Sydney Lima on Rich Parents Club, Supporting Working Class People in the Arts, and Pay Pigs
Words: Sydney Lima
When I asked my benefactor of seven months, otherwise known as my pay pig, if he could fund a series of free talks supporting working-class creatives in the UK, he went silent.
After weekly exchanges of foot content and videos of me screaming at my phone camera from towering heights (we call this "goddess POV") in exchange for designer shoes, thirteen cups of coffee, an Acne necklace and my boyfriend's Christmas present, my trusty steed drew the line at Parental Guidance: a free talk series giving working-class artists direct access to filmmakers, musicians, producers and writers at the top of their game.
I came out of a London-scene coma one day and looked around. I was one of the very few trying to make it without rich parents. While Instagram showcased the Christmas exodus of part-time London "squatters" returning to their modest six-bed mansions in Oxfordshire, I was faced with a nutter of a housemate posting an eviction notice under my door after I'd confronted her for scamming me into paying more rent. Her rich parents, of course, paid her legal fees.
It's not groundbreaking to note that most people in the arts have wealth propping them up. You need a rich daddy (or, in my case, a sugar daddy) to stay alive while pursuing artistic endeavours. It isn't just a roof over your head. It's access to any industry you want, by way of bankrolling your life until you make it.
The arts rely on free labour. It's the only industry where you're still doing favours in your thirties for the chance of "real work" later. Who can afford this? Unless, of course, you have rich parents.
From a young age it saddened me to learn that not one member of my family had a lucrative death in them. If anything, there were dribblings of inherited debt as something to remember them by.
My parents. My poor poor parents. Separated though friendly (something I'm forever reminded is a blessing) are both creative.
“For those with Rich Parents: may you forever pick up the bar tabs. Just don't deny how lucky you were, and maybe look outside your inner circle when hiring.”
In the nineties, my dad made a feature film called The Imitators, funded in (let's say) "creative ways." Mum's still pissed he used all their money while they lived in a council house sinking from subsidence. Dad, after winning a Fujifilm cinematography award, hasn't given up his BAFTA dream. He just finished another self-funded documentary, filmed between painting-and-decorating shifts. He recently fell off a ladder. (Mum and I aren't allowed to laugh about that.)
Mum is an aspiring writer who'd come home from a 9-to-5 and work on adapting a book into a screenplay whilst squeezing in auditions. (I was busy demanding Polly Pockets.) Her writing's taken a back seat since taking full custody of my Jug, Lord Pinkerton the First, who has developed incontinence and a need to bark at dust motes.
Given their lack of conventional success, they didn't want me following their path. Having sent me to a Soho primary school wedged between two sex shops (never a finer greeting upon arrival), they were determined to get me into the "best" secondary school so I didn't end up like them. "Them" being: a painter-decorator-filmmaker (definitely never a drug dealer) and a writer-actress (definitely never a dancer in sticky-floored Greek clubs).
The search for the "best" school came with a frenzied attempt to have me learn the Bible. Not my parents' doing (they were die-hard atheists) but most local secondaries were CofE, requiring you to retell a favourite Bible story for the entrance exam.
Aged eleven, I'd never read the thing. I was bought a children's breakdown of its greatest hits and chose, for reasons lost to time, the Burning Bush.
My fractured retelling of two brothers killing one another and a fiery shrub did not a CofE girl make. Rejected, I got a full bursary to an all-girls private school. Ironic, since proximity to wealth in this way served me no favours. If anything, it taught me how wide the gap really was. And how to bake for the boys' school next door. Among other things. ;) ;) ;)
I quit school to pursue heavy drinking and older men who, in hindsight, have been lucky to escape jail time. After going missing aged thirteen with a man from MySpace, it was decided I wasn't cut out for law school. Mum was at her wits' end. I was having a great time.
Despite no financial support (and the fact I may have been mentally unhinged) I had what Jack Rooke (creator of Big Boys and my favourite writer) calls "inside the M25 privilege."
Growing up on a Peabody estate five minutes from Soho was my version of having a Rich Parent. I had everything on my doorstep, and I grabbed it by the balls. I'm not advocating alcoholism as a gateway into the creative industries, but I am insisting on the importance of proximity to people doing the things. Being in the right rooms got me a gig in post-production in my late teens.
I didn't have connections. I had a postcode. Sometimes that's enough.
Proximity, in this country, functions as currency.
So what happens when we run out of working-class artists? Only 8% of creatives in UK film and TV now come from working-class backgrounds, the lowest level in a decade. For those born in the sixties, the figure was 16%. For my generation, it's halved. If the creative industries stay dominated by the privileged, we're stuck in a cyclical capitalist hamster wheel, living on superhero remakes 'til death do us part. And it’s not to say that no money doesn’t make money; just look at the current success of the film ‘Obsession’ reportedly made on a budget of around $750,000 and making over 21 times its budget in its opening weekend. Headlines read that the films success has relaunched the viability of investing in low cost cinema. Let’s see about that?
Getting your foot in the first door (of potentially several more) is the challenge. This is what I want the Parental Guidance talks to provide: the people, the discourse, the direct access. Next stop: beyond the M25! There's been a slight delay in funding however, after my big toenail fell off, but I'll return to the fancy footwork soon.
For those with Rich Parents: may you forever pick up the bar tabs. Just don't deny how lucky you were, and maybe look outside your inner circle when hiring.
"Do you feel bad you're not rich?" my friend asked my dad at the last event.
"No," he replied. "It gives her something to talk about."
P.S. Vacancy going for a new sugar daddy who believes in supporting the creative industries. Foot pics available upon request.
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