Culture is Bad for You: Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries

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In this extract, they share their interview with ‘Henna’, an aspiring creative, and introduce some of the book’s findings: Dave O’Brienis Chancellor’s Fellow in Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Edinburgh. He has published extensively on sociology of culture and cultural policy, and is currently part of a large scale AHRC project assessing the impact of COVID-19 on the cultural sector in the UK.

Unrealistic expectations: Exposure to airbrushed images and seemingly perfect lives can contribute to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem as individuals struggle to live up to these impossible standards. In addition, the increasing influence of pop culture in the digital world can contribute to feelings of social isolation. The more people follow and consume pop culture online, the more they may prefer virtual interactions to face-to-face communication. This can lead to weakened interpersonal skills and diminished empathy, making it challenging to maintain healthy relationships. The Problem: If employees often work through lunch, it’s either because they feel they don’t have time to stop working, or they believe management doesn’t condone taking breaks. Not only is that poor business logic — more than three-quarters of workers say lunch breaks improve job performance — it’s also a surefire way to turn employees away. Expecting that employees will perform well while working eight hours nonstop is ridiculous. Moreover, it signals to them that leadership only values their work output, not their contribution to the culture or personal commitment to the organization. This book tells the story of how Henna’s observation that film, and much of the rest of culture, is not a meritocracy. It is not enough to be talented and hard-working to make it. The Problem: Of course you want every member of your team to feel like they belong in your company culture, but hiring for culture fit is an outdated recruitment strategy that will cost you top talent. When you seek out carbon copies of your current employees, your culture will remain stagnant or start to decline. Like-minded individuals are great at agreeing, but tend to butt heads when it comes to pushing the envelope.This wasn’t all that Henna told us. She told us her gender, and the colour of her skin, were given less value than those of her white, male colleagues. This was despite the claims by parts of the film industry, and by government policy, that film is open to any and all who are talented. The book stresses the need to understand inequality in an intersectional way. It focuses on how race, class, and gender interrelate, privileging some whilst punishing others. For women of colour who are socially mobile, the experience of cultural occupations and cultural institutions is of an often hostile environment. For white, middle class origin men, the experience is of a smoother rise to the top of organisations, institutions, and art forms. Culture is bad for you is a sobering, enraging picture of the creative industries and the inequalities at their heart. Using data, case studies and sharp analysis, the result holds to account a culture that isn't just a reflection of a rigged society - but an engine of it. For anyone who works in British culture, or cares who does, or simply values true equality of opportunity, this is essential reading.' A lot of the kinds of policy interventions that would be most effective in confronting inequalities in the cultural sector are broader than the sector itself. A simple example is formally regulating (and almost certainly banning) unpaid internships: the consequences of unpaid internships are particularly visible in cultural work, but it’s just as important for think tanks and the policy research environment more broadly. The Fix: Lead by example and hold everyone accountable. Core values are important to your culture and your success as an organization, so ensure they are upheld by every member of your team. Holding all employees to the same set of standards will foster an open culture based on equality. This will also help promote your core values across all departments so they become ingrained in your culture.

Then, talk to employees — especially long-term employees — to get a sense of what’s kept them around. Consider conducting an employee engagement survey and carefully analyze the results. Once you know what you need to improve, act on it. In addition, technology has facilitated the spread of false information and misinformation through pop culture content. This can have a detrimental effect on critical thinking and the ability to distinguish fact from fiction. People are likelier to believe false information when presented in a pop culture context. The Fix: Praise in public, correct in private, and present the error as an opportunity to learn and grow. A healthy work environment allows employees to learn from their mistakes without shame. Pop culture has a major impact on our social relationships, communication, and consumption habits. With increased media exposure, many people have developed a desire to keep up with the latest trends, gadgets, and possessions, often leading to financial stress and dissatisfaction. Social isolation: The constant need for digital connection through social media platforms and online forums could lead some individuals to social withdrawal.A toxic work culture is a company environment dominated by practices, policies and management styles that perpetuate unhealthy habits and conflicts among team members. It can be harmful to employees, preventing them from being productive and growing professionally. Bad organizational culture can also lead to unhappiness and dissatisfaction that drives employees to look for jobs elsewhere. Thinking about production is a bit different. We can start by comparing people working in film & TV with people working in museums, galleries & libraries. At first blush, they look very different; 29% of people working in film & TV are women, while 81% of people working in museums, galleries, and libraries are. So if your goal was to get all sectors to 50:50, you’d have to take a very different approach. Then again, what both sectors have in common is that the workforces get more male as jobs get more senior. So, while they’re different from each other, they’re not as far apart as you might think. How to Fix It: Launch team building activities and company-wide initiatives to get teams talking and working together, even if it’s not work related. Breaking down these initial walls between teams and even within teams can help information flow better when it comes to everyday work. Additionally, creating open-door policies at the leadership level can work wonders for communication. When engagement and transparency are encouraged from the very top, information is less likely to get trapped. It can be difficult to abandon the styles of communication cemented in a company’s foundation but it’s worth the work.

We demonstrate in the book that there’s an overwhelming belief in the power of culture: culture can change lives. This isn’t a marginal issue that we can deal with once we’ve confronted all the other inequalities and injustices in the world, it’s inextricably linked to them. At the moment, the power of culture is often negative. If we want to transform that, everyone needs to do their part. Mike Quille interviews Mark Taylor, co-author of Culture is Bad For You, by Orian Brook, Dave O’Brien and Mark Taylor, published by Manchester University Press. While pop culture can bring us together, it’s essential to be aware of its potential adverse effects. By finding a balance between enjoying the pop culture and having meaningful conversations, we can build strong relationships and improve our communication skills. Consumerism And Materialism In Pop Culture For people working in the sector, the first thing to draw attention to is campaigning and activism. There’s organisations operating in and around cultural work that are drawing attention to the inequalities in culture, and doing things about it – I’d particularly highlight Arts Emergency, who both campaign around these issues and work directly with young people from historically marginalised to improve their chances of working in culture. People working in and around culture can support campaigning charities like Arts Emergency as individuals; they can also try to convince their organisations for an institutional commitment. We should recognise that the unusual working patterns of a large number of people in the sector aren’t symptomatic of a stereotypical contract – although the precarity associated with cultural workers goes far beyond them – and defend and extend workers’ rights and conditions through trade unions.

Fixing a Toxic Company Culture

I triangulated all that data – pupils on free school meals, their attainment levels and the proportion going on to higher education, and creative work – and mapped that against universities to help them identify where would be good places to focus their efforts and try to expand. It was never going to be a hard and fast you must go here; more a suggestion of areas that may be more fertile ground.” Limit passive consumption: It’s easy to fall into the trap of endlessly scrolling through social media feeds or watching videos on autoplay without truly engaging with the material. By setting boundaries around how much time you spend passively consuming content (and replacing some of that time with more active pursuits), you’ll create space for genuine reflection and growth.

A more complicated example is housing: several of our interviewees reported spending large amounts of money on low-quality accommodation in London where they were on edge about their landlord ending their tenancy at no notice. A few different policies would get at this: regulation of the private rented sector to look more like Germany; far more socially rented housing to look more like Austria; more homes being built so that housing is no longer such a scarce resource. This kind of transformation wouldn’t be targeted at the cultural sector, but for me it would be the most effective way to confront existing inequalities. While pop culture provides a common ground for people to connect and converse, it can also negatively affect social relationships and communication. One of the main problems is the superficiality it can foster. Because pop culture often emphasizes fleeting trends and entertaining distractions, it can lead to superficial conversations that limit the scope for deeper, more meaningful discussions. This, in turn, can hinder the development of solid and lasting relationships with others.Henna tells us some of our reasons why we’ve written this book, and why we’ve given it the provocative title of Culture is bad for you. She gives us the starting point for why we should question some of the ‘good news’ about culture. Art and culture are supposed to bring society together. Culture is bad for you challenges the received wisdom that culture is good for us. It does this by demonstrating who makes who and consumes culture are marked by significant inequalities and social divisions.