THE TALENT DIVIDE

A lot of people say that if you want to make it big in the music industry, you need at least one of these three things:
1) To be living in London
2) To be prepared to upend your whole life in order to move to London.
3) To know a lot of people who live and work in London

Well, you know what? I say that’s a close-minded, outdated, classist—

Oh wait. Sorry. Yeah, never mind, they’re pretty much spot on about that one.

For a bit of context, the Mercury Prize began in 1992 and every year it awards 25 grand to an album picked from a selection of shortlisted candidates. It’s a big deal; the equivalent of a Booker Prize for literature, or the Turner Prize for art. 31 artists have been chosen to be recipients of the prize since its inception. And of those 31, 17 have come from London.

Yikes. I extend my apologies to every artist living outside of the 607 square miles - looks like you’re shit out of luck.

But why is that?

People have this idea in their heads that all the creatives are in London, and if they’re not, it’s only because they’re not talented or driven enough to be there. The Mercury Prize is an award that’s given based completely upon music quality – the judges are very clear on that. So when nearly 55% of the winners come from one single city, surely it can’t be because of anything other than pure hard work, right? And it isn’t as if no one outside of London has won it either. You’ll notice that there are at least five Northerners who made it onto the Mercury Prize Winners graph, with Manchester, Southport and Leeds all getting one apiece, and Sheffield managing to bag it a whole two times! With these neck-and-neck statistics taken into consideration, it must have nothing to do with where you’re from, and everything to do with how good your music is, yeah?

I reckon that’s what your average Londoner might tell you, anyway.

We can all rub a few braincells together and figure out that there’s not some gaping void of creativity that grows and grows the further up the M1 you get. A baby born in Leeds is no less likely to have an innate ability to strum a guitar than a baby born in Tottenham. And yet the baby from Tottenham has double the chance of making a career in music. This might sound a bit like bitter conjecturing on my part, but it really isn’t. It’s a fact that everyone in the industry readily accepts, which isn’t just bizarre, but embarrassingly naïve when you consider that the most successful Mercury Prize winners of all time are Pulp and Arctic Monkeys - two bands which came from outside of London.

It is almost as if exploring the experiences of… you know… the rest of the country, is both culturally and commercially beneficial. Who’d have thought?

In a perfect world, everyone has equal opportunity to create the music they want and have it achieve the recognition it deserves. The only problem is that anyone who wasn’t born with a silver spoon rammed up their arse knows it absolutely doesn’t work that way. Instead, it comes down to the fact that the child going to their first music lesson in London can get a well-funded, smoothly-run Underground service and arrive there in 20 minutes, whereas a child in Leeds may have to endure the TransPenine Express – a route so unreliable that it actually forced our otherwise-useless government to pull their finger out and nationalise it. It’s the fact that one third of all arts funding in the UK goes to London, providing young people with easier routes into creative opportunities and experiences.  It’s the fact that of the 13 music schools in England, five are located in the capital. These things matter. Little Simz, the latest musician to win a Mercury Prize, points to her time at St. Mary’s youth club as a place where she grew to find her passion for music. Meanwhile, areas outside of London experienced some of the most severe funding cuts to their youth services in the post-austerity era, at 83% for the West Midlands and North East.

That graph is not a result of a lack of talent. It’s the result of a repeated, long-term lack of access. And yes, some artists are lucky enough to beat the odds and achieve the fame they rightly deserve despite their postcode. But doesn’t it make you think about how many other artists there are out there with a huge amount of potential, but too many hurdles to overcome in order to properly shine? It’s sad. And it shouldn’t happen.

Despite this, there are things to be hopeful about. Attitudes are shifting. Arts Council England – the organisation responsible for the distribution of grants to creative organisations – is increasing funding in the North of England by 25% over these next three years, after making a pledge to even out the balance of who receives what. Bradford in particular is set to see creative investment in the district treble as it prepares to be the 2025 City of Culture, and a variety of schemes in areas like Manchester and Hull are getting a boost in funding to help young people enter creative careers. For the first time, it seems as if the government is actually realising this is a problem that needs fixing, and they’re putting their money where their mouth is. After all: we pay tax, and we buy lottery tickets. It’s about time we get a fairer share of the funding which comes from that.

The North of England is a hugely diverse place, home to an absolute wealth of talent and passion. Life is undeniably different up here. We live on the doorstep of stunning countryside and cheerful, down-to-Earth people. Things aren’t rushed, and you don’t walk down any given street feeling as if you’re going to get your phone nicked - a sensation I didn’t even know I should be grateful for until I got on the Tube for the first time a few months ago.

But we’re also born frustrated. By the weather, by the lack of opportunity, by the perpetual feeling of abandonment that feels as if it’s embedded in every town hall and potholed road and housing estate and shop window plastered with the words ‘closing down sale’. It’s a constant weariness audible in everyone’s voices, and a lifelong conviction that, when it comes down to it, we’re basically on our own up here. The government aren’t going to do anything – so we might as well just put our heads down, get on with it, and try have a bit of fun in the interim.

It is precisely this kind of raw, unapologetic feeling which creates masterpieces like Arctic Monkeys’ AM or Pulp’s Different Class, both of which are steeped in unapologetic Northernness. These experiences are absolutely worth hearing – not only because they offer up a different perspective of what it means to be British, but also because they’re just fucking good albums. The region in which that music was produced shouldn’t remain relegated to a footnote in British culture.  

As the funding increases and the focus on representing the Nations & Regions continues to sharpen, all I can hope is that next year, if we’re really, really lucky, the Mercury Prize will manage to claw its way out of the suburbs of London for the first time in ten years. Perhaps it’ll even make it past the Watford Gap.

What a world that’d be.