the educational section of the guardian is full of stories recently of universities cutting HE courses in multiple subjects. quite often the arts are hit leaving behind business studies, law, and the sciences. anything that might turn a profit according to government thinking. ignoring in its wisdom the large percentage of GDP that the creative industries give to the national economy.

but even if the arts course still exists at university and you are able to study creative writing there remains a steel barrier to the admittance of anyone from a working class background – student fees. the introduction of annual fees to pay for the tuition combined with maintenance costs discourages many from a working class background. how can you justify following a dream, a passion, when bills need to be paid and your family is in need of much needed cash? particularly in an industry where there is no guarantee of regular income.

even when there were no fees up front years ago when i went off to study there were still barriers. other students received weekly allowances from their parents and talked of foreign holidays over the summer. i focused on covering my £5 food bill each week and knew i would be working over the summer break.no holiday for me. i lived on vegetable stew, vegetable curry, porridge and peanut sandwiches. no hanging out in the student cafe for me. many students regularly skipped lectures and did other things. i couldn’t. i didn’t have the luxury of failing. i had to succeed to earn money.

even if the modern working class would be writer gets a degree or goes directly into the world of work there are other barriers awaiting them should they scrape enough time to be able to write and finish a book. they have to get the book published. in a 2016 paper from goldsmiths, dr david o’brien suggests that 10% writers are from a background where parents did routine or manual labour make up the overall number of writers. 12% of working class people worked in publishing.

chris mccrudden, a communication planner who dissects data stated: publishing is an upper-middle class industry whose output caters to upper-middle class tastes. so how is a working class writer going to get their worked published if this class of people are the gate keepers? how are the gate keepers going to relate to the experiences of someone with such a different background and worldview?

it has been noted that the uk publishing industry is the least socially diverse of all uk creative industries (guardian, kit de waal, feb 2018) with the sutton trust stating the number of creative and writing roles has roughly halved since 1970s. the ladder is being pulled up and the class ceiling grows thicker.

there seems to be little if any appetite amongst members of the government to address this issue. student debt continues to grow as the government looks to giving ai tech firms a free hand to ignore copyright safeguards thus diminishing the already regressive returns to the creatives.

only those from the wealthy backgrounds can afford to take on the student debt for a creative pursuit or help fund a would be novelist as they develop their craft and seek publication. even when published the returns are slim and additional financing is needed.

what can be done to give all creatives, particularly those from a working class background ground a leg up? ireland seems to be showing the way. a universal basic income for all creatives. early signs show this has resulted in greater financial returns than the money invested. it removes the financial worries from the writer in meeting bills and being able to afford food and frees them to focus on the creative project in hand. this can only lead to cultural enrichment for britain and a growing percentage of gdp in the creative industries. but we need a brave progressive government to take that step rather than one that follows a regressive well worn path.