Monday 07-06-2021 - 15:31

Written by Leonie Edmead, BAME Ambassador

 

To put it simply, no.

 

As a final year textile student and ambassador for the Arts and Humanities faculty, my passion lies within the arts; it’s all I can imagine my life being. Choosing to study a creative subject at university was not an easy choice, I was often met with the question, ‘What will you do with your degree?’

Granted not everyone will understand the importance of the Creative Industries and just how much you can do with a creative degree. However, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak’s comment on creatives retraining and finding other jobs led me to question just how valuable are the Creative Industries? More importantly, how valuable are Black, Asian and minority ethnic creatives in these industries?

In 2018, the creative industries contributed more than £111 billion to the UK economy, equating to around £306 million per day. Economically, there’s no doubt that the Creative Industries are extremely valuable, the fall of these industries would have a huge impact on the UK’s economy. Nevertheless, the value of these Creative Industries shouldn’t be purely measured on an economic basis alone, but the social impacts of these industries that impact everyone every day.

Many of us take the everyday objects and spaces around us for granted. Take the clothing you wear, there’s most likely an extensive team of creatives working from designing the garment to selling it to you. Also, the music and television you turn to for entertainment, there are countless creatives behind the process from producers to directors and so on. That’s what makes the Creative Industries valuable, their ability to affect everything around us. It’s therefore important for us to reflect and appreciate how much creativity impacts our everyday lives. In such unprecedented times, creativity has brought so much joy, stress relief and very much needed entertainment to alleviate the horrors of the world. So, to reiterate, creatives should not retrain and find jobs in other sectors; they’re just as valuable to our economy and more importantly to our society as any other industry.

 

Creatives from BAME backgrounds

Black, Asian and minority ethnic creatives play a vital role within the creative industries yet are often overlooked for the work and inspiration they contribute. From the musical influences, to the architectural influences and fashion influences that Black, Asian and minority ethnic people have had on the UK, it’s not fairly represented in the workforce. Today, in the UK, people from BAME backgrounds only account for 11% of the creative workforce and 8% of the senior roles in these sectors. The impact this has on creatives is dire; it fails to create a safe place for people from diverse ethnic backgrounds to work and feel represented in industries that are heavily inspired by non-Western cultures.

The same can be said at higher education, as the lack of academic teaching staff from BAME backgrounds on creative courses doesn’t allow for students to always learn about art from non-white perspectives in much depth. Art cannot be confined to one part of the world (the West) as it’s often depicted in art lectures in higher education. This may not always be the case, but it most often is. The simple fact of having academic staff from BAME backgrounds also creates a place of belonging - it allows students from similar backgrounds to see a part of themselves represented in spaces they often are not.

 

So, what can be done to improve the current situations?

It will not be an easy nor quick task to change the lack of representation across the creative workforce or amongst academic university staff but there are many more ways to make change. You can make an active choice to support Black, Asian and minority ethnic creatives, there are many platforms out there already doing amazing work that you can support.

 

On Instagram:

Creative Cultures Collective - A platform to promote and encourage diverse cultural representation in Art & Design and other creative spaces

Fuse Manchester - A platform elevating creatives of colour in Manchester and beyond

FRESH Magazine - A platform to shine a spotlight on the work of Black and Asian designers and creatives

ROOT-ed Zine - Award winning, independent zine & social platform for Black, Asian & PoC creatives in the North West of England.

 

Find out more about the amazing work being done by the BAME Ambassadors and for regular updates and exclusive content, make sure to follow @mmubame on Instagram.