Let’s Kick Some Class
Voice’s ‘Kick Some Class’ series shines a light on the barriers faced by young people from working class backgrounds when entering the arts and media world.
Our Director, Diana, reflects on how Voice is tackling these challenges.
Voice is much more than a magazine…we’re here to open doors to arts venues, build creative skills and provide pathways for young people who love the arts but can’t imagine how you make them a career.
We want to help challenge the depressing stats that tell us ‘People from privileged backgrounds are twice as likely to work in creative jobs as those from the working classes’ (Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre) and only 8% of people working in film, TV and radio are from a working class background (Channel 4).
Our Kick Some Class series sums this up. Our editorial team, led by new editor Tom Beasley, has been talking to artists from working class families who have made it…but who tell similar stories. Very little money for arts activities as children, not much experience of live arts, a lucky introduction from a teacher or friend… but a fearful family – ‘acting isn’t a proper job’. And even the very successful, like Claudia Jessie, star of Bridgerton, say they can still feel out of place at work, anxious, surrounded by people with a very different background to hers.
Our mission at Voice is to support young people from less advantaged backgrounds to experience the arts for themselves and share their responses, building critical and communication skills. For those who get hooked and want to explore an arts or media career, we offer media training, mentoring and work experience placements…without the need for family contacts or resources.
We send young journalists out to see and review shows of all kinds, to meet and interview artists, to write and make media, and to blog about issues they care about…and through all this to build their own cultural capital, knowing their opinions and skills are as good as anybody’s, and ready to apply for a job, prepare for an interview, get a bursary. Our staff team share their own stories of forging a path to an arts career without the leg up of cash, contacts and networks.
70% of Voice trainees are now working in the creative sector. They carry the flag for a more diverse and representative culture as do all the interviewees in this series.
When comedian Alexandra Haddow wanted to be a fashion journalist, her family didn’t understand…but Voice could have helped!
Read Tom’s illuminating wrap up piece on Kick Some Class and let us know if it resonates.