A panel discussion on the state of diversity within the arts. Drawing together report writers and campaigners and politicians.

About this Event

This event proposes a conversation between Young Fabians and a Panel of researchers, on the broad issues of inequality. It seeks to interrogate the barriers to entry for many in the artistic industries, in a time of huge upheaval in terms of paradigms regarding work. With that he onwards march of Artificial intelligence,the gig economy proffering in equal measures new challenges but also opportunities. The arts due to its artisanal nature naturally resists autemination, the light of current education cuts. That have seen school slash arts budgets, in favour of subjects that are no more important to the development of a person’s skills sets. Nevertheless has created a two part system the well resourced public school system vs the strapped state system, returning to a point made earlier on automation and the impending 4th industrial revolution.

A career in the arts in social terms needs to be championed for its resistance to such a overhaul for its ability to create new sustainable careers. But as is sadly the case like in many other creative industries, the arts suffers heavily due to its widely unregulated structure from the perception that ‘its not for the likes of me’ more profoundly studies like the Panic report, the Culture Club report amongst others have proven and argued with detailed recommendations that the state of diversity in a human sense is dire. It suffers from some of the worst representation of minority status individuals on a the whole. Moreover class wise it is those who can afford the education, whose children go on to get the internships, who then find themselves over represented in positions of leadership, in managerial or other skilled work.

Overall the arts are perhaps the most ubiquitous forms of human production, to paraphrase a common meme, when can one go a day without listening to a podcast, reading a book, watching a movie, wearing clothes, etc how dry would ones world be. But on the most part due to the socio economic, ethnic ,gendered, abalist, lgbt+ barriers that permeate the professions. We are in a time still when a single narrative obliterates all over views and replicates its culture so widely that despite the apparent meritocratic instincts these professions project the truth is they are widely exclusionary and thus alienation of the wider intersections of identitarian positionings.

Panel participants to include:

Chair of the panel- Eduardo Da Costa

Mario Washington-Iheme, Centre for london report writer for - Culture Club

Dr David O’Brien Panic report writer,

Dr Clive Nwonk LSE Fellow in Film Studies Department of Sociology

Tracy Brabin MP on diversity in the arts APPG.

for the Facebook press here and the eventbrite press here.