British Theatre Is Failing The Working Class

CLASS has always played a part in my life, from my childhood in a council house to my commitment and militant passion that theatre should be for everyone. 

When I was a kid, I remember my dad asking, “When are you going to get a real job?” I’d done well in my GCSE’s — the creative subjects and ones I enjoyed — I wanted to pursue these subjects at A level. I was determined to become the first in my family to go to university. But he (a health and safety executive) still believed that people didn’t make money from the arts. 

In reality, that mindset runs deep. Many working-class people still see the arts as something not meant for them — a world that feels distant, exclusive, and unattainable. We need to change that urgently.

That said, I can socialise with my well-off theatre friends, but I’ll never think like them. I’ll never see the world through the lense of privilege. Many of them dismiss “working class” as an outdated idea — but it isn’t. Being working class isn’t about what job you do, or whether you work at all. It’s about the circumstances you’re born into — the values, the outlook, and the barriers that shape how you see and move through the world.

The UK’s creative industries are frequently hailed as an engine of innovation and soft power. But behind the rhetoric lies a persistent class divide in who gets to participate, study and succeed in creative fields. Research from the Sutton Trust (A Class Act, 2024) highlights that people from professional and managerial backgrounds dominate elite roles across film, television, music and the performing arts. Working-class representation in many creative occupations has halved over recent decades. Oh dear.

Private-school alumni are dramatically overrepresented among leading actors and classical musicians despite only 7% of the population being privately educated. As Sutton Trust CEO Nick Harrison has argued, “Talented young people from poorer homes are being blocked from studying creative arts degrees and breaking into creative professions.”

That class divide starts early. Cultural Learning Alliance (CLA) data show that children’s access to arts subjects is shrinking. Its Report Card 2024 found a 42% decline in GCSE arts entries since 2010 and steep falls in A-level entries. The number of arts teachers in state secondary schools in England has fallen by over a quarter since 2011, with hours of arts teaching dropping by more than 20%. These cuts hit state schools and disadvantaged areas hardest, reducing the chances of nurturing skills and interests in arts and design.

Arts Council England’s own Equality, Diversity and Inclusion data show similar structural issues. While there has been some progress in diversifying leadership and workforce on ethnicity, disability and gender, socio-economic diversity remains a blind spot. ACE repeatedly states that it wants “the diversity of audiences, leaders, producers and creators of creativity and culture to reflect the diversity of contemporary England,” but its reports show that this ambition is far from realised.

The arts are not where they should be in education system: centre stage. Campaign groups continue to be vocal about this. The Campaign for the Arts warns that the decline in school arts provision and cuts to higher education funding risk turning the arts into “an elite activity” once again. Director Jack Gamble said, “The arts have a proven role in contributing to better outcomes for children and young people, but they have been sidelined and underfunded. It’s high time we turned this around.” Their analysis shows arts subjects now make up only around 7% of GCSE entries, down from 13% in 2010, with a widening participation gap between the most and least deprived young people.

Earlier this year, an impact report, including data from the Creative Mentor Network, indicated that working-class representation across the creative industries declined from 26% in 2020 to 19% in 2023. I am only surprised that figure isn’t lower. 

Over the weekend, I was thrilled to hear from James Graham that he and producers for the West End run of Punch have decided that any profits made from the production will go towards the show being accessible to young people around the UK and beyond in the future.

Elsewhere, the evidence points to systemic rather than incidental barriers. Unpaid internships, expensive audition fees, and shrinking public provision all privilege those with private means. Campaigners and researchers recommend targeted investment in arts education in disadvantaged schools, banning unpaid roles and costly audition fees, and making public funding conditional on socio-economic inclusion.

Indeed, when creative leadership and storytelling are drawn from a narrow social base, the range of stories, voices and experiences on stage, page and screen narrows too. If Britain’s culture is to be truly representative, policy and funding must treat class with the same seriousness as race, gender and disability — and rebuild routes that allow talent to flourish regardless of background.

The strata of class are varied and vast. Many leading artists warn that this entrenched “class ceiling” is stifling innovation and creativity. As actor Christopher Eccleston, who grew up in Salford, recently told The Guardian:

“If you grow up in the north-west, you don’t feel culture and the arts belong to you. You don’t believe that if you come from a council estate you can be an actor, a poet, or a painter.”

I’m encouraged to see former chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal, now Chancellor of the University of Manchester, leading efforts to improve working-class representation in the creative industries across Greater Manchester. Given the Labour government’s limited success in addressing this crisis nationally, focusing on local solutions is a brilliant and much-needed approach.

“There is a wealth of research showing that working class representation in UK creative industries is at its lowest level in decades and many leading artists have warned that the class ceiling is holding back innovation and creativity,” Afzal said. Yet that can no longer be an excuse for failing to ensure class is treated as an equal marker of diversity and inclusion — in how we monitor employment practices, set targets for commissioning and grants, and confer awards.

For a time, there was a proactive effort to address the imbalance of working-class representation in the theatre industry: a group called Common. It aimed to unite working-class creatives through mentoring, campaigning, and the creation of a database — a practical resource for producers, employers, and funders seeking working-class directors, writers, or choreographer, for example.

Alas — as is too often the case — a mix of structural pressures, compounded by the impact of the pandemic led to the group disbanding. 

Thus it increasingly frustrating to know that every pound invested in the arts generates a £1.27 return for the local economy. Investing in the arts isn’t just good economics—it’s a catalyst for growth, a source of social cohesion, and a powerful vehicle for cultural empowerment.

What’s worse, financial exploitation in theatre is rife — from the reliance on unpaid interns (great news for those who can afford it) to volunteer community choruses padding out productions, and freelancers paid so little they’re struggling to put food on the table amid a relentless cost of living crisis.

We know that many talented creative workers have left or are considering leaving the theatre industry; this is not acceptable – freelancers make up almost half of the workforce. Without freelancers, the industry simply wouldn’t exist. The only reason I’m still here — writing about the industry, working in it, and fighting for it — is because I’m stubborn, and, frankly, resilient to a fault.

How do we ensure that people from the working classes find pathways into the arts? How do we move away from ‘connections, connections, connections’? Who tells the story determines the story that is told. And it is bloody obvious that economic growth would be increased, risk-taking enhanced and consumers better-served if arts organisations had more staff from less privileged upbringings. Duh. 

Anyway, for all of the efforts made by many of you still reading this, it should shame us all that British theatre is one of the most centralised and exclusive industries in the UK.