Click the image above for the link.

This is an article about a country, or at least an administration, at war with the arts and the humanities.

Its main thrust is a story of resistance, but on the way it tells a story of what the arts do in the lives of people exposed to arts practice and the humanities.

In summary, I think what the arts do here has the following characteristics.

• Participating in art in the community brings people together and, as the article says to, ‘..play a crucial role in fostering social bonds, as well as community and local identity and pride. As such, they are vital to social resilience..’ From my experience of care, resilience emerges out of attention and attachment. People are attended to, attend to each other and, vitally, attend to themselves. They see themselves being seen. They hear themselves being heard. Like the article says, arts activities like storytelling, ‘..uplift youth voices, nurture resilience, and build essential writing and communication skills’ in trauma-informed spaces connecting youth and educators.’ Resilience is an antidote to trauma. Each centre for art activities is ‘..a venue for self-expression and self-realization for many young people, in a context where few economic opportunities are available.’
• The creative sector, whilst it does not raise lots of money to the participants, it promotes the flow of money, invigorating communities. It promotes social capital and entrepreneurship. People learn to do stuff. Art making is active and is thus prone to activism.
• Therapeutic interventions reduce the burden of health services in the long term. It is plausible that the people receiving arts therapies may develop an interest in the arts and have some aspects of personal arts practice enhanced, with health benefits. The article talks about the way art practices in the community ‘..enable audiences to engage in critical reflection and preservation of human histories, cultures, values, and beliefs.’ The same goes for personal arts practice.

That this is an article about resistance emerging in the arts is expressed in the quote of Ursula Le Guin

“Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

Ursula Le Guin

People not only thinking and speaking for themselves, but being given the means by which to do so systematically, is an impediment to the act of power speaking and thinking for people. Art and it’s makers can speak for themselves.