Culture is bad for you; Inequality in the cultural and creative industries

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To start to understand the relationship between inequality and culture we can hear from Henna. Henna was one of 237 creative and cultural workers we interviewed for the research and analysis presented in this book. Like the rest of our participants we’ve given her a pseudonym, so she could be honest and open in the interview. We were asking her about her career, and working life. The Problem: It wasn’t cool in middle school, and it certainly isn’t appropriate in the office. Gossip leads to unwanted cliques that divide your workforce, turning employees against each other and creating a culture of distrust. One of the main problems is that pop culture can promote superficiality. It often emphasizes short-lived trends and entertaining distractions that limit our conversations to superficial topics and keep us from having more profound, more meaningful discussions. This can ultimately affect our ability to build solid and lasting relationships with others. Arts Emergency worked in London but aspired to expand its operations geographically. Dr Brook used data on schools in areas of social deprivation, with a high proportion of pupils claiming free school meals, mapping this against concentrations of people working in creative and cultural industries who could be approached to become mentors. The final piece of the puzzle was ensuring proximity to a university offering degrees in creative disciplines. A cornerstone of Arts Emergency’s work has been encouraging young people to access creative and humanities education.

In addition, the increasing influence of pop culture in the digital world can contribute to feelings of social isolation. The more people follow and consume pop culture online, the more they may prefer virtual interactions to face-to-face communication. This can lead to weakened interpersonal skills and diminished empathy, making it challenging to maintain healthy relationships. Henna tells us some of our reasons why we’ve written this book, and why we’ve given it the provocative title of Culture is bad for you. She gives us the starting point for why we should question some of the ‘good news’ about culture. Dr Brook co-authored both the initial report, Panic! Social Class, Taste and Inequalities in the Creative Industries, and the 2020 book – Culture is Bad for You.We demonstrate in the book that there’s an overwhelming belief in the power of culture: culture can change lives. This isn’t a marginal issue that we can deal with once we’ve confronted all the other inequalities and injustices in the world, it’s inextricably linked to them. At the moment, the power of culture is often negative. If we want to transform that, everyone needs to do their part. We will see how the workforce in cultural occupations is deeply unequal, with class, race, and gender constituting crucial axes of inequality. Film and TV occupations are hostile to women; museums, galleries, and libraries are marked by their whiteness. Publishing is ‘posh’. The ‘poshness’ of specific cultural occupations, the absence of those from working class origins, is not a new thing. It is a longstanding problem. For Dr Brook, work to redress the balance is ongoing. Projects in development include an ambitious plan to reinterview a hundred people working in CCIs from the Panic! project and see how their situation and perceptions have changed in the intervening years. Eventually, she hopes to see the research make a lasting and positive difference to the sector.

A more complicated example is housing: several of our interviewees reported spending large amounts of money on low-quality accommodation in London where they were on edge about their landlord ending their tenancy at no notice. A few different policies would get at this: regulation of the private rented sector to look more like Germany; far more socially rented housing to look more like Austria; more homes being built so that housing is no longer such a scarce resource. This kind of transformation wouldn’t be targeted at the cultural sector, but for me it would be the most effective way to confront existing inequalities. The Problem: High turnover is almost always a guaranteed sign of a toxic company culture. Not only will a bad culture drive employees away, it will also deter job seekers from taking your organization seriously; more than 30 percent of workers say they left a job in the first 90 days because “company culture was not as expected” and 20 percent reported switching industries because of a “toxic work environment/culture.” If you’re saying goodbye to employees left and right, they’re probably looking for a less toxic work culture. The book stresses the need to understand inequality in an intersectional way. It focuses on how race, class, and gender interrelate, privileging some whilst punishing others. For women of colour who are socially mobile, the experience of cultural occupations and cultural institutions is of an often hostile environment. For white, middle class origin men, the experience is of a smoother rise to the top of organisations, institutions, and art forms. Dave O’Brienis Chancellor’s Fellow in Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Edinburgh. He has published extensively on sociology of culture and cultural policy, and is currently part of a large scale AHRC project assessing the impact of COVID-19 on the cultural sector in the UK.In their new book ‘Culture Is Bad For You’, Orian Brook, Dave O’Brien, and Mark Taylor look at the inequalities that exist in today’s creative industries. They explore how jobs in the arts and how the consumption of culture are affected by economic, racial and gender inequalities, shaping the cultural world we all live in.

Q. The usual mainstream assumption is that culture is good for you – that it’s enjoyable, keeps you healthy, socially connected, inspiring etc. So ‘Culture is Bad For You’ is an interesting title for a book – can you tell us what you mean, the kind of research you’ve been doing over the last few years, and the core arguments that you’ve developed? To the outsider’s eye she had every possible advantage to ‘make it’ in her chosen cultural career. Yet she was blunt about the reality of working life: This is not the whole story. Some parts of the cultural sector, those most able to take advantage of the boom in demand for digital content as people have stayed at home, may be doing well. Those sections of the cultural industries aside, the future for culture is troubling. It is troubling because the impact of the crisis is not evenly distributed. COVID has exposed and reinforced the longstanding, embedded, structural inequalities that characterise the cultural sector. The Fix: Get your HR team together, hire a workplace consultant if need be, and then draft and enact a diversity, equity and inclusion policy. When you write workplace policies designed to keep all employees feeling safe at work, keep in mind the saying: Nothing for us, without us. Engage BIPOC employees as well as LGBTQ+ employees. Publicize the policy to employees and present it as a living document, encouraging them to suggest improvements.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone: not everyone who works in the creative industries fulfils the stereotype above, and it’s not as if every single wannabe actor with parental wealth ends up making it. But our research shows that this is the broad direction of travel. There are exceptions to this, where some forms of culture do more to challenge social inequalities, but overall we conclude that culture primarily reinforces existing inequalities. However, there is also a danger that excessive pop culture consumption can lead to conformism and a loss of individuality. Constant exposure to popular media can lead to addictive behavior, where people feel compelled to consume more and more content without deriving any absolute satisfaction or value from it. In addition, bombardment with media messages can impair our ability to analyze information critically, distinguish fact from fiction, and make informed decisions about important issues affecting our lives. The constant pursuit of material possessions has become a cycle that perpetuates the feeling of never having enough. This pop culture addiction has even sparked a counter-movement against materialism, with many people seeking alternative ways to find fulfillment beyond superficial things. On the positive side, pop culture can provide opportunities for self-expression and identification with like-minded people. It can provide a platform to explore one’s interests and passions, interact with like-minded people, and find a sense of belonging. Pop culture can also inspire creativity and imagination and be a source of inspiration for people in various fields, such as art, fashion, and music. The role of technology in the proliferation of popular culture has undoubtedly changed how we consume and interact with popular media. While technology has facilitated access to and dissemination of pop culture content, it has also negatively affected individuals and society.

The Problem: Employees look to managers for direction. If senior and middle management aren’t abiding by the core values you’ve set forth, employees will follow suit. Even worse, they’ll begin to distrust leadership for exempting managers from the office rules. Authority will be discredited, and a clear divide will form between leadership and the staff. Pop culture doesn’t have to be all about escapism and empty distractions. It can also provide valuable opportunities for personal growth if we approach it with intentionality and balance. How to Fix It: Launch team building activities and company-wide initiatives to get teams talking and working together, even if it’s not work related. Breaking down these initial walls between teams and even within teams can help information flow better when it comes to everyday work. Additionally, creating open-door policies at the leadership level can work wonders for communication. When engagement and transparency are encouraged from the very top, information is less likely to get trapped. It can be difficult to abandon the styles of communication cemented in a company’s foundation but it’s worth the work. While pop culture can provide entertainment and a sense of belonging, it’s essential to consider how consumption can negatively impact one’s mental health. For example: A toxic work culture is a company environment dominated by practices, policies and management styles that perpetuate unhealthy habits and conflicts among team members. It can be harmful to employees, preventing them from being productive and growing professionally. Bad organizational culture can also lead to unhappiness and dissatisfaction that drives employees to look for jobs elsewhere.Thinking about production is a bit different. We can start by comparing people working in film & TV with people working in museums, galleries & libraries. At first blush, they look very different; 29% of people working in film & TV are women, while 81% of people working in museums, galleries, and libraries are. So if your goal was to get all sectors to 50:50, you’d have to take a very different approach. Then again, what both sectors have in common is that the workforces get more male as jobs get more senior. So, while they’re different from each other, they’re not as far apart as you might think. Social isolation: The constant need for digital connection through social media platforms and online forums could lead some individuals to social withdrawal. In the quest for freedom and personal fulfillment, it’s essential to understand the potential consequences of our engagement in popular culture. If we recognize the risks associated with excessive consumption or unhealthy habits related to pop culture, we can enjoy it and maintain control over our well-being. The Impact On Social Relationships And Communication