Measuring social mobility in the creative and cultural industries – the importance of working in partnership to improve data practices and address inequality

The challenge

To understand how best to measure social mobility in a way that works for the cultural sector.

Context of the research

ACE wants to address growing concerns around the lack of social mobility in the cultural sector. To understand the make-up of the sector that it funds, it needs to collect new data about class in the workforce. To achieve this goal, better understanding is required of how inequality data is already collected, submitted and valued by cultural sector organisations.

Dr Oman undertook 2 phases of research with 15 ACE-funded organisations, known as National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs). NPOs are required to return data to demonstrate who has benefitted from public investment. This includes the diversity of the workforce in funded organisations. The findings of this research are presented here to inform equality data collection across the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCIs) in the UK.

Wider policy problem

As with all sectors, building an accurate picture of social inequality in the cultural sector and broader CCIs is key to understanding how to address it. Workforce data have historically been duplicated, often captured unsystematically and are resource-heavy to manage. Alongside this, the request for demographic data to understand diversity and inequality issues is frequently met with suspicion. Addressing existing metrics and data practices will improve the experience of data collection and the quality of the data collected. In turn, this will increase the sector’s capacity to be data-driven, also improving return on investment.

Key finding

The recommended measure to understand class and social mobility is based on a question which asks the occupation of people’s parents or carers when growing up. However, when trialled alongside 40 other questions, this was the most problematic for people to answer. This research found that the various barriers to answering this and other demographic questions can be alleviated by addressing data practices in context: who, how and where this information is collected. Crucially, improving these processes involves communicating the rationale behind the questions asked - and the value of data they produce - to those asked to share their personal data.