Cultural Capital: Arts Graduates, Spatial Inequality, and London’s Impact on Cultural Labor Markets

Abstract

This article looks at the degree to which spatial inequalities reinforce other forms of social inequality in cultural labor markets. It does so using the example of London, an acknowledged hub for the creative and cultural industries. Using pooled data from 2013 to 2015 quarters of the United Kingdom's. Labour Force Survey, we consider the social makeup of London's cultural labor force, and reveal the extent to which, rather than acting as an "engine room" of social mobility, London's dominance in fact reenforces social class disparities in cultural employment.

Inequality talk: How discourses by senior men reinforce exclusions from creative occupations

“…Mark was one of the youngest in our sample, in his 20s, but was already an established and successful theatre director. He offered a sense of privilege at being able to work solely from his artistic interests, rather than being constrained, a situation in which social structures easing the careers of white middle-class men in theatre were absent (Oakley et al, 2017;Friedman et al, 2016): The opportunities to make work, and to be driven by artistic impulse, render the imbalances of gender and race in theatre, particularly in writing, absent or irrelevant, exactly the 'unspeakable inequalities' identified by Gill (2014). Moreover, CCIs are marked out as different from other professions, both in terms of doing 'better' on equality and diversity, and in terms of the importance of the social function of cultural production.…”

Creative entrepreneurship and urban space: Exploring the location preferences of creative professionals in Αthens during the economic recession

“…The fact that a place is not only an economic environment, but also a social milieu, may be particularly relevant in the creative industries, where many freelancers and the self-employed have indistinct boundaries between their professional lives and their social identities as artists, bohemians or entrepreneurs (Scott, 2010;McRobbie, 2002). Indeed, while economic theory hypothesises that the labour/leisure trade-off is a rational, time-allocation decision made by workers, creative professionals have actually been found to have a strong preference for work over leisure time (Throsby and Zednik, 2011), which may inform their location decisions in a different way to those made by conventional firms: their work-preference ideals may well affect their pursuit of a work environment that not only has purely economic benefits, but also contributes to an improved work/life balance (McRobbie, 2002;Oakley et al, 2017). Scott (2010) recognised that a place is a local economy, social milieu and physical environment with a particular aesthetic and architectural signature.…”

The art of the good life: culture and sustainable prosperity

“…Monica similarly notes that because she did not train at a London stage school she had significant trouble getting performing jobs in the city as she competed with similarly qualified and experienced performers who were already "insiders." As freelance/self-employed workers who rely on establishing and maintaining professional contacts, this can have implications for the sustainability of their careers as they are excluded from opportunities (see Easton & Cauldwell-French, 2017;Oakley, Laurison, O'Brien & Friedman, 2017).…”