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. Now Class Ceiling, a review from Manchester University, co-chaired by the former chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal, is calling for change. It wants class to be made a legally “protected characteristic” like race and sex (and several others), to address the class crisis in the arts – not just in the north-west but across the UK.
The report tells a depressingly familiar story. A 2022 study showed that the proportion of working-class actors, musicians and writers has halved since the 1970s; another in 2024 found that fewer than one in 10 arts workers in the UK had working-class roots. Top-selling musicians are six times more likely than other people to have attended private schools, and Bafta-nominated actors five times more likely to have done so. The same is true behind the scenes: last year Guardian analysis found that 30% of artistic directors and creative leaders were privately educated.
The metrics all reveal a dispiriting picture of a cultural landscape riven with inequality, exclusion and seemingly inexorable gentrification. Before 1960, according to one study, nearly half of opera singers came from working-class backgrounds. Today, as Adele Thomas, the recently appointed CEO of Welsh National Opera, has said, “you need a private income just to live”. Michael Sheen, who, like Thomas, comes from Port Talbot and whose inaugural production for the Welsh National Theatre opened this month, set up a programme to support writers from working-class and other underrepresented backgrounds.
Sheen, Julie Walters and Christopher Eccleston, along with many other household names, have said their success would not be possible today. The closure of youth and regional theatres, and dwindling apprenticeships and grants have shut down avenues for aspiring artists. Unpaid work experience, zero-hours contracts, student debts and travel costs today make a creative career seem an impossible dream for many. Arts education has been shockingly devalued. Then there are the hidden benefits of the social confidence and networks afforded to the better off. Grayson Perry summed it up: “The idea … that society will breed untaught geniuses is rubbish.”
Calls for an end to unpaid work may not be new. But the Class Ceiling report is right to highlight the importance of ensuring that entry-level positions are not scooped up by those who can afford to volunteer. Jobs should be advertised to avoid cronyism. Creative work is skilled labour and deserves to be paid as such. Young creatives must be financially supported if they are to flourish.
The recent announcement by the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, of a £1.5bn funding package for the arts and the government’s decision to scrap the English baccalaureate to boost creative subjects in schools have been broadly welcomed by leading arts figures. Ministers should address the report’s call for new legal protections. Making class a protected characteristic would give that recognition real force. We must do more than pay lip-service to socioeconomic diversity in the arts straight away. For years the cultural sector has relied on equality messaging. But as the Class Ceiling report states: “The language has improved. The outcomes have not.” For the sake of the Tracey Emins and Idris Elbas of the future, this has got to change.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
