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Working-class creatives don’t stand a chance in UK today, leading artists warn

Exclusive: Analysis by the Guardian shows a third of major arts leaders were educated privately

They spoke after a Guardian survey of the 50 organisations that receive the most Arts Council England funding revealed a disproportionate number of leadership roles were occupied by people who were educated privately and those who went to the universities of Oxford or Cambridge. Composite: Guardian Design/Getty ImagesMichael Socha, who starred recently in the Meadows drama The Gallows Pole and got his start in acting via the Television Workshop in Nottingham, said the middle-class environment of film and TV in the UK could be difficult to navigate. Mark Simpson, the composer and clarinettist who won the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2006, said the reduction in local and national government-supported schemes meant someone from his roots would struggle to break through in the classical world today.

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