Culture is Bad for You

A panel event on the mechanisms of exclusion in cultural work and how they are mirrored in other national and policy contexts

1 April 2025
6pm - 7:30pm
In-person event
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Culture is Bad for You

1st April 6:00 PM 7:30 PM BST

Free

Culture is Bad for You offers a powerful call to transform the cultural and creative industries, by examining the intersections between race, class, and gender in inequalities in cultural occupations. Exclusion from culture begins at an early age, the authors argue, and despite claims by cultural institutions and businesses to hire talented and hardworking individuals, women, people of colour, and those from working-class backgrounds are systematically disbarred. Since its publication in 2020 the book has proved a powerful provocation to policymakers and cultural practitioners, and found resonance in cultural policy and sociology researchers internationally. 

To mark the publication of a new, updated edition, this event will bring together scholars from around the world with the authors to discuss the mechanisms of exclusion in cultural work and how they are mirrored in other national and policy contexts. 

This event is hosted in partnership with the Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture & Society (CDCS). 

Speaker Biographies

Headshot of Orian Brook

Orian Brook is Chancellor’s Fellow in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh. She studies social and spatial inequalities in the creative economy, and holds an ESRC ADR Fellowship exploring earnings of creative graduates. She is co-author of the book Culture is Bad for You and the report ‘A Class Act: Social mobility and the creative industries’ published with the Sutton Trust. She is a member of the College of Experts for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. 

Headshot of Dave O'Brien

Dave O’Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries at the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester. He is the co-author of Culture is bad for you, and has written numerous papers on the contemporary creative economy. His policy research includes a role in the AHRC-funded Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre,  the co-authored Panic! report, and the Creative Diversity APPG’s Creative Majority and the Making the Creative Majority reports. He has twice been an advisor to the House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, and is currently on a research secondment to the UK government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport. 

1 Lauriston Place
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