Who has real access to culture? Who can work in it? Which stories are told and which are left out? Drawing on her book “Culture Is Bad for You: Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries”, Orian Brook will share key findings from her research, conducted alongside Dave O’Brien and Mark Taylor, on how exclusion operates within the contemporary cultural system, from who can afford to study or work in the arts, to how it is decided which cultural practices and expressions are deemed valuable. Bibiana Collado and Brigitte Vasallo will join in a dialogue on the role of writing as a tool for denunciation, memory, and transformation. Both authors have explored, through literature and critical thought, how class, gender, geography, and sexuality influence who can speak, which narratives are legitimised, and which are marginalised. Through reporting, poetry, essays, and activism, they have created work that challenges, provokes, and refuses to reproduce hegemonic narratives.