Resources

To Watch

We the People panelist James Graham, the esteemed, Olivier Award-winning British playwright and screenwriter, sparked global discussions on enhancing class representation in the media industry in 2024.

Kansas-based journalist Sarah Smarsh has shattered preconceived notions around the American working class. In this clip, she speaks on how the Right has co-opted white rural Americans.

Former New York City Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl delivers remarks on artists and community in the city.

The CUNY School of Labor & Urban Studies’ How Workers Win: Rebuilding Labor’s Power for the 21st Century was day-long discussion of exciting new developments in the labor movement.

On November 29, 1962, President and Mrs. Kennedy spoke at a fundraising dinner for a National Cultural Center that would become known as "The Kennedy Center." The event, called "An American Pageant of the Arts," was broadcast live across the U.S. via closed-circuit hookup.

To Read

American Journalism

The Job Market is Frozen (Atlantic, 2025)

During the New Deal, mass Left movements and government funding spawned a boomlet in working-class art. For once, art wasn’t just the province of the rich.

America Needs a Working-Class Media (CJR, 2025)

This piece advocates for a media landscape that includes more journalists from non-elite backgrounds, aiming to provide coverage that resonates with and accurately portrays working-class individuals.

Response to Ife Olujobi’s “$5,000” (Howlround, 2024)

Playwright Ife Olujobi, leveraging her position as an artist-in-residence through the Creatives Rebuild New York program, successfully advocated for increased pay, prompting the Public Theater to raise its option fee to $7,500 and royalty rate to 6%. This change underscores the need for ongoing efforts toward equitable remuneration in theater.

The Culture Organizer as Urbanist (Urban Omnibus, 2012)

We the People participant José Serrano-McClain—artist, community organizer, and social entrepreneur—reflects several emerging trends. His expanding definitions of both public art and the art museum speak to trends not only in art, but also in urbanism. As artists and cultural institutions are increasingly intervening in urban space, they are borrowing tools from social justice movements as well as the design tactics of placemaking.

America’s Working Class Barely Scrapes By (Fortune, 2025)

Beyond a lack of pay, many working class people feel aggrieved by a lack of say. Studies show that a majority of workers don’t believe they have the right amount of input into how they’re compensated or promoted—what scholars call a “voice gap.”

America Needs a Working-Class Media (Columbia Journalism Review, 2025)

“The working-class reporters my organization supports have truly illuminated the conditions of Americans in ways I could have previously only guessed at. I am thinking of a piece on a working-class media by Carla Murphy, which EHRP commissioned, in which she framed the Statue of Liberty as a blue-collar media artifact, or the writing of Ann Larson, who worked in a grocery store during the pandemic. Finally, there’s Bobbi Dempsey’s piece on her mother’s inability to afford a hearing aid—a first-person testimony in the successful national effort to lower their cost. But there are many other reporters like these out there. And it’s not too late for their voices to be heard and absorbed,” writes Alissa Quart.

Tennessee's Live Music Fund (AXIOS Nashville, 2024)

The pandemic, competition from mega corporations and soaring real estate costs have combined to push the independent music industry to the brink.

Newsrooms Need to Hire More Working-Class Journalists (NBC, 2022)

“One of the best journalism stories I’ve ever heard was about the legendary, cigar-chomping New York Daily News reporter Jimmy Breslin. There he was at President John F. Kennedy’s burial, just one reporter among a horde of others covering the same story. While many of his peers interviewed luminaries and reported on loved ones, Breslin was able to see what was invisible to most: Clifton Pollard, the man who dug the president’s grave,” writes Amir Kahfagy.

Why We Need More Working-Class Voices in Fiction (Booker Prize, 2022)

In this guest article, Natasha Carthew, Founder and Artistic Director of the Working Class Writers Festival, argues that it is essential that more authentic working-class stories are told and heard, such as those of Booker winner Douglas Stuart.

Liberal Blind Spots Are HIding the Truth About ‘Trump Country’ (NYT, 2018)

Sarah Smarsh recontextualizes the lens we use to view rural working class white people: “Most struggling whites I know live lives of quiet desperation mad at their white bosses, not resentment of their co-workers or neighbors of color.”

TV Writers Explain Why They’re Walking Out (BBC, 2023)

Writer Alex O'Keefe was working on the hit television show The Bear, loved by the audience and critics, but was struggling financially. "A lot of us are struggling to make ends meet," Dave Metzger, a staff writer for CSI, said. "I know many incredible writers who have been forced out of the business simply because they couldn't make rent anymore."

6 Contemporary Poems to Read This Labor Day (Poetry Lab)

As American working-class poets have voiced for generations, labor inequity is tightly woven into the identity and landscape. In fact, one of the few things in this world actually older than poetry is exploitative labor. Since it’s almost Labor Day, we’re highlighting 6 poets and representative poems that will encourage you to punch capitalism in the dick. Along the way, you’ll learn about the American proletariat poetry movement, what Labor Day is all about, and how working-class artists continue to do the hard cultural work that supports us all.

The Poetry of Working Class Lives (Proletarian Poetry)

“Poetry is not the inconsolable wail of the only child. It can be the hum of the neighbourly voices in the meeting hall. To be welcomed in, all you need to do is open the door.”

These are the closing words from Fiona Sampson’s book on contemporary poetry, Beyond the Lyric. But the challenge facing any poetics of inclusion, is how to get people to open the door in the first place. However, as the Warwick commission report on the Arts recently showed, it is not only a problem for poetry.

Statistics & Research

Americans for the Arts Study

Hunter College’s Office of the Arts is working alongside Americans for the Arts to generate critical—and essentially non-existent—statistics on artists from working class backgrounds in the United States. The 2022 Arts & Economic Prosperity 6 report by Americans for the Arts highlights the significant economic contributions of the nonprofit arts and culture sector in the United States.

Economic Activity: Generated $151.7 billion, comprising $73.3 billion in organizational spending and $78.4 billion in event-related audience expenditures.
Employment: Supported 2.6 million jobs nationwide.
Personal Income: Provided $101 billion in income to residents.
Tax Revenue: Contributed $29.1 billion in tax revenues to local, state, and federal governments.

These findings underscore the arts and culture sector's pivotal role in bolstering the U.S. economy and enhancing community well-being but how can we begin to understand the lack of working-class representation, not reflected in these numbers—and how can working-class communities create and benefit from arts revenue?

Class Inequality in the Creative Industries Is Rooted in Unequal Access to Arts Education (2022)

“In England approximately 93% of the population attend state-funded schools compared with 7% educated in the private sector. Yet recent research from the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, found that people from more privileged backgrounds are twice as likely to be employed in the cultural sector. In ‘Music, Performing and visual arts’ just 22% are from more working-class backgrounds compared with 60% from more ‘privileged’ backgrounds. Similarly, The Sutton Trust found that 38% of the wealthiest individuals in TV, film and music and 44% of newspaper columnists attended private schools.”

Younger Adults from Working-class Backgrounds 4x Less Likely to Work in Creative Industries (2024)

The report, published by the Sutton Trust, reveals that amongst those aged 35 and under, there are around four times as many individuals from middle class backgrounds as working class backgrounds in creative occupations. Yet while just 20% of the UK’s working class individuals in employment have a degree, three times as many working class people in creative jobs have one. This underscores the importance of equal access to higher education for all young people.

The Class Ceiling in the Creative Industries (UK, 2024)

This research sheds light on the pervasive influence of class dynamics within the creative industries in the UK.

The Most Successful and Influential Americans Come From a Surprisingly Narrow Range of ‘Elite’ Educational Backgrounds (Nature, 2024)

Out of approximately 4,000 U.S. higher education institutions, just 34 schools disproportionately contribute to the ranks of America's most successful and influential individuals.

Guaranteed Income Programs Help Young People Survive (Teen Vogue, 2024)

Guaranteed income programs, such as Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY), provide artists with $1,000 monthly for 18 months, offering financial stability and fostering creativity. Similar initiatives, like the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED), gave 125 participants $500 monthly, leading to increased employment and improved mental health.

Inequality in Pandemic Effects School Placement (Nature.com, 2024)

“The pandemic has hit students differently, depending on their parental educational level and household income. While the average adverse effects of the pandemic were modest, we found that the effects were more strongly negative for students from the least advantaged families.”

More Colleges Offering Free Tuition to Middle-Class (Washington Post, 2024)

Schools are dipping into endowments to lure families who make six figures.

Forty Years of Working-Class Films (WorkDay Mag, 2020)

Feature films expressly about class conflict have always been rare in American cinema, and in recent decades have become even more so.

Inequality in Pandemic Effects on School Track Placement (NPJ, 2024)

“Following our interest in socioeconomic gradients in the role of embeddedness, we use a combination of parents’ education and household income quintile (the highest income of either parent is taken in case of non-coresidence). Using education and income of the parents reflects the idea that these refer to different resources in the family of origin, as sociologists have long recognized.”

It’s an Arts Emergency (UK, 2018)

“The idea of a fair and diverse industry is central to current discussions about cultural and creative jobs. However, as this report will demonstrate, the cultural and creative industries are marked by significant inequalities; in particular, we look at the social class back-ground of the workforce, and how this intersects with other issues, including attitudes and values, experiences of working for free, social networks, and cultural tastes.”

British Journalism

We have found that British journalists and artists are having conversations about working class artists more often than Americans. Here’s a sample.

Working-Class Creatives Don’t Stand a Chance (Guardian, 2025)

Almost a third (30%) of artistic directors and other creative leaders were educated privately compared with a national average of 7%. More than a third (36%) of the organizations’ chief executives or other executive directors went to private schools.

Further Reading

Books

Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House (National Book award winner)

Oren Cass, The Once And Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America

Nicolas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, and James H. Fowler, PhD, Connected, How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do

Joshua B. Freeman, Working Class New York, Life and Labor Since WWII

Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis, Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace

David Leonhardt (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream

Les Leopold, Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It

Sabrina Mahfouz (editor), Smashing It: Working Class Artists On Life, Art & Making It Happen

Arthur Levine Scott Van Pelt, The Great Upheaval: Higher Education’s Past, Present, And Uncertain Future

Walter Mosley, Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking Off the Dead Hand of History

Thomas Piketty, Time for Socialism: Dispatches from a World on Fire, 2016-2021

Rob Reich, Chiara Cordelli and Lucy Bernholz (editors), Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values

Dr. Faiza Shaheen,Know Your Place: How Society Sets Us Up to Fail—and What We Can Do About It

Sarah Smarsh, Heartland, National Book award finalist

Sarah Smarsh, Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else)

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous

Joan C. Williams, White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America

Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy

Further Resources

Working Class Creative Database (UK)

The Working Class Creatives Database aims to facilitate a space that puts working-class creatives at the forefront; A space for conversation, connections, and sharing of opportunities, skills, and knowledge. This database is about creating a community amongst working-class artists and encouraging greater representation of the working-class experience within the arts.

The Culture & Community Power Fund

The Culture & Community Power Fund is a national funders’ collaborative that supports frontline organizations and communities most impacted by systemic oppression.