The working classes have been pushed out of TV, and TV is poorer for it - Claire Malcolm

Graham was educated in a state school that pushed arts subjects, and grew up seeing “people who spoke like, thought like, felt like my family” on TV. Now, he feels, the same can’t be said.

The working classes have been pushed out of TV, and TV is poorer for it.

It’s an issue New Writing North has been working to change for the last decade with positive interventions.

This month, we’re hosting the Channel 4 Writing for Television Awards, our talent programme for northern writers from intersectional backgrounds which launched in 2015, at Leeds Playhouse.

Funded by Channel 4’s 4Skills programme, three new television writers, based in the north, will receive a long-term placement, mentoring by an industry professional and a £3k bursary.

Placements are with the independent production companies, Bonafide Films, Rollem Productions, and Red Production Company, behind hits like It’s a Sin and Happy Valley.

We’re grateful for the support of Channel 4 that allows us to sustain and grow this programme of work and to bring new talent into the TV industry. The awards have already launched the television careers of several northern writers, including Sharma Walfall, who has gone on to work on productions including Noughts and Crosses and A Town Called Malice, and Jayshree Patel, whose Hollyoaks episodes were submitted for a BAFTA.

As well as the awards, we operate year-round support with a Northern Talent Network, script hubs in Newcastle, Bradford and online and live screenwriting events in the north.

In 2021, we launched A Writing Chance with the actor Michael Sheen, Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Northumbria University, which supports those from under-represented backgrounds with bursaries and professional mentoring and networking to enable them to enter the professional writing industries. There are still too many barriers.

Through our work we build pathways for talent which otherwise might be overlooked.

Our creative industries – particularly TV - didn’t always used to be this way.

The BBC’s Play for Today ran from 1970 to 1984 and was a golden age of British TV, launching a generation of talent from the working classes.

When Coronation Street launched in 1960 and became one of the UK’s most watched shows it was centred on working-class lives. So, what went wrong?

Up till the 1990s, TV shows were mostly created in-house with contracted staff (including writers). Today, it operates on a model where independent companies vie for commissions and freelance became the norm. Aspiring writers are often expected to work for nothing to get their foot in the door. What’s more, the industry is heavily weighted in London.

When Northern writers are able to tell stories based in the North the benefits are wide-ranging and high impact. Look at the success of Ann Cleeves’s detective Vera, which has inspired fourteen years of production of the series in the North East and Benjamin Myers’s The Gallows Poll, adapted and directed by Shane Meadows, set and eventually filmed in Calderdale by the BBC. Both these shows bring economic benefits to the region when filmed and are then beamed across the globe, showcasing the North to the world.

Channel 4 has been a beacon in Britain’s creative sector. The move of its headquarters to Leeds was a huge step in changing the status quo. It has helped strengthen the creative ecosystem across the North. Since it began in 1982, it has made an astounding impact commissioning iconic programmes and films, becoming a huge success story for Britain and our creative sector. Its DNA is to nurture talent from every community, so no one is left behind and everyone is represented. It has made great strides in commissioning shows that explore many types of different lived experiences.

As such, they are a natural ally to our work. We believe that writing talent is everywhere but that opportunities are not. It’s our mission to identify talent and create career-changing opportunities to get it heard.

TV has enormous power. And, of course, with power comes great responsibility. That’s why we need these important interventions to remove barriers to opportunity.

Writers have the power to move, to connect, to inspire. Their work can be, and is, transformative.

Claire Malcolm is the CEO of New Writing North.