As part of the Student Success Project’s Inspirational Speaker series, director of the charity Arts Emergency, activist and University of Kent alumnus Neil Griffiths held a talk last Wednesday entitled ‘Why the cultural and creative industries are the worst for social mobility (and what can we do about it?)’.

This talk was based on the representation in art and media and how generally ‘the unrepresented go unseen, and the over represented assume their experiences are universal… We feel it’s urgent that people with different voices, different opinions and different experiences tell our stories as much as the small segment of society that currently do.’

Dr Laura Bailey, Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics and SECL Student Success Lecturer, said of the talk: ‘This week’s speaker was fascinating and what he said was quite shocking. The extent and the implications were really alarming, and based in a lot of thorough research. And following it, students had a really productive ‘practice networking’ session.’

The talk itself can be found on Moodle.

The next Student Success Project talk in the series, featuring Professor Meena Dhanda will be speaking on ‘Circumventing emergent vulnerabilities: the necessity of internal critique‘ will be taking place on Wednesday 6 March at 16.00.