Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Rent-Free Flat Targets a Class Gap: Only 16% of Creative Workers Are Working-Class

Phoebe Waller-Bridge has bought a London property and given it over as a rent-free flat for early-career writers, in a bid to ease one of the most stubborn barriers to a theatre career: the cost of living in the capital. The Fleabag creator’s donation anchors a new scheme called Writers’ Block, which is aimed at playwrights from disadvantaged backgrounds.

According to the reports, the resident will pay only the bills. Waller-Bridge, 41, has also made what the organisers called a “generous financial contribution” on top of the flat itself. The project is billed as a pilot.

How the rent-free flat fits into Writers’ Block

Writers’ Block grew out of the Adopt a Playwright Award, founded in 2008 by Sofie Mason and Diana Jervis-Read, who also started the Offies, the Off West End Theatre Awards. That earlier scheme matches writers with affordable places to stay when they need to be in London for meetings, rehearsals, performances and career opportunities. The Standard reports that 55 writers have been supported to date.

Writers’ Block is run in partnership with Omnibus Theatre in Clapham. It asks Londoners with a spare room to offer it at sharply reduced rates, capped at £30 a night or £500 a month, according to the Guardian. The scheme has so far signed up 15 homes and helped 12 writers, with stays ranging from a single night to longer placements. Organisers suggest it could appeal to older people living alone who would like company and extra income but would be wary of advertising a room to strangers.

Actor Alan Turkington, known for Netflix’s Heartstopper, is one of the hosts. He offers a room in his Camberwell flat and said he was trying to “pay some of that privilege forward” given how high rents have become. Writers, he added, tend to have a strong work ethic and respect for shared space.

A class gap that numbers back up

The scheme’s backers point to research from the Sutton Trust and the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre. It found that only 16% of people working in the creative industries come from working-class backgrounds, and that class imbalances are more pronounced in this sector than in any other.

Several big names are putting money behind the effort. Jack Thorne, co-creator of Adolescence, and playwright James Graham are among them, as are Happy Valley’s Sally Wainwright and The Crown’s Peter Morgan. Waller-Bridge’s partner, the film-maker Martin McDonagh, is also involved.

Thorne and Graham both framed the issue in personal terms. Thorne said he was fortunate that his brother put him up for five years when he started out. “For many writers, the need for a roof makes writing impossible,” he said. Graham recalled sleeping on friends’ floors and working in call centres and bars while he wrote. He argued that the industry’s drive for representation “is still letting down the biggest area of under-representation of all, which is class”. A spare room, he said, can save writers “from giving up completely”.

What the pilot could show

One donated property will not transform a sector in which class barriers run deep, and the sources do not say how many writers the flat can house at a time or how residents will be chosen. But the pilot tests a simple idea: that stable, affordable housing is a practical form of arts funding. If the rent-free flat and the network of hosts work, they could offer a model for opening up a profession in which, as Thorne put it, privileged writers worry about what to fill a page with while others worry about survival.

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File photo: Nicola Benedetti Humza Yousaf Phoebe Waller-Bridge – All Festivals Reception (Waller-Bridge cropped) (cropped).jpg by Scottish Government, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.