The loss of Arts Funding and Art as a subject in general education is depriving our next generation of nurturing their creativity and imagination. It’s child neglect and as a society, we are all guilty.
Previously, we’ve written about the need to teach children creativity, lest the machines take over all the non-creative roles and jobs and leave a generation unemployed and ill-equipped to be imaginative.
Taking this a step further, our original article on Medium, Art for Art’s Sake, takes a deeper look at why we believe that art is something that should be nurtured in the next generation and not just to create objects of value and investment, but for the sake of just being creative.
If we only view art as an investment then it colours our view on arts funding as well. It means that we view arts funding as something to get a financial return on.
What if we look at art as a process instead of the finished object or product. What if we fund creating instead?
The example of children drawing pictures in the sand with a stick, only for the waves and the tide to erase their artwork within the next 6 hours; Art as a temporary creation – not there as a permanent record of work, no arts funding needed. Just an exploration of their imaginations.
We take endless photos of artwork so that we can look back on them or mark that day out with the photos stored on a harddrive somewhere, never to be looked at again. How about we don’t take photos but just take in that image; instead of taking 5 minutes to compose the perfect selfie infront of the piece of art, take 5 minutes just to soak up the moment.
In our minds, art needs to be created just for the sake of creating art. Arts funding needs to fund projects that drive creation.
We need to place a qualitative value on the creative process, on our children sitting and sketching for no reason at all. Bring back doodling instead of texting, let us create instead of
