The Big Smoke

My first response to the question ‘Why are the arts in London so white?’ is to challenge its premise. The visual arts are very white and middle-class, but not exclusively so. To be honest, I come across many more black people from middle-class (sometimes privately educated) backgrounds than white working-class people in the sector. If we think about who enters into the visual arts, and how, the answer becomes quite clear – it’s the (art) economy, stupid.

While there are many ways in which ethnic minorities engage with the sector – as artists, administrators, curators, educators – in both the public and private sector, I am going to focus here on employment.
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In recent years, the publicly funded arts sector has had an obsession with ‘diversity’, not least because it is strongly championed by Arts Council England (ACE) and the Department for Culture Media and Sport. This is not inherently bad. The problem is that this ‘diversity’ is very narrowly defined: it includes people from the ‘established minorities’ – African, Asian, Caribbean – but completely ignores ‘working-class’ white people and only benefits a small number, who are mainly characterised by a serious lack of ambition. They have also neglected the most important part of any transformative process – research and consultation. It’s a result of asking the wrong questions – in fact, of hardly asking questions at all. When writing ‘Boxed In: How Cultural Diversity Policies Constrict Black Artists’, I encountered many people – including those involved with Arts Council schemes like Inspire and Decibel – with lots of constructive criticism based on real experience. There is a huge dissatisfaction in the sector, yet many are too afraid to publicly express their concerns. I believe these fears are unnecessary and that this subject needs to be discussed openly. Policies ought to be debated in the realm of ideas, not just left to politicians. The Arts Council England is rather an easy target for artists to bash, so our criticism ought to be constructive. Nevertheless, your typical London visual artist could quite easily never come across a single non-white person (apart from the security guards, cleaners and the odd receptionist) working in a non-diversity-based role at Arts Council England’s London regional office.

Ethnic minorities overwhelmingly choose to study subjects other than art. For many people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds (as most minorities are), entering into the sector just isn’t a wise course of action – it relies on internships, and pay structures in the arts are notoriously low.

I’ve had many conversations with people from different arts organisations (including ACE) and they are all saying the same thing: there aren’t many ethnic minority people applying for jobs in the first place. I’ve yet to come across evidence suggesting that the ‘problem’ is that qualified black people are being prevented from getting on as a direct result of ‘institutional racism’.

This emphasis on race – and the lack of attention paid to class and economics – obscures the real issues, providing an easy answer to a complicated question. Only when the economic status quo is challenged will you see any wholesale changes in the sector.

The key questions we should be asking are: ‘What are the routes into the sector?’ (Art school, internships, low-paid work.)
‘Who goes to art school?’ (Mainly white people from high-income and/or middle-class backgrounds.)
‘What subjects are ethnic minority people most likely to study?’ (Depending on the ethnic group – law, social sciences, medicine, computer science.)

The research undertaken by Rohini Malik Okon for Arts Council England makes this clear. In addition, Okon confirms that parental influence has a greater effect on ethnic minorities than on the white majority when choosing what and where to study, which means that students end up on courses that lead to professions other than the arts. This is despite the fact that a ‘disproportionately’ high number of non-white people choose to go to university.

So, what needs to be done? Artists, curators and institutions need to take the lead. The Arts Council is bureaucratic and slow-moving by nature and its decisions are based on politics, not what is necessarily best for the arts.

A system of paid internships for people from low-income/first-generation university-attendant backgrounds would encourage more people from a variety of backgrounds to believe that they could build a future for themselves in the arts.

Bursaries for students at the major art schools allocated on the same basis would also help, particularly for curatorial and art historical MAs (key routes into curatorial jobs).

A comprehensive review of pay structures in the sector is well overdue.

More qualified non-white people should apply for the jobs available, regardless of whether or not they are specifically targeted at them on racial grounds. If you don’t apply, you can’t complain about not getting opportunities.

Equally, there ought to be more awareness of career structures. Often people from non-arts backgrounds have no idea as to how things work, which then leads to poor decision-making. This is a situation that can only be in the interests of those who wish to maintain the status quo.

If we can extract the good from the instrumentalism of the past decades, we can see that the emphasis on education projects has created a generation of young people who are more familiar with an artist’s life than any previous generation. Perhaps this will lead to more young ‘working-class’ people pursuing a career in the arts, and not being diverted into something more ‘sensible’. After all, those of us who want nothing else but to work in the arts will find a way to do so, even if it does mean being skint…

Sonya Dyer is a London-based artist, writer and arts consultant. She grew up on the Holly Street Estate in Hackney and was fortunate enough to have a liberal mum who encouraged her to go to art school.

Dyer will be taking part in ‘Cultural diversity: a straitjacket for the arts?’ at the Battle of Ideas on October 28 (www.battleofideas.org.uk).
For information on Dyer’s paper, ‘Boxed In’ (published by the Manifesto Club’s Artistic Autonomy Hub with a-n, the artists’ information company) visit www.manifestoclub.com/aa-diversity.