On May 30, 2026, at London’s Reference Point, and in the frame of Minor Attractions' Summer Session festival, AWC gathered to think along a simple question: what are the politics of art circulation? Joined by the art journalist Harriet Lloyd-Smith, Seren Metcalfe of the Working Class Creative Database (WCCD), and The Art Journal editor Tom Seymour, the discussion ended up being an interrogation of how culture survives in an era of platform capture and public funding retreat.
The friction between the physical and the digital is the arena where the struggle for cultural identity is currently being negotiated. Physical zines passed hand-to-hand or a WhatsApp community of thousands require different circulation networks and demand different forms of labor. For the working-class artist, the “democratization” of the digital sphere has meant more visibility and the intensification of labor—a relentless cycle where creating art is inseparable from the exhausting work of self-branding and optimization.
The following conversation is a critical attempt to map these tensions and to find a way forward that doesn't just move art but also moves the needle as to who gets to exist within the sphere of art.
Dalia Maini: How does your work as a cultural practitioner reflect on the question of art circulation, Seren?
Seren Metcalfe: COVID created a strange but important moment, politically and culturally. Obviously, it was a difficult time in many ways, but it also created conditions for new forms of community organizing to emerge. People were isolated, many had stopped working or had more time, and there was suddenly space to speak to one another differently. Because physical contact was limited, communities had to form digitally—and so many grassroots platforms and mutual support networks emerged during this period because people genuinely needed connection, visibility, support, and solidarity.
I also think it’s important to recognize how different the landscape is now for artists compared to previous generations. Older artists who went through art school decades ago often weren't carrying huge student debt, housing was more accessible, people could survive on benefits while developing their practice, and squatting or living cheaply in cities was far more possible. Now people still move to cities looking for the same cultural opportunities, but many cannot afford to live there. Most artists are constantly working alongside their practice, and when they're not physically working, they’re often still logged into another form of labor—social media, self-promotion, networking, visibility. COVID created a rare interruption to that pace.
Working Class Creative Database (WCCD) began through this online circulation. We started with a WhatsApp group and informal Zoom meet-ups between working-class creatives who often felt disconnected from traditional art infrastructures. Over time, the community grew because it responded to a real social absence. Now WCCD exists as a platform and network of over 2,000 creatives across the UK, alongside exhibitions, talks, events, residencies, publishing, curation, and producing.
News On The Move. Courtesy Minor Attraction
DM: What interests me is that you're not only circulating images or articles—you're circulating people.
SM: Exactly. Opportunities, resources, confidence, knowledge, support systems. Our platform exists as a way to circulate working-class creatives themselves. We currently have a shared resources sheet that members contribute to collectively, a members map, a daily WhatsApp community where people ask questions and support each other, and we’re now applying for Arts Council funding to build a larger website and database infrastructure to better facilitate these forms of connection.
But social media has transformed what cultural labor looks like, particularly for working-class artists. Instagram is often more important than an artist’s website now. I know many artists who have been discovered for exhibitions or opportunities entirely through it. But this visibility comes with pressure. Artists are no longer only expected to make work—they're expected to continuously document themselves, brand themselves, circulate themselves, and remain visible.
There's something classed about this pressure. Working-class creatives often feel they have to give more of themselves publicly to gain access to opportunities or legitimacy. Meanwhile, some of the artists with the least online presence are often those who already possess financial stability or institutional networks.
DM: Social media can democratize visibility and intensify exhaustion at the same time.
SM: And self-surveillance. When Instagram becomes part of your labor as an artist, it becomes difficult to know where the work ends. There's also the danger of digital spaces becoming echo chambers—which is why in-person events remain important to us even as online engagement grows. WCCD has always tried to move between digital and physical: online circulation, but also real-world conversations, exhibitions, meet-ups, and support networks.
In some ways, one of our aims was to build our own networks of support and opportunity outside traditional gatekeeping structures—almost a kind of self-built nepotism for working-class creatives who historically have been excluded from those systems.
DM: Harriet, what's the role of art publishing in shaping a counterculture of aesthetic and social critique?
Harriet Lloyd-Smith: The question is whether art publishing can still shape a counterculture at all without radical magazines taking on the task. Those publications could genuinely set an agenda because there were fewer channels, and the art world was smaller and more print-dependent. Now the critical conversation is fragmented across Instagram, TikTok, Substack, podcasts, academic journals, fairs, and legacy print. The internet didn't kill counterculture, but it atomized it to the point of paralysis.
Countercultures require a dominant culture to push against. In art today, that’s the market, the institutions, the governments, and corporations that claim to champion art while setting its terms. They’re increasingly in bed with each other. At what point does a countercultural force become a mainstream one? When does it accept a certain kind of funding? When is it absorbed into an institution? Many publications began as about as anti-establishment as British art publishing gets, and it still took Arts Council money.
DM: If there's no position truly outside the dominant culture, what does opposition even look like?
HLS: Probably something more plural and embedded than we’re used to imagining. And that points to a crucial distinction: between reflecting a counterculture—lending it credence by covering it—and shaping one, being involved in its conception. Most publishing today does the former but dresses it up as the latter.
Art publishing’s role in shaping counterculture is not through content alone, but through the relationships and communities it builds around that content. Ideas need somewhere to land and grow. Without that, even the most radical editorial position is just broadcasting into a void.
There’s also the harder point: countercultures in art publishing have historically been narrow. UK platforms like The White Pube have made this argument for years—any counterculture worth the name has to be plural from the outset, or it just reproduces the narrowness it claims to oppose.
News On The Move. Courtesy Minor Attraction
DM: Seren, how have class structures shaped ways of communicating art for you?
SM: Class shapes who enter editorial spaces in the first place. If you’re not from a major city or a creative background, many jobs within the arts aren't even visible to you growing up. Often, the only artistic role presented in schools is “artist” itself—careers in publishing, criticism, curating, editing, and commissioning remain invisible unless you later encounter them through university, relocation, or existing social networks.
That invisibility matters because editorial culture is still heavily shaped by access, geography, education, confidence, and social familiarity. A lot of art writing continues to circulate within relatively closed networks. Meanwhile, there are incredibly active artistic communities across the UK that remain underrepresented within mainstream coverage.
DM: And digital publishing hasn’t necessarily opened that up—it’s accelerated a different kind of narrowing.
SM: Yes. There’s increasing pressure to produce content quickly, publish quickly, and compete constantly for attention. Endless lists of 5 exhibitions to see this week, short-form cultural commentary designed around shrinking attention spans and platform algorithms. Culture starts being consumed in snippets.
We also spoke during the panel about how significant PR companies have become within the gallery system—something I wouldn't even have understood before being in conversation with writers and editors. Increasingly, the same PR agencies represent large numbers of galleries, particularly in London, which can begin to homogenize cultural coverage and shape which exhibitions, artists, and conversations receive visibility. It makes it much harder for younger publications, emerging writers, smaller galleries, and independent platforms to compete for attention in an already oversaturated landscape.
DM: So what does working-class art coverage actually look like?
SM: It means resisting that acceleration. Taking time, showing care, and paying attention to practices that may not already be institutionally validated or trending online. Seeking out perspectives from outside dominant cultural centers. Recognizing the importance of smaller communities, DIY organizing, and regional activity.
It also means creating space for longer-form writing, criticism, and conversation that actually feels alive rather than rushed to fill a content cycle. But for that to exist, time and financial support need to exist. Slowness itself becomes a resource that not everyone has equal access to. Working-class artists are often navigating multiple jobs, precarious housing, burnout, caring responsibilities, and uneven access to time itself.
Within WCCD, we try to think about coverage and programming through conversation, accessibility, mentorship, and collective support rather than authority or exclusivity. For me, working-class cultural coverage is not simply about representing working-class people aesthetically—it’s about building structures of attention, care, and visibility differently. Publishing no longer exists somewhere distant. It exists in our pockets, on our phones, inside our daily lives. That makes questions around who gets circulated, who gets attention, and whose stories get amplified even more important.
DM: Ultimately, circulation is a battleground of political and material agency. If we are to move beyond the exhaustion of self-branding and the narrowing gaze of the algorithm, we must commit to building infrastructures that prioritize solidarity over visibility. We must reflect on how the homogenization of the “feed” influences the tangible, community-driven networks that actually sustain our labor. Only then can we assess if we want to reject it altogether. Critical use of these tools lies in transforming circulation from a tool of platform capture into a mechanism of collective power—ensuring that art remains a vital, lived practice belonging to those who have historically been excluded from the art system.
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- Footnotes
News On The Move. Courtesy Minor Attraction
