By Jo Howell

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I have worked in the arts and culture sector since 2009, and over that time I have noticed a peculiar game being played by the organisations that hold the purse strings. In my previous article, Don’t pee in my pocket and tell me it’s raining!, I wrote about the wider societal problem of how language is used to program the way we think. Once you start paying attention to this game, it becomes impossible to un-see it. Words aren’t neutral; they carry power. And in the arts, certain phrases have crept into the lexicon that, once unpacked, reveal just how much they shape inequality, access, and exclusion.

The Slippery Vocabulary of Inclusion

Let’s start with two phrases I hear over and over: hard to reach and emerging artist.

They sound harmless, even caring. They are often deployed by arts organisations, funders, and policy-makers as if they are tools for inclusion. But look closely, and you can see the shadow they cast.

Calling a group hard to reach immediately creates otherness. It implies the problem lies within the group, not the system. It suggests that people are somehow elusive, unwilling, or even defective in their lack of access to culture. But who decides that someone is “hard to reach”? Is there an application form? Do you get stamped on the forehead? Or is it simply a convenient way to absolve institutions of responsibility?

The phrase puts the onus on the community—working class, disabled, migrants, people outside London, whoever is deemed “other”—to bend towards institutions, rather than forcing institutions to examine why their doors, fees, jargon, and elitist codes keep people out. It’s not the people who are hard to reach; it’s the organisations who are hard to access.

Then there’s emerging artist. At first, I thought it was a compliment. It sounds as if you are blooming, sprouting into your potential. But over the years, the phrase has become grating. Emerging from what, exactly? A cocoon of poverty? A cave of invisibility? Are we caterpillars slowly inching towards butterfly status, waiting for a pat on the head from a curator or a funder before we can “arrive”?

The term is used so loosely that it becomes meaningless. Is it about age? Professional status? The first ten years of practice? The first exhibition in a recognised institution? Or is it simply another polite way of saying “not quite good enough yet”?

For me, as a working-class, disabled, female artist from the North East, these words aren’t empowering. They are traps. They remind me that I am “othered” at every turn. I tick multiple boxes of exclusion. I guess that makes me “hard to reach.” And I’ll never “emerge” as a butterfly in the eyes of the gatekeepers. My art, my voice, my perspective will always be filtered through these categories that keep people like me on the outside of power.

Will my work ever hang in the National Gallery or MOMA? Short of doing a Banksy and hammering it up myself, I doubt it. The canon isn’t built for people like me.

Whose Histories Are Worth Hanging?

When I think of artists who have made it from humble beginnings, only a handful come to mind. Norman Cornish, the pitman painter, or L.S. Lowry at a stretch. Both are celebrated for chronicling the lives of the industrial working class: the soot, the mills, the grime, the hardship.

But even in their celebration, there is romanticisation. Their paintings offer a “secret window” into poverty, a nostalgic look back at suffering. They become exotic curiosities in the white-walled galleries of the elite. Look at the poor! Look at their grit! Isn’t it beautiful, in its own tragic way?

The work is historicised and sanitised, but the conditions—the exploitation, the despair, the lack of opportunity—are still with us. Artists from the North East know this all too well. We live in communities still shaped by deindustrialisation, austerity, and neglect. Yet we are rarely given the chance to narrate our own realities without being filtered into these archetypes.

Artists as the New Social Workers

In this climate, artists have often become the unsung heroes of “care in the community.” Over the last decade, doctors and mental health professionals have started prescribing art workshops as a form of therapy. On the surface, this sounds wonderful: recognition of art’s power to soothe, heal, and connect.

But peel back the surface, and the cracks appear.

Between 2013 and 2015, I worked at The Art Studio Sunderland, one such community arts organisation. We were a small team. None of us had formal training in psychiatry or psychology. Yet the NHS routinely referred people with deeply complex needs to us: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe trauma.

Yes, art can provide mindful moments of relief. Drawing, painting, pottery—these can help ground someone in the present, offer joy, spark connection. But we weren’t equipped to offer long-term therapeutic care, especially outside of session hours. We weren’t a substitute for professional medical support.

And yet, time and again, participants found themselves signed off by medical services after attending a few sessions with us. The logic seemed to be: if you can make a collage, you must be fine. You no longer need psychiatric help. This was not an isolated incident. It happened repeatedly.

The result? People were left adrift, without the medical care they desperately needed. They were pushed back to square one, forced to endure long waiting lists for therapies that could have made a real difference. It was counterproductive, dangerous, and frankly cruel. We saw the consequences: self-harm, suicide attempts, desperate cries for help.

And as staff, we were caught in an impossible position. If we raised concerns or declined referrals, we were accused by NHS staff of being discriminatory, even threatened. We had no resources, no safety net, and no authority to push back.

When the System Eats Itself

After a few years of this untenable situation, the inevitable happened. The strain eroded morale. Staff were burnt out, traumatised, and angry. Eventually, the organisation came under threat from a worker’s tribunal. Charities don’t have deep pockets for legal battles. After a short fight, the studio closed its doors for good.

Another supposed lifeline for “hard to reach” people disappeared.

And so the cycle continues: policies written by people who have never worked on the frontline create frameworks that harm the very communities they are supposed to support. The language shifts, the buzzwords evolve, but the lived reality remains unchanged.

The Problem With “Access”

Arts organisations love to talk about access. It has become one of those shiny, fundable words. But access is often defined in the most superficial way possible: a ramp here, a caption there, a free ticket scheme. All important, yes, but nowhere near enough.

Access isn’t just about getting people through the door. It’s about dismantling the hierarchies of language, power, and legitimacy that dictate who belongs in the arts and who doesn’t. It’s about asking:

• Why are funding applications written in academic jargon that alienates working-class artists?
• Why do panels privilege “innovation” over authenticity?
• Why is “professionalism” equated with a middle-class polish of CVs, portfolios, and networks?
• Why are artists expected to volunteer, intern, and work for exposure when those from poorer backgrounds cannot afford to?

Access must mean structural change, not tokenistic gestures. Otherwise, it is just another word in the gatekeepers’ arsenal, deployed to make institutions look progressive while they continue to exclude.

The Weight of Words

This brings me back to the language itself. Words are not innocent. They shape how people are perceived, valued, and treated. When you call someone “hard to reach,” you position them as a problem to be solved rather than a person to be listened to. When you call someone an “emerging artist,” you diminish their current worth, keeping them in a permanent state of waiting for validation.

The arts sector thrives on this coded vocabulary. It allows those in power to maintain control while pretending to democratise culture. It keeps funding streams narrow, keeps artists insecure, and keeps communities “othered.”

And once you see it, you cannot un-see it.

Towards a New Language

So what can we do? For me, it begins with reclaiming language. With naming the game being played, and refusing to parrot the phrases that keep us in our place. It means calling out gatekeeping when we hear it, even if it makes us unpopular in the boardroom or on the application panel.

It means insisting on words that honour people as they are—not as problems, not as larvae waiting to “emerge,” not as elusive ghosts to be “reached.”

It means shifting the burden of change back onto institutions. They are the ones who must become easier to reach. They are the ones who must stop hiding behind jargon. They are the ones who must recognise that artists from working-class, disabled, and marginalised backgrounds already exist, already create, already have value—whether or not they are “emerging” into the spotlight.

Final Thoughts

The arts are often painted as a utopia of freedom, creativity, and expression. But behind the curtains, the language of the gatekeepers reveals another story: one of control, exclusion, and the careful policing of who gets to belong.

I am a working-class, disabled artist from the North East. I don’t fit the mould. I don’t want to be your emerging butterfly. I am already here, making, creating, telling my story. And I am not “hard to reach.” I am right in front of you.

The question is: will you bother to listen?

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