In this extract, they share their interview with ‘Henna’, an aspiring creative, and introduce some of the book’s findings: I think it's very difficult. It's about asking people to be more reflective about various aspects of the conditions in creative organisations such as the work/life balance and so on. There’s this expectation that people who work in the arts do it for love but we all need to pay the rent and eat. There are only certain groups of people who can afford to say it's not about the money. I’d like to see greater recognition of that and an understanding that people still need to be paid even if they love what they're doing Connect with others over shared interests: One of the best aspects of pop culture is its ability to bring people together over shared passions. Use this as an opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations about what resonates with you and why – not only will this deepen your understanding of specific topics, but it will help build relationships based on shared values. The Problem: Healthy competition is good for business. It motivates employees and encourages stellar performance, which can help grow your company. However, having competition as the focal point of your culture will breed animosity between employees.

So culture can be bad for you if you’re working in the cultural industries and you don’t fit that stereotype of a middle-class, White, male person. What about as consumers of culture, can culture be bad for you then? And can you say something about how culture is defined? For Dr Brook, work to redress the balance is ongoing. Projects in development include an ambitious plan to reinterview a hundred people working in CCIs from the Panic! project and see how their situation and perceptions have changed in the intervening years. Eventually, she hopes to see the research make a lasting and positive difference to the sector. Cultural production and cultural consumption are the two areas of focus for our story about culture and inequality. These two areas have seen a longstanding and rich set of research traditions and agendas associated with them. We’re contributing new data and new analysis to this already extensive academic work…Who you know and who you’ve worked with’ are how the labour market in film functions. The industry is risk averse as a result of the huge costs of production (and of subsequent distribution and marketing), set against the uncertainty of success.

I think there is that understanding from within the organisational level but, what I was hearing, is that it's still very much seen as a completely normal and desirable thing by the universities because of the need to get real world experience. If students are still expected to go out and do unpaid work, there's some joining up there that needs to be done. The Fix: It’s time to double down on your company culture strategy. To do that, however, you need to understand the root of the problem. Probe employees during exit interviews on their reasons for leaving. Try to understand what it was about your culture that frustrated them and which aspects they found difficult to part with. Thinking about production is a bit different. We can start by comparing people working in film & TV with people working in museums, galleries & libraries. At first blush, they look very different; 29% of people working in film & TV are women, while 81% of people working in museums, galleries, and libraries are. So if your goal was to get all sectors to 50:50, you’d have to take a very different approach. Then again, what both sectors have in common is that the workforces get more male as jobs get more senior. So, while they’re different from each other, they’re not as far apart as you might think.The Problem: High turnover is almost always a guaranteed sign of a toxic company culture. Not only will a bad culture drive employees away, it will also deter job seekers from taking your organization seriously; more than 30 percent of workers say they left a job in the first 90 days because “company culture was not as expected” and 20 percent reported switching industries because of a “toxic work environment/culture.” If you’re saying goodbye to employees left and right, they’re probably looking for a less toxic work culture. The Janus-faced character of culture lies at the core of this wonderful new text. The big and diverse world of culture and entertainment brings joy, health, connection and catharsis to billions, but often at the expense of the talented few who labour to produce it. Culture is bad for you is a sweeping, empirical investigation of what it takes to "make it" as a British culture producer, but also of the forces that "break it": unequal access for people with fewer resources. Essential reading for citizens, policy makers, employers, artists and fans - and for those who study them.'

If you've ever felt on shaky ground describing your experience of inequality in the arts, if you've ever wondered if it's really true that some people are excluded from participation in cultural production and representation, if you'd like something to wave in the face of naysayers who think the cream always rises to the top, this is it. Culture is bad for you. This book does more than it says on the tin.' The expectation of unpaid labour is now endemic to the cultural sector. It is experienced differently according to social class: for those from middle class origins, with the most economic, social, and cultural resources, unpaid work is an investment in their career. It might mean a show at the Fringe, an internship at a prestigious publishing house, or working for free on their first short film; For those from working class origins, unpaid work is experienced as exploitation, as dead-end opportunities that most often lead nowhere. The Problem: It wasn’t cool in middle school, and it certainly isn’t appropriate in the office. Gossip leads to unwanted cliques that divide your workforce, turning employees against each other and creating a culture of distrust. For people working in the sector, the first thing to draw attention to is campaigning and activism. There’s organisations operating in and around cultural work that are drawing attention to the inequalities in culture, and doing things about it – I’d particularly highlight Arts Emergency, who both campaign around these issues and work directly with young people from historically marginalised to improve their chances of working in culture. People working in and around culture can support campaigning charities like Arts Emergency as individuals; they can also try to convince their organisations for an institutional commitment. We should recognise that the unusual working patterns of a large number of people in the sector aren’t symptomatic of a stereotypical contract – although the precarity associated with cultural workers goes far beyond them – and defend and extend workers’ rights and conditions through trade unions.While pop culture can provide entertainment and a sense of belonging, it’s essential to consider how consumption can negatively impact one’s mental health. For example: As Raymond Williams long ago argued, culture is all around us, and it is ordinary. Brook, O'Brien and Taylor show us that ordinary culture is bad for us. It is bad for us as workers, as consumers, and as a society. This excellent book will be the go-to source on the extraordinary inequality in the creation and consumption of ordinary media for a long time to come.' This analysis of nationally representative quantitative data shows the patterns of inequality in contemporary society. The rest of the book is about explaining how these patterns are sustained and replicated. Inequality begins young, with clear differences in access to culture in school and in the home. These differences in childhood cultural engagement set up lifelong divergences in the chances of different demographic groups making it into cultural occupations.