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Has Covid made the inequalities in cultural sector recruitment worse?
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As the global pandemic has devastated both the programmes of the cultural sector and the entry routes for the new workforce into it, the creative and cultural sectors now face a new challenge. While organisations have been fighting for their survival, the hard work they’ve done towards fair access and recruitment may have fallen by the wayside. Unfortunately, this is the very time when young people aspiring to join the sector need it the most.
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Even before the pandemic hit, unpaid internships were pressuring young people to work for free. Recruitment often defaulted to requiring a degree, regardless of whether this is actually relevant to the role. There was also the unconscious bias of organisations more inclined to hire ‘people like us’ than challenge their own perceptions.
With the ensuing redundancies and recruitment freezes of the Covid crisis, which has affected young people disproportionately, the odds of fair access for people from disadvantaged or minority backgrounds has also diminished.
It was saddening to read the recent findings by the Resolution Foundation think tank revealing that the Covid crisis has widened existing employment gaps between ethnic groups. The UK jobless rate for young black people rose to 35%, with 24% for young people of Asian descent, and 13% for young white people.
This supports earlier research from Nuffield College's Centre for Social Investigation, which found that British citizens from ethnic minority backgrounds had to send, on average, 60% more job applications to get a positive response from employers compared to their white counterparts. This rises as high as 70% for people of Pakistani heritage, 80% for Nigerian and South Asian heritage, and 90% for Middle Eastern and north African heritage.
These statistics are for the UK economy as a whole, but are reflected in the creative industries, which still struggles to represent people from all backgrounds – not only at the senior level, but now it appears, at entry level too. At CCSkills, we have constantly championed the need to open up access to creative careers to all parts of society and the approach of fair access is needed now more than ever.
To this end, we hope that our Creative Kickstart programme, which we have launched with the support of DWP’s Kickstart funding, will help to realise our commitment to support hundreds of young people from all backgrounds into paid employment across the cultural sector. We also hope that the programme will play its part in helping to transform the way our sector thinks about recruitment.
Our online guides and training sessions on best practice recruitment can further help to change an organisation’s mindset when it comes to fair, open and equal recruitment, from implementing anonymised recruitment to ensuring an application form is accessible to all.
We want to keep this conversation going. That’s why the first full episode in our brand-new podcast series discussed the topic of class prejudice in the cultural sector. We heard from Suba Das, Artistic Director of HighTide and Vilma Nikolaidou, Associate Director, People Strategy at UAL: University of the Arts London, as well as hearing the perspectives of Danielle Edmunds and Calum Macdonald, two young people who participated in the Cultural Ambition programme.
We remain passionate about supporting our sector’s growth and helping employers recruit their future workforce from every part of our society. We remain totally committed to ensuring that as this crisis recedes, our sector will build back fairer.
Jane Ide OBE, CEO, Creative & Cultural Skills
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Podcast #1 - Class prejudice in the cultural sector
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Our latest podcast episode asks if an already-established prejudice against hiring from disadvantaged backgrounds has become even worse in the pandemic?
With Suba Das, Artistic Director and CEO of HighTide; and Vilma Nikolaidou Associate Director, People Strategy University Arts London.
Listen and subscribe to our podcast
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Discover! Industry Insight events have been designed to give students aged 16 – 24 an opportunity to understand specific job functions within the cultural sector by providing interactions with real employers.
We're excited that the Insight events will be starting this week!
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We’re thrilled to be providing a series of training sessions for the archive sector, delivered online, empowering the sector to adopt inclusive and lawful recruitment practices that will support growth by developing a more diverse range of talent.
The training sessions will cover topics such as apprenticeships, volunteering, working with freelancers, diversity and inclusivity.
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Creative & Cultural Skills supports the UK cultural sector by shaping skills, education and employment best practice. We provoke action and enable learning opportunities that drive change and help to build an inclusive skilled sector.
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Creative and Cultural Industries Ltd is registered in England as Charity no. 1105974 and Company no. 05122855.
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