I didn't feel particularly working class until I entered the world of journalism. Depictions of working class life in pop culture were built around struggle and hardship, whereas my childhood was one predominantly built around happiness. I was aware that money was often tight and, years later, the Theresa May government would provide a term for that – Jams, or those who were Just About Managing. But when I arrived at university on the south coast and found myself surrounded by middle class folk, I quickly felt like a chimney sweep merrily dancing across rooftops with Mary Poppins.
In working on the Kick Some Class series for Voice, I've discovered that I am far from alone in those feelings. Class identity often only arises from opposition. If the people around you share your class identity, the differences between our social hierarchies can be almost invisible. As Bridgerton star Claudia Jessie told me of her own background on an estate in North London: “When you grow up council, everyone's council.”
That's something that came up over and over again as I spoke both to working class creatives who had achieved success despite the “class ceiling” and organisations that are “holding the ladder” for the next generation of those artists. It's hard to talk about social class in the world of culture because the vast majority of people in these cultural spaces have very little frame of reference for the problem. It makes the inspiring folks I've spoken to for this series all the more important.
I wanted to get an idea of how Voice readers feel about class and so we launched the Voice Class Survey. The survey clearly showed broad agreement about the lack of working class representation in arts spaces. 71% of those who took part agreed there aren’t enough working class people in film, TV, and literature, while an even higher 79% pointed to a lack of working class representation in the world of theatre.
CJ Lloyd Webley spoke about working class representation in theatre71% of respondents identified themselves as working class and the same percentage described their social class as being identical to that of their parents. When asked to identify the strongest signifiers of class identity, 57% pointed to a person’s own household income, while 50% chose parental income and 50% chose home ownership. In fact, 43% said that your own household income is the single most important signifier of your class, way ahead of the 21% who chose job title – the second most popular option. Added together, those two figures show that a majority of those surveyed believe your own career is the most important signifier of class.
I found this result interesting as it speaks to a controversial idea that was raised in my interviews, including with academic Dr Teresa Crew. Wayne Rooney is a multi-millionaire because of his career, but does that erase his status as a working class man? Surely not. Stephen Graham is now a wealthy, A-list actor, but his background speaks to a working class identity and nobody would deny him that. If we take working class identities away from those who achieve success in the arts, how can we ever improve representation? If you’re only working class until you’re successful, then we can never have working class successes.
Despite a great deal of progress, the barriers still remain. Over and over again, interviewees spoke to me about rapidly diminishing funding and the unforgivable de-prioritisation of the arts over the last decade or so. It's a tough world out there, so the perception is often that there's no room for working class kids to spend time on “frivolous” pursuits like culture and creative expression. There's certainly no money for it. As Television Workshop boss Ali Rashley said: “It baffles me how we can see the merit of sport for kids that aren't going to be sports stars but fail to see the merit of any kind of performance project for kids that aren't going to be performers.”
The joy and the personal enrichment of art for art’s sake is something that simply isn’t possible for working class young people. Those that have succeeded often manage it by virtue of an enormous slice of luck alongside their own effort and commitment. It takes being in the right place or the right time or happening upon the right person in order to smash through the barrier that says working class people should focus on paying their rent rather than creating art.
New UK culture secretary Lisa Nandy
(Credit: Tim Hammond/Downing Street)However, there was also a note of optimism in a lot of the conversations I’ve had over the last few months. This series has arrived in the early days of a new government – a government that is at least saying the right things about protecting and promoting access to the arts regardless of social background. In the manifesto on which Keir Starmer’s Labour party fought the election, they wrote: “With Labour, the arts and music will no longer be the preserve of a privileged few. Culture is an essential part of supporting children and young people to develop creativity and find their voice.”
All eyes now turn to Lisa Nandy, the new culture secretary, to implement that pledge. In her own speech to the Royal Television Society in September, Nandy called for more representation from creatives across the class spectrum and said: “Who tells the story determines the story that is told.”
There might just be a crack worming its way across the immovable structure of the class ceiling at long last. And if that does happen, we can thank those who paved the way – starting with the tremendous and inspiring interviewees I’ve had the pleasure to talk to over the course of this series. If you haven’t already, why not dive in and meet them?
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