“Getting into advertising was the hardest part of the job”, says Emily Stewart, an account director at a major creative agency. “When I started out, it seemed like a mythical industry – one in which you had to know someone to get in.”

With an estimated 60 per cent of jobs going unadvertised, the creative industry can indeed be tough to crack. Entry points are often limited to the well-educated, the well-connected, the well-off – and the white. Many people who do find careers do so through existing connections or unpaid internships, which exclude young people from low-income backgrounds.

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This struggle is one of the reasons why Stewart signed up as a mentor in the Creative Mentor Network. For four months, she was paired with Esme Kontoh – a sixth-former from London with aspirations to work in the media. The pair met for an hour a week, discussing the roles available in advertising, the skills needed, and potential routes in.

Kontoh says: “I learned that there were a range of different routes you could take to get into the industry, and realised that it was more diverse than I once thought.”

Young people at a Creative Mentor Network event

That said, while diversity may be a buzzword in creative circles, the statistics are revealing. In design and fashion, under 9 per cent of employees are from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, and in film and TV production that figure is just 3 per cent.

In journalism, 80 per cent of the top echelon of editors are privately educated, compared to just 18 per cent of Britain’s population.

When Isabel Farchy founded the non profit Creative Mentor Network in 2015, this was among the issues she wanted to address: “There are so many creative businesses talking about the importance of hiring diverse talent”, she says, “but I worry that talking about it in some way absolves people from doing anything about it.”

I learned that there were a range of different routes you could take to get into the industry, and realised that it was more diverse than I once thought

A former teacher of English and media, Farchy was working in an academy in west London when she realised the extent of the problem. Locked out by old boys’ networks, financially impossible internships, limited careers guidance and a pervasive lack of industry awareness, many creative teenagers were leaving school with little or no understanding of creative careers. Some relegated their passion to a hobby while others chose to abandon it altogether.

“As the fastest-growing sector and the biggest graduate employer, the creative industries should be a focus for careers departments,” Farchy notes.

Sophie, a career consultant in the mentor network, is a teacher and illustrator

But they often are not, and parents from low-income families often discourage their children from taking what is seen as a risky option. The network selects pupils from schools with a high proportion of students on free school meals and high levels of ethnic diversity, and links them with creative professionals. The mentors span advertising, design, film and TV.

The aim is that the young people leave the scheme with at least four connections in their chosen sector. Farchy plans to expand the network to 50 schools in London in 2018, and then to other cities. But this is no one-way street: mentors get access to fresh perspectives from outside their bubble and access to untapped young talent. In some cases? They may even be meeting a future employee.

Young people at a Creative Mentor Network event

Images: Creative Mentor Network

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Nine out of 10 young people in the UK want careers that will allow them to tackle social issues. That’s according to EngineeringUK, a non-profit organisation that promotes the importance of engineering in society. The body quizzed 1,246 young people aged nine to 18 years old about their career preferences.

Ninety per cent of participants, who took part in the study in August 2017, said they wanted careers that would make a difference. Some 47 per cent wanted to help animals, 37 per cent wanted to save lives and 29 per cent wanted to tackle homelessness.

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Awarding salaries based on people’s qualifications and earning potential is far preferable, city officials said as the ruling became law in October.

“Being underpaid once should not condemn one to a lifetime of inequity,” said public advocate Letitia James, who believes that the practice perpetuates a cycle of unfair salaries.

“By banning questions about salary history, we are putting a stop to an employment practice that perpetuates gender wage discrimination and hurts all New Yorkers,” said James.

“We will never close the wage gap unless we continue to enact proactive policies that promote economic justice and equity.”

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The state of California, as well as Massachusetts, Oregon, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have all passed similar, partial laws in the last couple of years. This month, Amazon reportedly banned hiring managers from asking prospective employees about their salary histories.

The US Census Bureau reports that women in the US working full-time are paid 80 per cent of what men are paid. The Washington-based Institute for Women’s Policy Research reports that women in New York state earn 87 cents for every dollar that men earn.

Other US states and cities are likely to pass similar legislation in the coming months, say experts.

Illustration: Give Up Art

This article is featured in issue 92 of Positive News magazine. Subscribe now to get the magazine delivered to your door each quarter.

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Launched in London last year, Auticon is a social enterprise that exclusively helps adults with autism find work in IT. It offers support from ‘job coaches’, and has links with major firms across the country.

According to figures from the National Autistic Society, only 16 per cent of autistic adults are in full-time paid employment, despite 77 per cent of those who are unemployed wanting to work.

Auticon currently employs 15 full-time autistic IT consultants in the UK. But the company says demand for these skills is higher than ever, and so has launched a campaign to find more applicants.

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“We saw that so many talented individuals, who wanted long term employment and had so much to offer, were missing out,” said Auticon UK CEO Ray Coyle.

“We have had great responses from major blue chip clients, who really value the skills our consultants bring. So great, in fact, that we are now unable to meet demand. We are calling out for autistic adults, who have an interest in technology, to apply.”

Auticon UK CEO Ray Coyle

The surge in demand – from companies ranging from startups; to major firms such as GlaxoSmithKline and Experian – is due to both a tech skills shortage in London, and the fact that companies are recognising the value of employing workers with autism, said Coyle.

The company acknowledges that autism-specific strengths are highly individual, but say they frequently include logical and analytical abilities, sustained concentration, conscientiousness, loyalty, an eye for detail, and technical expertise.

“Autistic adults often have extraordinary cognitive abilities, yet many find it difficult to secure or maintain mainstream employment. Auticon taps into this potential and produces a win-win-win situation for clients, autistic consultants, and society,” said Coyle.

Autistic adults often have extraordinary cognitive abilities, yet many find it difficult to secure or maintain mainstream employment

As well as lining up employment, Auticon arranges job coaches, who work with each consultant to ensure they feel comfortable in the workplace. Project managers offer technical support and tips on professional development. Prospective employers are also given advice on creating autism-friendly work environments.

Tom Cowley (pictured) has a degree in games design but, six years after finishing his studies, he still hadn’t broken into the industry. “After university I found myself stuck in the eternal trap of how to get a job in the industry without experience,” he told BBC News.

“A year passed, and then another year – I wondered if I just wasn’t good enough.”

He is now a consultant with Auticon and works in the 3D printing industry. Cowley says many of the traits that come with his autism make him more employable in the IT industry.

“People [with autism], despite having relatively little interaction with the world around them, still have a very active and concentrated inner world inside their head,” he said.

“The tendency and ability to block everything else out and just focus on the one thing is a big help; I can keep plodding forward without letting it wear me down as much as it would most people.”

The tendency and ability to block everything else out and just focus on the one thing is a big help

Auticon was founded in Berlin in 2011 as the first enterprise to exclusively employ adults with autism as IT consultants. It employs more than 90 consultants across the UK, Germany and France.

Images: Grey Corporate
Featured image: Tom Cowley (r) provides IT consultancy for Auticon clients

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While UK employment has reached record levels, independent economists say more people are taking insecure, low-paid jobs. Figures show that the number of UK workers on zero-hour contracts has passed 800,000 for the first time.

The new measure, adopted under Wales’s 2015 Well-being of Future Generations Act, is one of 46 national indicators looking at everything from loneliness to biological diversity.

It will record the percentage of working people who earn more than two-thirds of the UK median wage and are either on permanent contracts or on temporary contracts and not seeking permanent employment.

The move mirrors a proposal made last year by thinktank the New Economics Foundation (NEF) for a UK-wide ‘good jobs’ indicator. NEF called the government’s move “a big step in the right direction”.

Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, has also noted the decline in the proportion of the workforce in “secure and well-paid jobs” between 2011 and 2014.

 
Image: A staff member at Care in Hand – the first company in the Welsh care sector to become an accredited Living Wage employer. Credit: Care in Hand

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Scott Santens: “Let machines free us from low-paid, low-skilled jobs”

Founder of The BIG Patreon Creator Pledge, a campaign for universal income, who is supported by a crowdfunded monthly basic income, from New Orleans

The best way to help those in need is by helping everyone regardless of need. Consider for a moment the phrase, ‘those who need it most.’ Who are they? Why? What’s needed? Who decides that, and at what cost?

Simply put, the notion that any of us can best judge the needs of another is folly. As soon as we introduce tests for determining need, there will be those who fail who shouldn’t. It’s called a false negative. False positives also exist, but giving aid to the uninjured doesn’t have the same consequences as not giving aid to the injured.

We mistakenly believe we know how to help others better than they themselves do

To err is human, and so in our drive to help only those who need help, we fail. We also create stigmas around the shame of needing help, which leads to people not seeking it. Additionally, determining need requires those who determine it, which creates counterproductive bureaucracy. Finally, we mistakenly believe we know how to help others better than they themselves do. It’s all of these errors in thinking that point directly to basic income.

As for the exploitation of not working, what does that even mean in a world where jobs once performed by humans are increasingly done by machines? Do we exploit our tools when we let them work for us as we go about our lives? Personally, I think that’s the entire point of machines, to toil for us. So let’s let them and collectively earn the payslips they aren’t.

If we provide ourselves basic income, we’ll be free to pursue what we wish, and who are we to say which pursuits are valuable? By forcing someone to flip burgers instead of browsing the internet, we could be stopping the next Einstein. It is that possibility that is potentially the most costly of all.

Anthony Painter: “Basic income should still incentivise paid work”

Director of policy and strategy at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) in London

Money is what money does. Existing welfare systems already provide ‘free money’ in a variety of ways of course. However, welfare has become a soft form of probation. We provide support for the poorest, but we do it the dumbest and most morally dubious way possible.

The difference with basic income is that it doesn’t come with the baggage. At the moment, if you are on low pay you are locked between an increasingly coercive welfare state and inflexible, insecure work. This is the underside of the flexible labour market.

Money does very different things with a basic income. Instead of being a source of instability, it becomes a support for more stable lives. It is yours and it can’t be taken away. This allows you to plan, learn, work and care without having to answer to the state.

Basic income is a step towards helping people to cultivate better, more secure lives

Basic income, as the RSA model proposes, does not free people from work but it gives them a fighting chance to improve their lives. In other words, if they are fit and able to work they would have a very strong incentive to do so. And they would not get trapped at low earning levels. All recipients over 18 could be required to be on the electoral roll, thereby reinforcing citizenship too.

The weekly amount that any working age person would receive is a ‘basic’ amount. We propose an annual basic income of £3,692 for all qualifying citizens between 25 and 65 (based on 2012-13 prices), as well as a pension for those above 65 and a basic income for children.

It’s not perfect but it’s a start. With welfare institutions, the first step is the hardest. Basic income is a step towards helping people to cultivate better, more secure lives. That’s what the money we now spend could – yet normally fails to – do.

Anthony’s response to Scott

Check your pragmatism. That is the warning shot that Scott’s contribution sends to the basic income movement.

In a dash to prove that basic income is practical and achievable instead of the ‘nice idea, but pie in the sky’ its detractors claim, it’s easy for advocates like us to become too focused on technical detail. The idea is a big one and, even as we try to meet the range of objections, it is important not to lose sight of the hope and vision that propels this debate forward. Scott helps us do that.

Change happens when hope and history rhyme, as the poet Seamus Heaney once said. If we are to see a wave of justice in this generation, which I believe is possible, then principle and pragmatism need to be in harmony.

That is the mission for the basic income movement. On that, Scott and I are completely in tune.

Scott’s response to Anthony

I fully agree with Anthony that the RSA’s proposed partial basic income is better than the existing welfare state of affairs in all its counterproductive glory. We know from Alaska, where citizens have received a standard flat rate from the country’s oil revenue since the 1980s, that such universal systems have many positive benefits. With that said, I’m not one to suggest we should let ‘perfect’ be the enemy of ‘better’, rather that we should aim for the moon instead of settling for the sky.

The unprecedented ability of people to be able to say no to employers is possibly the most transformative promise of basic income. It emerges only as a result of a sufficiently high income decoupled from employment. This is real bargaining power, only otherwise possible through the collective bargaining weight of unions.

It is this capacity, that only a full basic income could provide, which has the potential to change the game entirely.

Main image: Flickr member Pictures of Money

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