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Tuesday, February 03, 2026
The Guardian view on the class crisis in the arts: the UK’s culture must not become the preserve of the elite
Editorial | The Guardian: In his McTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV festival in 2024, the playwright James Graham called class “everyone’s least favourite diversity and representation category”. A socioeconomic duty on public bodies was included in 2010’s Equality Act, but has never been enacted.
2 comments:
Sid J
said...
Recently we’ve been hearing about diversifying the economic statuses of theater patrons (Mamdani’s acts on the arts in New York), but I haven’t heard a lot about diversifying the socio-economic statuses across performers. Thinking about it now, it makes a lot of sense. There are so many performers and designers that are struggling financially and trying to book the next gig, and there aren’t opportunities because they’re often given to people who are already wealthy. Everything is about connections in this industry, and its much easier to make connections when you don’t have to work another job to support yourself and you can afford to travel to all the conventions and networking events and all that. Artists who have already made it to their late career are in a much better position than younger artists who are victims to this economy where building wealth is near impossible, and that stifles artistic growth.
I really enjoyed the quote that this article began with, by James Graham. “[Class is] everyone’s least favourite diversity and representation category.” It resonated; I definitely don’t think about class diversity. In all the places I’ve grown up and the communities i’m a part of, I’ve experienced racial diversity, cultural diversity (to some extent) and gender diversity. Class has definitely been different. I think it is less overt, and somewhat a taboo topic–money and wealth is political. It makes sense when the article lays the issue out in front of me, but like Sid, I hadn’t heard much about this before reading this article. It is harsh especially to compare the modern climate to theatre and the arts historically. As the article puts it, “Arts education has been shockingly devalued.” I’ve experienced this all my life, growing up in a community that predominantly created art for a living. Society found artistic talents impressive but not necessarily indicative of being “smart,” or worthwhile for a career. Going to school for the arts was also a hard choice. I’m pushing to take classes in more traditional STEM fields: math, science, etc, because I worry about my marketability. I hope something will turn around.
2 comments:
Recently we’ve been hearing about diversifying the economic statuses of theater patrons (Mamdani’s acts on the arts in New York), but I haven’t heard a lot about diversifying the socio-economic statuses across performers. Thinking about it now, it makes a lot of sense. There are so many performers and designers that are struggling financially and trying to book the next gig, and there aren’t opportunities because they’re often given to people who are already wealthy. Everything is about connections in this industry, and its much easier to make connections when you don’t have to work another job to support yourself and you can afford to travel to all the conventions and networking events and all that. Artists who have already made it to their late career are in a much better position than younger artists who are victims to this economy where building wealth is near impossible, and that stifles artistic growth.
I really enjoyed the quote that this article began with, by James Graham. “[Class is] everyone’s least favourite diversity and representation category.” It resonated; I definitely don’t think about class diversity. In all the places I’ve grown up and the communities i’m a part of, I’ve experienced racial diversity, cultural diversity (to some extent) and gender diversity. Class has definitely been different. I think it is less overt, and somewhat a taboo topic–money and wealth is political.
It makes sense when the article lays the issue out in front of me, but like Sid, I hadn’t heard much about this before reading this article. It is harsh especially to compare the modern climate to theatre and the arts historically. As the article puts it, “Arts education has been shockingly devalued.” I’ve experienced this all my life, growing up in a community that predominantly created art for a living. Society found artistic talents impressive but not necessarily indicative of being “smart,” or worthwhile for a career. Going to school for the arts was also a hard choice. I’m pushing to take classes in more traditional STEM fields: math, science, etc, because I worry about my marketability.
I hope something will turn around.
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