A new report into UK film, broadcasting, publishing and performing arts has revealed a startling lack of diversity within the sector. The report, Panic! Social Class, Taste and Inequalities in the Creative Industries produced by Dave O’Brien, Orian Brook, and Mark Taylor from Edinburgh and Sheffield Universities, includes interviews with nearly 250 professionals in the sector and follows on from a discussion held by the British Film Institute on Working class Heroes in film and television. Speakers at this event reinforced the report’s findings noting that the ‘Oxbridge-educated’ gatekeepers may be contributing to ‘the iron curtain around opportunity at some of our national institutions’, and that ‘reductions in drama teaching in schools and cuts to youth services’ were also contributing factors.
The report, released by Create London and Arts Emergency is available at: http://createlondon.org/event/panic-paper/