Understanding and challenging inequality in culture

The Creative Industries Sector Deal positions the Creative Industries as a central part of the UK economy in the imminent post-Brexit period, with major implications for its role not simply economically, but also socially and culturally. It also recognises that the Creative Industries are sites of inequality, although questions are raised about whether this is primarily to do with messaging, in which people from minority and disadvantaged backgrounds simply don't know enough about what working in the Creative Industries can offer them.

Understanding and Challenging Inequality in Culture (UCIC) aims to directly address issues raised in the Industrial Strategy and in the Creative Industries Sector Deal. It builds on several previous AHRC-funded projects in order to understand the contemporary dynamics of inequality in culture, addressing both cultural labour and participation, through the analysis of existing data with the potential to shed light on inequalities in areas that have not had a major focus so far. It does so through five central research questions, coproduction with key actors in the Creative Industries throughout, and a plan for impact through which inequalities in culture can be meaningfully challenged. It uses existing data throughout, in order to make the most of the UK's strong data resources around culture, both datasets designed for academic analysis, and data originally collected for other reasons which can be analysed to answer questions about inequality in culture.

The five questions are:
1. How can members of underrepresented groups access work in the creative industries? How successful are current approaches to challenging inequalities?
2. How far do boards of directors, and of trustees, reflect and reinforce existing inequalities in the creative industries?
3. Do snapshots of inequality in culture conceal high levels of year-on-year change in participation, both within and across forms?
4. How does understanding cultural participation as a network inform our understanding of inequality in culture?
5. How similar are the dynamics of inequality in the creative industries in the UK to those of a salient international comparator?

These questions have been chosen in order to work across different parts of the Creative Industries: RQ1 involves analysis of access to work in the Creative Industries, which have historically mainly been answered using qualitative methods; RQ2 involves systematic analysis of the most senior levels of organisations in the Creative Industries, above even workforce level; RQ3 involves the analysis of changes in cultural participation, rather than merely differences, to understand the persistence and volatility of inequality in cultural participation; RQ4 involves the analysis of participation at the organisational rather than individual level, and RQ5 puts inequality in culture in the UK into an international context. Through answering these questions, issues of inequality will be raised at different levels across the Creative Industries, in order that the questions raised in the Creative Industries Sector Deal can be comprehensively addressed and action taken.

UCIC will answer these questions in collaboration with two key organisations in the Creative Industries, who are positioned to effectively challenge the sector and work alongside organisations within to make changes.

Impact is at the centre of UCIC. The project involves coproduction with key organisations in the cultural industries with the capacity and motivation to address issues of inequality in the sector, challenging some of the celebratory discourses in the Creative Industries Sector Deal to recognise structural inequalities that are not simply supply-side problems, or problems of insufficient information about cultural participation being offered to groups who attend less often. The long-term impact of the project will be to generate a clear picture of the dynamics of inequality in culture so that they can be directly confronted by the people with the power to change them; along the way, the current research priorities of crucial organisations can be met so that they can better understand inequality in order to be able to change it.

Impact will be achieved in UCIC through five major routes, described in more detail in Pathways to Impact: through working with key policymakers in the UK, with institutions in the CIs in the UK themselves, with institutions that work alongside CIs in the UK, with general publics, and with CI organisations internationally. These routes will each be different, based on the particular needs and challenges associated with each. The crucial elements will be: coproducing research design and analysis with the project partners and with key relevant stakeholders, including in Australia for RQ5; the generation of public-facing and accessible versions of research, in collaboration with project partners; and working with the international advisory board to identify how impact can be pursued in national contexts beyond the UK and Australia.

I will extend the experience of having worked on Who is missing from the picture?, in which we worked with CI institutions to generate meaningful discourse in and around the media to produce engagement across a range of publics and audiences.