What It’s Like Being a Creative When You’re Not Middle Class or White

“I remember hearing the word ‘Margiela’,” remembers Rahemur Rahman, “but I was like, I don’t know what or who this is.”

Times have changed: In 2022, Rahman became the first Bangladeshi fashion designer to exhibit at the V&A. He was the first to show at London Fashion Week in 2019, and is now one of the youngest lecturers at Central Saint Martins – the world’s most respected fashion school, attended by the likes of Alexander McQueen and Kim Jones. By all measures, his success is phenomenal. But he remembers a time when, as the son of a garment factory worker from Tower Hamlets, London, the world of fashion seemed impenetrable – and “Margiela” was nothing more than a weird sound.

“I actually thought fashion wasn’t for me at one point,” Rahman tells VICE, remembering what it was like to study fashion design at Central Saint Martins. “All of these kids, they’re from a different class or wealth background; they know about Surrealism and all the different artists; you know, they’ve been to Berlin! I hadn’t even left the country at that point, because my parents couldn’t afford to do our passport application.”

Rahman is very obviously not the only creative to have ever felt this way in the UK. Middle class people are twice as likely to work in the creative industries than working class people, and a third of the workforce in the creative industries is actually upper-middle class – elite private school or raised-by-a-nanny territory. 

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Recently, a report found that working class representation in the arts and creative industries is a miserable half of what it was in the 70s. Sure, socioeconomic diversity continues to be an issue for white Brits, but add in the race factor and you get a sense of exclusivity worse than Leonardo Di Caprio’s age criteria for dating. Only 2.7 percent of people working in museums, libraries and galleries are BAME, according to research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. There’s 4 percent in music, performing and the visual arts and 8.3 percent in publishing. Naturally, the number gets even smaller at the management and directorial level.

A study on social mobility and Muslims by the government’s Social Mobility Commission found young Muslims face “enormous social mobility barriers” despite outperforming their white counterparts in schools.

I’ve experienced this firsthand: Five years after graduating from the London School of Economics and Political Science – one of the best universities in the world, where students go on to earn six figure salaries and become world leaders – I was working at a halal Subway in Nelson, Lancashire. It took me ten years, two scholarships and a lot of audacity to believe I could become a writer. Then, after all that, I got to London and realised nobody was as exceptional or out of my league as I’d been conditioned to believe.

For Rahman, the exclusivity of the fashion world has been a continuous issue. “Like being in a room and everyone is just sipping champagne and knows each other,” he says. “You’re usually the only person of colour, so you block it out – like, ‘time to code switch’. In these rooms full of nepo babies that can basically help your career, you almost have to appease them a bit. I  just can’t be arsed to do that anymore.” It’s why he now runs art sessions for young people in Tower Hamlets, where he grew up.

It’s a sentiment that journalist and former factory worker Taj Ali, 24, shares. “I feel like an impostor all the time,” he says. “There’s lots of unwritten rules in journalism – all about who you know, rather than what you know. It’s an incredibly socially exclusive industry. If you don’t have the same networks or circle as the most privileged, it can be very difficult.” Ali thinks your location, in or around London, has a huge impact. If he could afford it, he’d move to the City as he says it would improve his prospects. “There seems to be an assumption that all journalists live in central London,” he continues, “I get invited to press conferences in Zone 1 at a few hours notice.”

This was the reason that photographer and creative director Jameela Elfaki, 28, chose to leave the Midlands for a London university. “I always aimed really high and I wanted the best for myself, because I didn’t want to live in poverty like how I grew up. I wanted to get out of that,” she says. “When I moved to London, I managed to get all the grants I could, and bursaries for being at university to help with low income.”

Still, moving to London wasn’t her only hurdle. Elfaki, who’s also the founder of AZEEMA magazine, had to work two part-time jobs while studying fashion communication and promotion. Though she’s achieved a lot in the years since graduating, she still struggles to pay the rent. “I’m still in this experience even though it’s been years since I was in university and I’ve managed to build my own agency,” says Elfaki. “We had to take out a loan to do the last issue of our magazine.” 

Even though living in London is a hard hit on her finances, she still believes it’s necessary for the best creative opportunities. “I wouldn’t have started my magazine if I hadn’t moved to London, I wouldn’t have worked for half of the companies or met half of the people I’ve met,” she continues. “Being in London is important because it’s the pinnacle of the industry I want to work in.”

Hudda Khaireh, member of artist collective Thick/er Black Lines, spends a lot of time nurturing artists and is keenly aware of the effects of generational poverty.

“Being poor is when you’re the only one in your house that’s working – you have to be careful not to fuck up everyone’s housing benefit,” she says. “So much of the artist I am is because my parents were getting disability allowance. That’s the kind of background I come from.” Khaireh says the health implications of poverty are severe, made worse by the lack of safety net and support due to generational poverty: “There is a difference between you not being able make rent, which a lot of people struggle with, to when you can’t make rent and your mum also can’t make rent – it’s different.”

Elfaki relates to this. “It’s not just about personal success for me, it’s about trying to help my family out financially. I’m trying to break generational cycles of poverty,” she continues. “Like my dad’s flat had a massive leak in the ceiling and I want to be able to support him. That’s probably something most people don’t need to worry about, but it’s a pressure on me to ‘make it’. I’m an only child, there’s no one else.”

The irony, of course, is that the humble backgrounds of these creatives gives them the resilience and creative point of difference to be the artists they are today. We’ve all seen the rich kids publishing books (looking at you, Brooklyn Beckham) and becoming artists and designers, but sometimes their work rings hollow. It’s like privilege has tied them up in knots of abstraction that amount to nothing – or nothing special. 

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“The best art comes from an understanding of the constrictions that you’re in,” continues Khaireh. “Think about a haiku. What I love about art is that it lets you see what beautiful things can be made within a discipline, within the constrictions of life.”

While a lot of artists go to art school, Khaireh’s art practice was developed in her bedroom, with her friends in South London. The Tate and Somerset House came to her to propose working together and she believes it’s because she became an artist within her community first. 

Ali agrees and says he can relate to strikers on picket lines because he’s been there himself. He believes it makes him a better reporter – one that strikers are more comfortable speaking with.

All these factors influenced Rahman, who went on to study academic and curriculum design, to learn how to make education more accessible without scrimping on the quality. Now, he calls himself an “artist and community curator”.

With most opportunities in exclusive circles, people from marginalised groups feel the pressure to appeal to the white gaze and the very gatekeepers who sidelined them to begin with. Rahman looks forward to moving beyond this double-bind. “I’m more excited about Aisha from Whitechapel doing an art project about some trash she found on the floor, rather than her doing a whole project on why she wears a headscarf,” he says.

When this happens, he says, the work will improve, and so will the lives of the artists who make it. “I’m waiting for the time when a person doesn’t get pigeonholed within a working class box or Black box or Muslim box – when they get to be free.”