There have been a variety of articles in the press recently about the use of the phrase ‘working, benefit, criminal class’ prompted by the advertisement for a new Artistic Director & Joint CEO for Camden People’s Theatre.

RTYDS started working with Class and Coronavirus at the height of the pandemic in 2020. The initiative was established by Stef O’Driscoll and Caitriona Shoobridge – two freelance artists. Class and Coronavirus moved to Classroom and now Caitriona and Stef are part of RTYDS project Fair Play. Both Class and Coronavirus and Classroom were unfunded, peer-led projects. They were a space where artists who were working class or from low socio-economic backgrounds could get support, come together and find a community.

One of the important offers was a series of Town Halls and it was at one of these that 80 artists came together, and this is where the term emerged – working, benefit, criminal class. This was how those artists identified. We started to use it because it came from artists and how they wanted to identify. There was a lot of misunderstanding around why this language was representative of the people who chose to use it. Just as there is now. As the project has evolved, so has our language. We now predominantly use ‘low socio-economic background’ aiming to bypass the misunderstanding and get to the root of the barriers quicker.

If you want to find out more about the use of ‘working, benefit, criminal class’ you can find a note here. As it says: “We are not asking the creative industries to adopt this language if they do not want to. Classroom was a space to talk about class, but we cannot represent anyone other than ourselves. If you do not want to use this language, then you could use ‘low socio-economic background’ as we also do across our projects and programs.”