Where Are Our Heroes? A Look at the Lack of Working-Class People in the Creative Industries
By Nicole Porter
Growing up in a working-class community on a council estate in a small town in Essex, I didn’t think that I was any different from anyone else. Class is not something that you can see, and children are pleasantly ignorant to the workings of the world. Because of this, I never realised that class was going to be such a big hurdle for me when I was younger. Then I got older and started studying music at college, and my eyes were opened to the existence of elitism and the prevalence of discrimination in the world.
Making music and ‘making it’ in the industry is not as simple as it perhaps used to be. Everyone on my course had £1,000 computers, £200 software, expensive instruments, and access to recording studios. And I was just kind of there, coming to the realisation that I was well behind the starting line, surrounded by people who were unknowingly steps ahead of me. I desperately tried to catch up to them while hurdle after hurdle was thrown at me. My two years at college felt like a constant battle. While I did well at college and received the highest grade I could, the elitism of the music industry that I was exposed to scarred me.
The only music equipment that I owned when starting college was an unbranded electric guitar, which is the one that I had years of lessons using, practised with, and didn’t think anything of until I got to college. Everyone else in my class had expensive guitars (Les Paul’, Fender’ etc.), and suddenly, I felt like an imposter. Despite the fact I could play just as well as every other guitarist I studied with, I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb due to my cheap instrument. Maybe some of this insecurity came from my own internalised classism. However, the comments made by several of my classmates and some members of staff didn’t help to ease my insecurity at all.
While at college, I was also introduced to the concept of nepotism. Finding out much of the relatable art that I saw pieces of myself in was made by artists who were born into wealth, with a world of opportunities at their fingertips, made me feel betrayed. While this doesn’t make me suddenly dislike the art or the artist (other than the artists who pretend to be a different class and portray themselves as such for the ‘aesthetic’), it feels like a desperate search to find artists from my background. It’s like a never-ending game of Where’s Wally? Where is the representation? It is discouraging not being able to see yourself in the industry you want to so desperately work in. It is almost like those in power don’t want us there.
Representation matters for every under-represented group out there. Within mainstream media, accurate portrayals of the working class are non-existent, which just adds to mine and many others’ discouragement and shame. The only time working-class people are represented in the media is either within reality TV (shows such as Benefits Britain, sixteen kids and counting, etc.) or comedy shows. Both these genres of TV have one factor in common: a primary middle to upper-class audience, for whom the working class become the jester to point and laugh at. The media is blatantly and painfully out of touch with what it means to be in the working class, however, the industry also sets the societal stereotype for working-class people. Why do the media only choose to portray such a wide group in such a negative light?
I don’t want to sound ungrateful for any future opportunities that may come my way, but unpaid internships within the music industry seem to be the only way to garner experience. The problem is, I can’t afford to take one, and I know there are many other people out there who are also in my shoes. I would not be able to quit my day job and only focus on the internship; I would have to work both, which means I may not be able to give my all to the internship, whereas someone with more financial security could. While I understand that everyone has to start somewhere, and that the application process for these opportunities are fairly equal, the overall system around music and other creative industries seems to be built to keep people like me out of them.
The path into the music industry is full of connections that I’ll never find, unpaid internships, and expectations that I’ll never meet – it’s an impossibly steep hill that I (foolishly or heroically) am still willing to climb. With the odds stacked against working-class individuals within the creative industries, I find myself asking: where are our heroes?