Graduating at a time of crisis: Covid-19 and career challenges for creative graduates

Written by Dr Roberta Comunian and Dr Lauren England, King's College London

At any given year in the past, even with plenty of opportunities and degree shows, we would still be talking about the challenges that creative graduates face when entering the creative labour market.  Over the last decade we have explored these challenges in numerous research papers, discussing both how creative graduates receive lower economic rewards from investing in a degree and the challenges of finding a creative job in a creative industry.  Policy analysis has questioned their ‘value for money’, although recent debates hosted by the PEC have argued for the importance or considering other values and contributions that creative education makes both to the creative economy and society as a whole.

However, it is important to acknowledge further challenges emerging due to Covid-19. The on-going global pandemic has had a devastating impact on the creative and cultural sector and specifically on creative and cultural work.  Our recent paper (2020) discusses the way Covid-19 has exacerbated the existing conditions and made the precarity of creative workers more visible. However, within the rush of policy and support organisation towards mapping the impact of Covid-19 on creative work, we highlight the lack of demographic data. This can hide the different impacts across sub-categories, with potentially already under-represented groups being the ones affected the most. Across these under-representative groups, recent and soon to be graduates are likely to be some of the worse affected, not qualifying for government support schemes and finding more structural challenges in entering the sector. 

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(A survey by Prospects on finalist’s experiences of the effects of COVID19 on their careers has revealed that out of the 1,202 final year university students who responded:  
26% had lost their work placement/internship; 
29% had lost their job;  28% had their job offer deferred or cancelled. 
 
In general, jobs are not likely to be available, with small creative business likely to be focusing on surviving and not thinking of hiring new staff. The Prospects report highlights that 80% of arts, entertainment  and recreation businesses reported temporarily  pausing trade compared to only 5% of IT businesses and 3% of professional or business service 
firms.   
As industries enter survival mode, the pipeline for creative talent is likely to be blocked off at the receiving end, increasing the already fierce competition for creative jobs; a backlog of qualified, experienced candidates is sure to form, leaving limited room of emerging and recent graduates. Opportunities may lie in championing the transferability of creative skills, and for more creative graduates to become “embedded” in non-creative industries, as outlined in the Creative Trident Model.  
 
The call for universities to ‘prepare’ their students and graduates has been getting progressively louder over the last decade. It is perhaps now more important than ever for them to have a realistic understanding of the sectors they seek to work in, and also be aware of opportunities that may lie beyond the creative industries. Nevertheless, being ‘work ready’ is arguably much more challenging to achieve when faced with sweeping uncertainty over the future of work.  
 
The structural integrity of the pipeline for creative graduates in part depends on the (financial) support measures developed for the creative industries, but also concerted effort from policy, industry and the HE sector to address the structural precarity of the sector that predates the crisis.  ​

We will discuss these challenges further this week (Wednesday 17th) during our Zoom Cafe (3-4pm UK time). If you would like to join, register via our get involved page.