The ‘C’ Word: The Challenges of Class in Creative Business Education

As many academics acknowledge, class is a complex and fuzzy term that presents challenges in creative business education. Recent research clearly demonstrates the significance of class inequality in cultural and creative industries and highlights the way class inequality intersects with race, gender, and disability. Within creative education, class inequality is also at play. Research suggests that working-class students’ lack of economic, cultural, and social capital hinders their ability to take up work placements and internships and creates barriers to social engagement. Talking about these issues, however, is also highly challenging, for the ‘unspeakability’ of class means that structure inequalities are often interpreted as individual failings. In this chapter, I look to address the challenge the ‘c’ word presents in creative business education. In doing so, I consider how contemporary academics understand class and how class has been approached in an intersectional way in the context of arts and creative industries. I then turn to the significance of class inequality within the sector and how class origin shapes students’ experiences of education with creative disciplines. The chapter argues that students can find it hard to unpack the ways in which class operates and how it impacts their lives. Providing space to share these experiences and anxieties, however, can be one way of increasing understanding of class inequality with a view to challenge its influence across the creative sector.