Commoners #004
Helping common people become more common in the creative industries.
Hello common friends,
Happy New Year! The format of this newsletter is a little different to the norm because we needed to have a bit of a rant about maths.
The last three years have been challenging. There’s no doubt about that. We all had high hopes for 2023. Things had to get better right? Rishi Sunak had his pick of challenges to tackle in his first speech of 2023. Maybe given that we’ve just had our hottest year on record he’d unveil ambitious plans to tackle the climate crisis. Maybe he’d announce plans to help the NHS or support families facing the brunt of the cost of living crisis.
Instead, he decided to talk about his plans that will "reimagine our approach to numeracy". Really? Two more compulsory years of maths?
It’s a bad stereotype that all creatives hate maths. If you’re in any marketing or media role you’ll need to know your way around numbers and spreadsheets. Looking at our WhatsApp group, what most of us agreed on is that we hate how maths is taught in schools. However, some creatives really do just hate maths and Simon Pegg’s video captures some of the sentiment that they all felt when he called Sunak a pr***.
“So Rishi Sunak, our unmandated, unelected prime minister twice removed, has decided it should be compulsory for children to learn Math up until the age of 18 – what a pr***. What about arts and humanities and fostering this country's amazing reputation for creativity and self-expression? What about that? What about the kids that don't want to do Maths? I hated Maths. I dropped Maths as soon as I could and I’ve never needed it other than the skillset I acquired at the age of 12.”
All creatives know that when developing anything you need to listen to what your audience want and really need otherwise you risk speaking to yourself and looking like an idiot. Our hope is that Sunak listens to what young people actually want and need. We’ll bet all our money (which isn’t much) that two more years of compulsory maths isn’t high on regular pupils' agendas.
In November last year, Izzy Garbutt the Youth MP for Wigan and Leigh gave an impassioned speech to parliament about education and health. In the speech she explained that even though she could recite a quadratic equation, she felt unprepared for life following School:
“For years, we've been calling for a curriculum for life, a curriculum which will see us leaving school with a greater understanding of the world around us. We are pleading for more emphasis on employability, communication skills and personal wellbeing.”
The video is well worth a watch, jump to 30:00m to hear Izzy speak.
Meanwhile, kudos to Saatchi & Saatchi who did their best to remind Sunak that the creative industries are estimated to generate £115bn for the UK economy each year with an ad van highlighting that ‘Investing in creativity isn’t double maths’
Other than maths, we’ve been talking about
Social class (naturally)
In mid-December KPMG published their results from a pioneering study which analysed 16,500 people’s careers. The research made several headlines which highlighted how social class is the biggest barrier to career progression.
Nepo babies
Just before Christmas everyone seemed to be talking about nepo-babies and we were no different. BuzzFeed’s Izzy Ampil wrote a great piece outlining how nepo babies are the tip of the class inequality iceberg. The Creative Mentoring Network joined the conversation with some sobering stats that we all know sadly too well, like how 60% of people in Creative Leadership roles come from privileged backgrounds.
We’ve been reading
A great piece by Weber Shandwick's Tom Beckman exploring why ‘eat the rich’ will be the dominant creative narrative of 2023. Beckman observes, “This recession, suddenly, the rich are not the aspirational icons of our dreams, they are the villains in our films”
Emilia Clarke has been shouting about how the lack of working class people in creative jobs is “outrageous”'. Clarke is a patron of arts charity Open Door, which aims to address inequality for budding actors.
The working class author Kerry Hudson wrote a piece in inews, asking that people don’t call her a social mobility success story as it disguised the truth about the arts sector. Hudson writes, "Our culture is missing out on some of its most vibrant creators because of a system rigged against working class creatives."
Given that the average pay for authors has fallen to just £7,000 a year Hudson’s voice should be listened to. Even the Times have said that writing could “soon be the preserve of the wealthy”.
Tomiwa Owolade wrote a great piece for The Guardian which highlights how a rich life in the UK’s creative industries is a long shot if you are born poor. Owolade believes, “Low pay and job insecurity in the arts are increasingly making the field the preserve of the wealthy, and less diverse as a result.”
Chris Clarke wrote an interesting piece asking why so many people pretend to be working-class, Clarke notes, “According to recent polling; far from middle-class norms pervading, British people disproportionately see themselves as working-class.”
We’ve been celebrating
Lucky Generals and its co-founder Andy Nairn for launching a set of creativity cards, based loosely on the book Go Luck Yourself, to raise funds for Commercial Break, to help working class talent in the creative industries. It’s raised over £30,000 so far.
Santander for scrapping their 2:1 degree requirement for graduates as part of their wider efforts to boost the proportion of employees from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in senior roles from 28% to 35% by 2030.
Government stuff
In mid-December, The Government published a report which identifies the current barriers to finding and using socio-economic data, to outline an ambition of what an improved data environment could look like and how it might benefit future policy-making.
Arts Minister Lord Parkinson gave a speech outlining government support for the Arts and Creative Industries.
In early January Katharine Birbalsingh quit as the UK government’s social mobility head as she believed her views were “doing more harm than good”.
Helping Common People
The easiest way to help is to share this with some Common People Like YOU. Whether they’re an industry leader, or someone wanting to break into the industry, we can help. Point them in our direction.
If you’ve got jobs or opportunities that you’d like to share, send them our way.
If you see anything interesting that you think us Commoners would like, send that too.
If you’d like to offer up yourself as a mentor or find a mentor, reply to this email and we can help.
If you’d like to support Common People by helping out, then we’re always looking for people to join the group that puts a lot of this sort of stuff together.
We hope you enjoyed our latest newsletter. Let us know what you think - we’re a friendly bunch.
And never forget, we’re Common People, and proudly a different class.
See you again, take care, and stay in touch,
Your fellow Commoners