Wealth Inequality Lab
- Written byFrancesca Panetta
- Published date 20 August 2026
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What Happens When Research Meets Creative Practice?
Wealth inequality is often discussed through statistics, tax policy and economic growth. But it is also shaped by stories. Stories tell us what success looks like. They shape who we admire, who we blame and what kinds of futures feel possible.
Too often, culture treats wealth as proof of talent, effort or good choices. Poverty is framed as personal failure. The systems that concentrate wealth and pass advantage between generations can disappear from view. That makes inequality harder to recognise, challenge or change.
The AKO Storytelling Institute created the Wealth narratives storytelling lab to explore another possibility. What if research into wealth inequality could become useful material for storytellers? What if creative work could make the structures behind inequality more visible, without becoming didactic or losing the audience?
Bringing research into the room
The Lab was developed with researchers from the London School of Economics and Boston University, with support from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It brought together five creative practitioners working across stage, screen, audio, journalism, podcasts and short-form video. The aim was not to tell creatives what stories to make. It was to create space for researchers and storytellers to think together.
The starting point was research on how people in the UK understand wealth inequality. People often underestimate its scale. Many believe that wealth reflects hard work, even when it is shaped by inheritance, asset ownership and the rules of the economy. At the same time, wealth can represent safety, freedom and the ability to care for family.
Culture matters here. Most people do not see the workings of extreme wealth up close. Instead, they encounter ideas about aspiration, status, deservingness and security through television, film, journalism, advertising, social media and everyday conversation. A story does not need to be explicitly about money to reinforce a particular idea of wealth.
More than a briefing
The Lab was not a presentation followed by a creative response. It was designed as a shared inquiry. Researchers, storytellers and facilitators examined how wealth appears in familiar cultural work. They explored the assumptions carried by characters, settings, plotlines, genre and visual style.
Together, the group considered how stories can show structural inequality through human experience. Housing, debt, inheritance, work, care, family and belonging can all reveal the forces that shape people’s choices. The task was not to replace compelling drama with a lesson. It was to find ways for meaning to emerge through character, conflict and form.
This mattered because research does not automatically become a good story. A message that works in a policy briefing may feel flat, heavy-handed or unconvincing in fiction. Storytellers need room to interpret ideas through their own craft. They need time to question, test and reshape them.
Creative tensions
The group worked with several tensions at the heart of this work. How can a story critique extreme wealth without making luxury look desirable? How can it show systems of power without reducing everything to one villain? How can it offer hope without pretending that change is easy?
There are no simple answers. A beautiful home, a glamorous lifestyle or a satisfying rise to wealth can still reinforce the idea that money is the ultimate prize. But perspective can change the meaning of a scene. The same world looks very different through the eyes of a wealthy owner, an underpaid worker or a family priced out of their home.
The Lab also explored the balance between subtlety and clarity. Creatives did not want to make work that tells audiences what to think. But they also recognised that a story can become so subtle that the structures behind inequality remain invisible. Strong storytelling can make those structures felt through the pressures, opportunities and limits that shape people’s lives.
Building narrative literacy
A key outcome of the Lab was stronger narrative literacy. This means being able to notice the patterns beneath individual stories. It means asking which ideas a story makes feel normal, fair or inevitable. It also means making creative choices with greater intention.
For some participants, the value was finding language for instincts they already held. For others, it was discovering a field of research they had not encountered before. The learning will not stay within one project or one issue. It can travel into future writers’ rooms, pitches, commissions and collaborations.
The Lab also generated story ideas, with three projects receiving development funding. Alongside those projects, the Institute is developing resources to share the learning more widely. The ambition is not that one Lab, or one story, will change culture on its own. Change happens through many stories, across forms and over time.
What comes next?
This Lab is an early model for how research and creative practice can work together in the narrative change sector.
Our new industry report, Wealth Narratives in Culture: Learning from a Creative-Research Lab (coming shortly), shares the process, insights and lessons for funders, industry leaders and others who want to support this kind of work. It explores how collaborative Labs can help research travel into culture—and what infrastructure is needed to make that possible
We have also created a toolkit for storytellers (coming shortly). This guide for creatives offers practical ways to spot the wealth narratives already at work in culture and to make more intentional choices in their own work.
A series of short videos (coming shortly) brings these ideas to life, making the research accessible for creatives working across forms and genres.
Together, these resources are designed to take the learning beyond the Lab. They offer a starting point for creatives who want to make wealth, power and inequality more visible in the stories they tell.
