The best place in the world to be a cultural worker?

Earlier this year, I had a conversation withI Matthew Jarratt of the North East Culture Partnership. He asked me what I thought the future should hold for the North East heritage and cultural sector.

A big question and with a multifaceted answer.

We talked about the ecology and how things were becoming polarised to organisations and individuals. How people expect me to polarise that more because I am working to advocate for freelancers, and how that was not the case! How we all need to work together to make things better – but it has to be getting better for freelancers as well. 

We talked about how freelancers have been at the bottom of the pile, but how other cultural employees have also had it really hard, over the last few years particularly. 

We talked about the cost of living crisis and how it was effecting everyone, but particularly those on precarious and low incomes. 

We talked about the mental health of freelancers and wider society and I explained how I was really scared about the mental health crisis. That we, as a sector, have a responsibility to try and alleviate the pressures on our workforce.

We talked about education, opportunity and access, and how policy shifts are going to make art and culture even less accessible to the very people we need to be encouraging into the sector to ensure the sector is relevant, representative and innovative.

We talked about how the structures, organisations and institutions are often not the safest spaces for people who are marginalised in society, which is why they find their own place in the freelance and independent sector. 

We talked about money! 

Life is really scary right now for the cultural sector, and especially so in the North East. We are often the ones forgotten about, and even the levelling up agenda is political at its core. We are low on infrastructure, with the majority of our funded organisations centred around Newcastle.

It’s unsurprising the Arts Council levelling up long list includes nearly the whole region! And why we have such a significant number of Creative People and Places projects. 

We are working in a strange political landscape with combined authorities – one in the North and one in the South – with the rest of the region working at a local authority level. 

We have some of the starkest figures of social deprivation in the country and some of the worst health statistics. So, not only Is the sector struggling, but the challenges for the region as a whole are a contributing factor too.

But we also have some of the most amazing heritage and culture, and an increasingly diverse population that are bright, joyful and innovative. We pride ourselves on our friendliness, and it shines through in the generosity of our sector. Since starting North East Cultural Freelancers the generosity of the creative community has made me want to weep on more than one occasion. 

And throughout the conversation I realised exactly what we the future should be for the region’s arts and culture.

We need to become the best place to be a cultural worker in the country. Perhaps even the world! 

If the North East was a place where access and opportunity to a career in the arts was possible, no matter your background, then we would be vibrant and bold and unique. 

As a sector we focus on audiences and participants, and I do understand why, I really do. But if we took a moment out of each day to focus on the workforce, how wonderful would that be? 

What does it mean to be the best place to be a cultural worker?

• We would have the best pay for culture sector workers – I was going to say outside of London but let’s aim bigger! We would have the best pay for cultural sector jobs. Full stop. 

In the North East we are some of the worst paid – that is across all sectors, but still. So, what can we do about that? Pay better! I know many organisations will get a knot in their stomachs about this and I get it – but it really is that simple.

We need to be thinking about the work that we are doing, if we can’t afford to pay our workforce properly, should we be doing the work at all?

If our workforce are attending meetings for free or planning in their own time, then their fee is not high enough. We should all be aiming to push wages up not drive them down! 

• We would have the best opportunities to start a cultural career in the UK. 

Our pathways and career options are murky at best!

In the North East we would have clear pathways into careers, there would be clear points of contact for anyone entering a creative career in the region – whether they are leaving education at 16 or whether they are starting off their career at 65. All Secondary Schools would have connections to cultural organisations and have a better understanding of the breadth of creative careers. 

• We would invest in our creative community – understanding as a workforce we are nuanced, but more investment in our connection, growth and upskilling will benefit the whole region in the long term. 

We should value the talent we have in our region and look on our doorstep for innovation and inspiration – we have some of the most amazing talent in this region and we should all celebrate and cherish it. 

If we recruit to roles we should think outside of our immediate circle of influence and develop creative recruitment techniques – ensuring we are not just building more of the same, and making sure we are moving towards a more representative workforce! We have the highest percentage of people with disabilities in this region yet I don’t see that reflected in our workforce, and especially not in senior roles within organisations. 

We should be working with creative teams to ensure their mental health is supported and if they are working with challenging content we should be providing them with suitable supervision. 

Rather than centring our approach around organisations, buildings or institutions we could focus our efforts on people.  

By centring people, I think in time, we then get:

• Higher wages. 

• A stronger creative community. 

• To keep our talent in the region.

• A stronger creative economy. 

• An increased likelihood of inward investment. 

• A safe and diverse environment for creatives to flourish.

• Creatives embedded in their communities.

• Creatives who feel their mental health is supported. 

• Better and more meaningful connections to audiences. 

• Accountability structures. 

• Young people and their adults more likely to value creative industries as a profession. 

• A USP as a creative community – we could be the only region in England that puts the workforce first.

• Through all this we will also have the best creative outputs of any other region…full stop. Because if you have a happy, healthy, connected and engaged workforce, you will also have the product to match. 

We are not going to get there overnight, but if we all work towards being the best place to be a cultural worker – and I mean all of us – then we can get there one step at a time! 

Who’s with me?