A recent arts industry report posed the question: where are all the working class people in the visual arts? Reflecting on Glasgow's biggest festival for contemporary art, Hailey Maxwell concludes that, if anything, exploitation and inequality in the world art itself reflect British society as a whole...

Kicking off in mid-April and finishing this week, the Glasgow International biennale of contemporary art spread its numerous offerings across 78 venues in Glasgow. Interesting and dynamic, the festival has long been regarded as an important event on the calendar of the international art world and one which nourishes Glasgow’s reputation as the UK’s “second city” for culture and visual art.



The festival continues to construct its success around the play between local and global and by balancing award-winners and emerging talent, all the while emphasising collaboration, co-operation and audience involvement with a lively programme of group exhibitions, public sculptures, workshops, happenings, screenings, talks, and performances.



In a recent interview with The Skinny, festival Director Richard Parry recognised the politicised tone of the event this year, insisting that “there has not been a more important time to listen to artists,” noting “for many artists making work now, there's the sense that you have to take a position and make it explicit in the work.” Indeed – the GI programme included a number of events that reflected the democratic and communitarian ideal, with artists and collectives incorporating issues of inclusion, diversity, identity and community into events which demand audience participation.



Many of these were extremely exciting: Najma Abukar, Layla-Roxanne Hill, Sekai Machache, and Adebusola Debora Ramsay came together as Yon Afro, a Black-led collective of women of colour in Scotland. They explored identity as resistance within their group show “(Re)imagining Self and Raising Consciousness of Existence" at the Govanhill Baths.



Elsewhere, Deniz Uster prompted a conversation around Community Right to Buy, and the sharply named collective Sorryyoufeeluncomfortable’s (BUT) WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT WHITE SUPREMACY? challenged viewers with a series of screenings, discussions and workshops.



Parry is correct in highlighting the increased expectation that artists take a political stance with their work, but the broader question of who artists are talking to, and who should be listening to them demands consideration. Beyond inviting locals and visitors to explore and discover experimental and interdisciplinary art and artists in some of the city’s most interesting places and spaces, the eighth edition of Glasgow International magnified the quiet but unsightly truth that culture is not innocent.



This year, the festival as an institution has been confronted by some ugly truths about the industry and the unsustainable nature of large, global events like Glasgow International. The content and form that made up Glasgow International and the political and social context of the festival this year reveals a number of long-standing structural problems of power, exploitation and discrimination at the core of the cultural sector and the production of contemporary art.



Earlier this month, partners from Edinburgh College of Art, University of Sheffield and London-based consultancy Create published Panic! Its An Arts Emergency: Social Class, Taste and Inequalities in the Creative Industries, a report exploring social mobility in the cultural industries - the first sociological study of its kind.



The paper revealed that not only is the cultural sector overwhelmingly male, pale and stale, but confirmed what many frustrated and demoralised cultural workers know from experience: class inequality is a defining characteristic of the creative industries.



Despite having arguably most left wing, liberal and pro-welfare views of any other profession, this monolithic workforce has very little insight into how bad things are for working class people attempting to break in to the sector. Levels of ignorance are particularly high among those more senior individuals most capable of enacting change. Cultural workers are unlikely to know many people (including friends, family and colleagues) from outside the creative industry. In short, the arts is indeed largely a bourgeoisie bubble.



The report found that levels of working class exclusion in the sector are the same as almost forty years ago, with women and BME individuals most badly affected. While the media cliché which universalises working-class experience as exclusively belonging to angry, White men occasionally allows representatives of that group entry – usually portrayed as a kind of 'noble savage' (e.g. Irvine Welsh, Darren McGarvey) – women and people of colour are more often than not excluded completely.