J, Desai. (2020) This Work Isn’t For Us - Response

Following my reading of ‘This Work Isn’t For Us’ by Jemma Desai (2020), I thought about issues of access within the cultural sector in terms of opportunities and employment. This text discusses how people in charge would see minority groups participating in culture and being employed by cultural organisations such as the BFI and museums and galleries as a whole as an indicator of success and progress in issues of diversity.

Because minority groups participating in arts and culture is often seen as the primary indicator of progress, it was interesting to me that white middle and upper class women are often included when organisations reference diversity, as seen in the Arts Council England report titled ‘Equality, Diversity and the Creative Case’ published in 2016. White middle and upper class women are homogenised into one group alongside BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) people, LGBT+ and disabled people, who are all underrepresented in this sector considerably more than women in this sector. (Arts Emergency, 2018)

Desai (2020) notes that this gives ‘vastly inflated narratives of progress’. I am inclined to agree with Desai, as when thinking back on my own issues with access to cultural engagement, it has always been my working-class background or my disability that have provided these barriers. While obviously I am only one point of reference for this, and it is undoubtedly important that we continue to include women in these sectors, it raises the question of whether women should still be counted when looking at diversity statistics. Are we at a point where it’s a given that women are included, especially white women who are not from low-income backgrounds?

Because these diversity percentages may be inflated, it could be the case that these issues of inclusion have not progressed nearly as much as they seem to on the surface. What are these statistics when we remove these groups who do not experience marginalisation to the same degree as BAME, LGBT+ and disabled people?

While this is one indicator of change, it does not recognise that BAME people face further barriers to their access of culture beyond simply engaging with it. Desai questions why the focus is on people who are most commonly excluded from these institutions and not on the people who actively exclude these people, or the people who aid in exclusion through lack of action. This is something I intend to do further reading on, beginning by looking at issues of retention and access on the conditions of assimilation as mentioned further on in Desai’s text. I also plan on looking at Consilium (2018).

References:

Arts Council England (2016) Equality, Diversity and the Creative Case, https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Equality_diversity_creativecase_2015_16_web_0.pdf

Arts Emergency (2018) Panic! Social Class, Taste and Inequalities in the Creative Industries, https://createlondon.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Panic-Social-Class-Taste-and-Inequalities-in-the-Creative-Industries1.pdf

Consilium Research and Consultancy (2018) Equality and diversity within the arts and cultural Sector in England, 2013-16: Evidence Review, https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Consilium_Equality_Diversity_report_13112018.docx_0.pdf

J, Desai. (2020) This Work Isn’t For Us, https://sourceful.us/doc/337/this-work-isnt-for-us--by-jemma-desai