Artists, directors and actors have raised the alarm about what they describe as a rigged system preventing working-class talent thriving in their industries after analysis showed almost a third of major arts leaders were educated privately.
The creator of Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight, the director Shane Meadows and the Turner prize winner Jesse Darling were among those who spoke to the Guardian about what was described as a crisis facing the sector.
They spoke after a Guardian survey of the 50 organisations that receive the most Arts Council England funding revealed a disproportionate number of leadership roles were occupied by people who were educated privately and those who went to the universities of Oxford or Cambridge.
Almost a third (30%) of artistic directors and other creative leaders were educated privately compared with a national average of 7%. More than a third (36%) of the organisations’ chief executives or other executive directors went to private schools.
The analysis also found that 17.5% of artistic directors and more than a quarter (26%) of chief executives went to Oxford or Cambridge, compared with less than 1% of the general population.
Andy Haldane, the chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts, said he was “shocked by that finding but not especially surprised”.
I worked in recording studios for nearly a decade about twenty years ago or so ago, recording all kinds of stuff including film and tv scores.
Producers and composers were overwhelmingly from a privilieged > public school > Oxbridge background. Presumably the lack of representation from other groups is either the same or worse now.
The people I worked with tended to have grown up with money/privilege (meaning it is easy to piss about producing films). But some kind of Oxbridge old boys network/snobbery mostly covers why this lack of opportunity for the general public exists. Of course Oxbridge is all about nepotism and privilege. I have lived around very privileged people and very underprivileged people. I haven’t noticed one iq point of difference between the two cohorts. If anything, being forced to struggle makes people atronger (until the amount of hardship to be endured becomes too much).
I can say that it was often the ones that acted like they expected to be waited on hand and foot, who didn’t show any class whatsoever when it came to actually paying their bills on time (often if at all).
British society is rife with it. Ultimately these type of people being in charge makes our society extremely weak. As we move beyond 20th century political/economic liberalism this weakness will be exploited by adversaries.