Looking at what it means to be a young creative starting out and navigating the growing creative industries, East London creative freelancer Reese Campbell identifies the need for greater support and the importance of providing access to local networks. Despite efforts to improve diversity, there is still a lack of representation and opportunities for those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Small organisations such as Walthamstow International Film Festival and E17 Films & Emerging Talent CIC are working to bridge this gap.
A film accompanies this article: Voices of Waltham Forest: How do we support people into the creative arts?
This summer, we commissioned eight creatives and writers living and practising in the city to research and document a story of creative and cultural innovation in their local community that mattered to them, using a solutions journalism approach. From a mahjong club in Hackney and a zero waste makers cooperative in a disused car park in Brixton to a creative hub in Fish Island and a film hub for emerging talent in Walthamstow, these stories showcase the importance of third spaces – informal networks and places and spaces of creativity and enjoyment – where people from all backgrounds can come together to connect, collaborate and create.
The creative industries are enjoying a ‘boom’ period in the UK. How can organisations support emerging talent?
Reese Campbell
Instagram: rarely.reese
Pictures: @paultuckerstudio (Instagram) and Liza Fletcher
In 2021, the creative industries sector contributed £109bn to the UK economy, equivalent to 5.6% of the economy that year. More recently, the government has proposed to boost the UK creative industries by £50bn, provide £77m in new funding for the sector, and support a million more jobs by 2030.
Despite the ambition to amplify the economy through the creative industries, there is an overarching question that lies beneath the grandeur of the proposal: Who are the people benefitting from it all, and where does this leave individuals who are seeking a career, and have entry-level or little experience within the creative industries?
Studies have shown that there is an all-round diversity gap when it comes to employment and the makeup of the creative industries. According to research by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC), 52% of workers are, on average, from high socio-economic backgrounds, compared to 27% from working-class backgrounds.
Whilst efforts to make the creative economy more inclusive and accessible are developing through methods such as Positive Action schemes and training bursaries, many individuals still find it difficult to get their foot in the door, an issue recognised by Paul and Liza Fletcher, co-founders and directors of the Walthamstow International Film Festival, and E17 Films & Emerging Talent CIC. The company’s mission is to ‘support emerging talent through film exhibition, community projects and careers development, whilst improving accessibility and diversity in the film, TV and creative industries’.
This, paired with their annual Future Film Focus careers event, exemplifies the possibilities of what can be done to tackle the socio-economic gap within the creative industries so that organisations can support those at the start of their career.
Whilst there are no easy answers when tackling a concept as large as social stratification and intersectionality, the efforts of small organisations within Waltham Forest suggest that it starts with community.
For German-born Ghanaian Monday Adjetey, a twenty-three-year-old camera operator and editor for a sports production company, his pathway into the creative industries began traditionally at school. Wanting to produce football boots, he initially studied product design but was recommended by a friend to take media for his A-Levels.
Monday went on to complete a degree in digital film production before returning to his initial idea of starting an apprenticeship, a task made difficult by the coronavirus outbreak.
“That was really elusive,” reflects Monday. “But I managed to get it and finished an apprenticeship in junior content production. I stayed there for about a year before being brought on full-time,”
Eventually, Monday decided he felt more ‘comfortable’ shooting sports content and decided to ‘make a move’ towards a company that did so.
Despite his success, Monday admits that he was apprehensive when pursuing the world of camera.
“The elephant in the room is race,” he says. “But I think that it’s mainly because, in the world of camera, it’s usually a particular type of person from a background who not only has access to equipment but people. It’s not what you know, it’s about who you know – and looking into my background, I didn’t have that starting out.”
Networking is at the core of E17 Films’ values. It is widely said to be the key to getting into and maintaining a career. Monday is grateful for the opportunity to meet and connect with creative professionals as he started out in the creative sector.
“[Liza] had an eye for young people who also have an eye for filmmaking,” he says. “If it wasn’t for Liza being proactive, we would not have gotten to know her network of people.”
Monday was part of Future Film Focus 2019, which, since its inception in 2018, has seen over 15 young people go onto training, apprenticeships, and recruitment with companies such as BBC, ITN and MTV and has engaged with around 950 young people from across Waltham Forest. Outside of providing entry-level opportunities and mentorships, the platform provides young people with relevant work experience, helping them prepare for careers within the sector.
There are similar initiatives which operate within the borough. ‘Future Programmes’, commonly known as ‘Future Formed’, was a legacy project from the 2019 London Borough of Culture and was initially focused on younger people. Future Programme’s new project lead, circus performer Kaveh Rahnama, has broadened the initiative to support and empower young people aged 16 to 30 in their creative careers.
“The aim was to work with younger people in Waltham Forest, residents from backgrounds underrepresented in the arts and creative industries, to try and get them into the industry,” says Rahnama.
“My predecessor did a great job, but it was quite contained. I really try to see things in the long term – like genuinely try to maintain a relationship with someone, and try to make Future Formed a support programme to provide people with more pathways to connect them to people and opportunities within the industry to help them grow,”
Whilst programmes like Future Formed and Future Film Focus have considerable success through partnerships and individual passion, there are often constraints.
“It comes down to time, money and resources,” says Rahnama. “Essentially when I started, it was just me running the program, so partnerships are important to me.”
Funding is available from large organisations, such as Arts Council England, as well as smaller London funders, such as Foundation for Future London, but it isn’t guaranteed, nor is it always enough.
“The industry in particular – performing arts for example – doesn’t have a lot of money,” says Rahnama. “Sometimes, we’re talking about quite small organisations that we’re trying to get people to support. They haven’t got the money to support them, and they’re struggling to give enough jobs to people with years of experience. How are you going to support the next people with no experience and very little money or safety net?”
Local efforts to provide creative career assistance highlight the place and importance of communal, altruistic approaches to supporting people in the industry that tap into founders’ networks. But these initiatives are far from sustainable. Ultimately, supporting young people cannot fall just upon individuals or organisations but should be viewed as a wider cultural, industry-based call to action.
Many individuals with lower socio-economic backgrounds do not feel the arts are for them due to the sector’s history as predominantly led by white and upper-middle-class interests. With this at the root of the problem, it is almost impossible to support every potential artistic talent without challenging the diversity of the arts as a whole.
When asked what organisations could do to better support individuals in the creative industries, Joshua, a poet and recent film studies graduate, said, “It’s difficult for me to say because I’m very privileged in many ways – I’m white, I’m a man, and I’m cisgender. You don’t want to, but you have to look around you [at university] and make assumptions. It’s very, very middle class.”
With issues such as ‘hustle culture’ within the industry coming under scrutiny and its ties to poor pay and long hours, money should be considered by organisations and the industry. Solutions such as accounting for expenses in travel or food or reducing the prevalence of unpaid internships as a whole can have a wider impact in supporting creatives as a whole, relieving some aspects of financial pressure.
“The privilege of being in the arts is the privilege of having parents who have enough money that you aren’t forced to go into a job that makes money immediately,” says Joshua. “The arts don’t make money immediately.”
Efforts from larger organisations such as Barbican and BFI through Young Producer schemes and filmmaking grants for those from underrepresented communities make an impact, but more can be done.
“They [Barbican and BFI] do really well with grants and such,” says Joshua. “But it can’t be enough. It will never be enough. It’ll always be getting loads of responses – but one or two people get in. This is stuff that pales in comparison to nepotism and the freedom of financial stability. It’s a cultural problem.”