hugely successful:
‘Cultural Transformations: The Impact of Hull UK City of Culture 2017 found 71 per cent of volunteers in Hull agreed or strongly agreed that there had been an improvement in their self-esteem, while 68 per cent said there had been an improvement in their confidence because of their participation in the year.’
However later on in the report, there’s an admission that: ‘It has been difficult to sustain change in places following a year of culture, or at least a level of change that residents can perceive. In Hull, one resident suggested: “It’s just been like … ‘here’s some money, have fun’ and now we’re all … like ‘ok, what do I do now?’”
And when looking at opportunities within UK creative industries as a whole, the ‘Cultured Communities’ from Policy and Evidence Centre report spells it out in stark terms:
‘Earlier research suggests there is a persistent, systemic underrepresentation of those from working-class backgrounds in the sector (see for example, Create London 2018; O’Brien et al 2016; Eikhof and Warhurst 2013) and this is further evidenced by our analysis of recent data from the Labour Force Survey.
‘The majority (52 per cent) of those working in creative occupations in 2019 were from privileged backgrounds, compared with a little over one-third (37 per cent) of the total workforce. In contrast, just 16 per cent of employment in creative roles were from working-class backgrounds compared with 21 per cent of those in professional occupations and 29 per cent across all occupations.’
‘…What we find at this headline level is that those from privileged backgrounds are more than twice (2.5 times) as likely to end up in Creative Occupations than their working-class peers. In 2019, just 4.4 per cent of adults (aged 23-69) from working-class backgrounds found employment in creative roles, compared to 10.9 per cent of those from better-off backgrounds.’
The conclusion of the Fabian Society report acknowledges the need for access to and participation in arts and culture to help us cope with a post-Covid world, while simultaneously highlighting that the very foundations of our artistic institutions are in danger of crumbling.
And after reading these reports, I hate to say it… but maybe some of those foundations should be allowed to falter.
Because it’s clear that despite years of reports and recommendations, panels and discussions, the drive towards greater inclusion and diversity hasn’t led to any real change, and the pandemic has just peeled back the lid and exposed problems that were never going to go away.
Because until we can genuinely acknowledge and address the inequalities that are still present in the creative industries, we will never see any change within them.
It shouldn’t take a global pandemic to highlight the desperate, precarious nature of trying to survive as a freelancer in the creative industries, which is even more pronounced if you are not from a privileged background.
‘I don’t want things to go back to normal, I want them to change’
I’ve heard a lot of people talk about how they can’t wait for things to go back to ‘normal’ in the arts, however, as someone who has spent over a decade trying to keep my head above water, I don’t want things to go back to ‘normal’.
I want to see change.
Because I want to see artists and creators from working-class not just benefit from or participate in the arts passively, but have a real role and stake in the future of the creative industries, however that will look.
I don’t just want to see freelance opportunities for working-class artists; I want to see working-class producers, curators, artistic directors and academics. I want to see working-class people running galleries and theatre spaces, lecturing students at universities and working on sets and in studios, and newsrooms. Actual, real jobs and careers with genuine opportunities and security.
Change must come from within. If we’re in a position where everything is potentially falling apart, let’s take the opportunity to build something better and fairer. While everything is chaos, let us step back and use this time to address inequality and dedicate ourselves to genuine inclusion and diversity.
We don’t need any more reports commissioned to tell us what the problem is, 2020 has seen to that. We can see.
Now is the time for action, because:
How much longer can we get away with doing this?
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