Rebalancing London’s ideas economy: the Creative Mentor Network
The creative industries have a problem. Although employment opportunities are growing at four times the rate of other sectors, this burgeoning jobs market is all but closed off to huge sections of UK society. In design and fashion, 8.7% of employees are from BAME backgrounds. In film and TV production roles, it’s 3%. And in journalism, 80% of the top echelon of editors is privately educated, even though only 18% of Britain’s population has been to private school. For many young people eager to get into a sector in which up to 60% of job openings are unadvertised, the way in is either through a pre-existing connection on the inside, or an unpaid internship – which in London requires reserves of around £1,000 a month just to carry on living.
What statistics like these make clear is that the entry points into a creative career are largely limited to the well-educated, the well-connected, the well-off and the white.
PRESS RELEASE
19 Oct 2017
Rebalancing London’s ideas economy: the Creative Mentor Network