How working-class talent is seizing control of the arts

From Stephen Graham to comic Sophie Willan, success has fuelled change in the creative industry

-  Richard Benson

Stephen Graham moved millions of people in Britain with his emotional, self-deprecating Emmy acceptance speech. But he made an important factual error. "This kind of thing doesn't normally happen to a kid like me," he said, in case you somehow missed it. "I'm just a mixed-race kid from a block of flats in a place called Kirkby. To be here today in front of my peers, and to be acknowledged by you, is the utmost humbling thing I could imagine in my life, and it shows you that any dream is possible."

Of course, we all know what he meant. But the fact is that, in 2025, this sort of success is starting to happen to kids from blocks of flats in places like Kirkby. And it's partly thanks to the efforts of people like him.

This year has seen a long-overdue reset of who is thriving in many different areas of the arts; working-class creatives from left-behind communities who are being met with huge critical acclaim, public affection and booming box-office sales. The tone was set in January when the unprecedented "Lives Less Ordinary" exhibition at Two Temple Place, London, presented art by people from working-class backgrounds, and focused on themes of humour and resilience rather than the conventional made-for images of struggle and crisis.

Not long after "Lives Less Ordinary" opened came Beth Steel's brilliant play Till the Stars Come Down, which follows the family of three sisters on the wedding day of the youngest, Sylvia, to Marek, a Polish immigrant. It opened at the National Theatre in London and promptly became a sell-out hit, running alongside the updated version of James Graham's This Is England.

Meanwhile in the North West, the brilliant Gods of Salford cast 25 young locals alongside professional actors in a reimagining of Greek myths in the context of Salford's working-class culture.