Thoroughly Good

A day-long conference staged by Revere Arts on access in classical music revealed systemic blind spots, uncomfortable truths and the barriers still shaping who gets to belong.

Class Ceiling was a one-day conference challenging members of the classical music industry to reflect on access to those from deprived backgrounds. For a conference that went to great lengths to avoid the phrase ‘working class’ in favour of more neutral terminology, the day was dominated by the phrase and with good effect.

Sessions examined barriers to access in policy, music education, higher education and the profession, some contributors surfacing valuable insights, others less so. Amid the careful positioning, dodged questions, and forensically curated case studies, the more valuable insights and thought provoking reflections emerged from data driven studies rather than the anaesthetising appeals to nostalgia or making the case for the benefit itself.

Dr Anna Bull drew on Diana Reay’s work to show that “working-class children and young people get less of everything in education”, yet are often the most musically active. The explicit point that working-class girls and racially minoritised young people are the least represented in formal music education provided a valuable reminder that opened up thinking. Similarly, her argument that bursaries can inadvertently restrict access, rather than widen it, was one of the day’s more uncomfortable provocations.

Few institutions wanted to be drawn on defining the term, though many individuals were quick to share their credentials. The cumulative effect was powerful, if draining on the psyche. Guilt has that effect. Maybe that was the point.

Music education painted the bleakest picture: an ecosystem held together by goodwill and localised partnerships. Most striking was how the ability of certain parents to navigate the system in itself creates pressure on the existing systems established to increase access in the first place. The message was blunt — access doesn’t collapse because of a lack of appetite but by lack of infrastructure, be it space to practice, parental support, transport, money for one-to-one tuition or instruments.

Where the higher education panel’s preoccupation with code-switching, otherness, and the emotional labour of “fitting in”: accents softened, outfits changed, identities trimmed to survive spaces built for someone else, it was the Profession panel which perhaps dared and rewarded the most.

In particular, Daniel Lewis’s account of moving from a middle-class publishing house to a workplace with far broader backgrounds cut through the noise. So too, his clarity around the need for greater transparency to enable better access — one of the few moments where the conversation shifted from theory to worked-through example. Lewis modelled that transparency by sharing how the UK workforce of composers is minute — between 2,000 and 10,000 classical composers, the average income of whom is a surprisingly low £20,000. But he went further in saying that artistic organisations might benefit from drawing on a wider pool of creative talent if they made their decision-making processes less opaque. The best creative thinking needn’t be complicated; it certainly shouldn’t be overshadowed by indignance or blame.

Lynn Henderson — the only professional orchestral player to appear in the conference — offered the most necessary and unpalatable of truths. In addition to HR teams that lacked teeth in confronting systemic workplace culture issues, there was contradiction in musicians in higher education finding themselves paying fees to learn from professors who had secured their playing and teaching positions without holding a degree. Is it time to question, she asked, whether our conventional education paths are not only anachronistic but an industry barrier which now needs to be dismantled?

Where Class Ceiling really had impact was holding up a mirror to the listener. Here was an opportunity to examine our own path and identify where there was access, where there was a barrier, and how it was got around. Unsurprisingly, it was research that drove the real insights of the day rather than the easy sometimes hollow rhetoric, in particular Dr Anna Bull drawing on the 2019 Youth Music/Ipsos Mori study around working-class children demonstrating a wider range of musical creativity, and the Scott Paisley study that highlighted how many state school pupils had no knowledge that music conservatoires even exist and that they require much earlier applications for entry — in effect, a significant barrier to those from working-class backgrounds.

Some working-class parents may well have bought access to independent education in a bid to realise their own failed aspirations, but at a cost. Present-day definitions of working class focus less on the opportunities afforded than the parental background. Being part of the system doesn’t guarantee frictionless movement through it. It’s only when challenging conversations expose and redefine terminology that a deeper understanding of what biases existed in one’s own career can be observed and felt. Just because money bought access to a middle-class system doesn’t mean there weren’t barriers. Seeing what those barriers are is the first step in seeing the barriers of others. Hectoring exchanges, cheap shots, and hand-wringing performative statements do little else but put nervous individuals on the defensive. Creative thinking can’t occur with a fixed mindset.

Barriers undoubtedly still exist, often in dimly lit corners of the industry where class is calculated according to the education path you followed. As few journalists as professional musicians were visibly present at the day-long event, meaning less coverage for a systemic problem — evidence the conversation needs to be had more loudly. Given the issue is live and potent, this lack of coverage points to the very problem in the industry the conference sought to explore. Little wonder independent platforms exist. It also emphasises why more need to grow.

Class Ceiling could have devoted more time to reveal how barriers had been navigated around by those platformed. Instead some appeared to demonstrate an organisation or institution’s credibility. Transformative thinking might have been given more of a chance had there been fewer CVs and more visibility of the kind of access the industry needs to facilitate.

Amongst the senior management who collectively avoided talking about management access, there was evidence of siloed thinking: eulogising classical music as mitigation for the mental health crisis in one panel, whilst Thangam Debonaire advocating the democratising nature of social media platforms for increasing awareness of the genre. This dissonance sat uncomfortably, given her open admission that she was judging TikTok’s classical awards whilst not being a TikTok user herself, and that TikTok is one of a slew of social media platforms banned this week in Australia amid fears of the destructive impact on young minds. Leaders positioning themselves as change agents need to look more holistically so as to avoid a glaring dissonance of values. In a similar vein, they might want to downplay the performative vulnerability. Imposter syndrome needs to be worn less as a badge of struggle, instead articulated for what it really is: evidence of a brain functioning normally amid a period of building trusted connections.

For some the conference was evidently an opportunity for self-promotion at the expense of the very people whose story needed to be heard more. It was the fearless contributors who avoided performative statements and spoke uncomfortable truths who ultimately deepened understanding. Potent questions were planted that are likely to have a far longer shelf life than pledges to be better.