Sometimes considered so outlandish that Tom, Dick and Harry have a hard time interpreting the bin-liner taped to the Tate Modern wall. It’s not difficult to understand why some groups feel excluded from art.
That being said, you’d be hard done to find someone — anyone — who doesn’t consume art in some form. Most widely consumed as music and film but not limited to the art pieces in our offices, sculptures outside our underground stations, fashion in our wardrobes, graffiti on our way to work and direction of our favourite Youtubers.
Let’s use music as our primary example of unanimously consumed art here. Sure, not every genre is to everyone’s taste — I’ll put my hands up and say heavy metal is not for me — but I’m yet to meet an individual who rejects music altogether. It’s one of the few common interests we all have an opinion on. In every culture across every corner of the globe there is a local interpretation of music. Maybe some of us don’t listen to it everyday, but there will be some piece, or live performance, or busking guitarist, that we’ve stumbled upon that resonates with us and gets our feet tapping.
Records of humans creating art dates back to cave wall paintings and decorations on the human body. Why prehistoric man decided to start adorning walls and themselves in the first place is still up for much debate and there are various hypotheses. It is widely accepted, however, that this development of art by our ancestors marks the first appearance of human consciousness. The reasons behind it are irrelevant. Its occurrence at all plays an intrinsic part of our existence because it quite literally marks the intellectual birth of our species.
Given that art is a pretty damn important facet of human existence — if not the most important since it marks the inception of human consciousness — why the hell is the pursuit of art and its creation no longer regarded worthwhile?
I grew up in a white middle-class village in the shires where, despite my light skin, being half-Armenian was as diverse as it got. 99% of our school year went on to university and it was one of the best performing state schools in the area — I mean it was a selective state school. I distinctly remember when one of the smartest kids at my school wanted to do Fine Art at university. He was told by several of our teachers that it would be a waste of his talent. Yes, he was exceptionally smart but he was an equally talented artist. He didn’t end up going on to do Fine Art.
But I get it. If you call yourself an artist in today’s western world people don’t take you seriously. Unless you have already ‘made it’ you get treated with an air of hostility — and by ‘made it’ I mean you are either a household name or you can support yourself by making and selling art only. The irony being: it is difficult to ever become financially independent because artists aren’t taken seriously in the first place.
Despite my entire family being artists and musicians, I chose to ignore my love for singing because I believed it was a waste of time. It wasn’t until five years down the line, after I had graduated with a degree I wasn’t interested in, did I finally choose to pursue singing. Yet even now when people ask me what I do I daren’t call myself a singer for fear of the patronising tone and judgement that follows. There just seems to be this fundamental paradox in our outlook: we can’t accept art as something worthwhile to pursue despite the fact that every one us would have a vacuum in our lives without it. It’s like never loading the dishwasher and getting annoyed when there’s no clean plates: it has to come from somewhere.
In the UK, we are facing a crisis in arts and culture. Despite creative industries being worth over £84 billion per year to the UK economy, the government doesn’t consider arts and culture an industry worth investing in. Arts funding faces continual cuts, schools are experiencing a reduction in time allocated to arts and Brexit is set to severely impede the British film industry.
Without investment there is no art. Without art pushing the boundaries of the norm, there is no social change. No innovation in the economy. Think about it. How many times have you walked away from a movie or finished listening to an album with a sense of empowerment, a renewed desire to pick up that guitar gathering dust or a promise to yourself to start drawing again? And how many times has that sense of liberation transcended into your day-to-day, giving you that eureka moment at work? So many of histories’ pivotal events have been catalysed by a movement in art.
Not only does art have the power to inspire and unite (I’m hippy-dancing in the field again), but it is one of the few studies that teaches subjective problem-solving. With no set path or singular answer, it is up to the individual creating the work to determine what the path is. And it is this type of critical thinking that is essential for innovation.
There is no discipline that drives imagination and unleashes creativity and innovation more than arts and culture. — The Stanford Social Innovation Review
After all, the process to invent and to create art are much the same. Outside of a workshop, away from tools or a computer. Inventions start with an idea, a mere concept so far from the process of designing or building that one could mistake the inventor for an artist. It’s no surprise then that many CEO’s are exposing their employees to art and culture in order to drive creative thinking and innovation in their businesses.
So what does this all mean?
It’s quite simple really: we have to create more art.
Studies have demonstrated that everyone is born creative but that it may well be educated out of us at school. After all, creativity is only synonymous with imagination —show me a kid without imagination before you pipe up to disagree. So if it’s just a case of rediscovering our imagination, then we need to go out and explore. Pick up a pencil or a camera or a paintbrush or guitar or whatever mode of creation you choose. With no goal or purpose, no right or wrong answer, go and start strengthening that creative muscle by practicing it.
I don’t know about you, but I’m fed up of hearing the same old drag about the daily grind and the next promotion. We need more bigger, bolder and exciting ideas in this world. I’m pretty sure our descendants in several hundred years’ time will look back at this time period and wonder why the hell we were wasting our lives away in a 9 till 6 when we could be leading the creative age for mankind.
I want to see what kind of world will exist when every Tom, Dick and Harry exercises their imaginations’ curiosities — and I’ll be damned if I’m left behind in this lifetime before it happens.
So go forth and create. Let’s see what happens.
