Let me start with a story of a theft that I am rather proud of. In 2009, when I was researching our upcoming funding theme of arts and older people, Duncan Campbell approached me, insistent that I needed to see the arts and older people festival he was then running in Ireland called Bealtaine. I was (and remain) deeply impressed. The thought crossed my mind that this might work in Scotland (there was already a festival in Wales called Gwanwyn, again inspired by Bealtaine). Luckily enough I found support from Creative Scotland and jointly we commissioned what quickly became Luminate.
So it was with huge pleasure that I joined Luminate’s excellent gathering in Edinburgh on 28th March, roughly 14 years later. They are certainly going strong, and I was very stuck by the Director Anne Gallacher’s opening keynote speech where she expressed her concerns that there could be an over-emphasis on the health benefits of creative activity.
Although we fund a programme of arts for and by people with mental health problems, I completely agree with Anne. The Baring Foundation is a human rights funder. Access to culture is a human right as recognised by Article 27 of the UN convention on human rights. It is wonderful to see that the Scottish Government is planning to incorporate into domestic legislation the International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (though in reality the Convention has little to say about cultural rights and is largely a warning against their restriction rather than an encouragement of their flourishing). Being a right trumps other potential benefits and means that it should be available even if these were not the case. In philosophical terms, it is necessary and sufficient.
However, none of this should blind us to the fact that there are many actual positive effects for most people in involvement in the arts, it’s just that if that wasn’t the case, creativity would remain a right.
In recent years, there has been a burgeoning interest in the health impact of creative engagement as an audience maker or a maker (it’s a bugbear of mine that audience members are dismissed as ‘passive’. Firstly, it’s untrue as looking at art in a gallery or on stage is never a passive process but a reflective one, and secondly, artists need audiences!). This has led to a tremendous increase in academic research as exemplified by the World Health Organization Collaborative on Arts and Health at University College London the World Health Organization Collaborative on Arts and Health at University College London and many other centres.
The rub lies in that health outcomes can be difficult to ascertain given the number of variables to consider and that treating art as medicine reduces art to medicine when it is always so much more. However, if funding for an arts and health project is coming from a health funder it is entirely understandable that they should have a narrow focus on health benefits as their money could be going on other interventions that foster good health or recovery. It is also reasonable if those health benefits aren’t discernible that funding stops.
But my point is that none of this should be seen as binary: arts for health or arts for art’s sake. We strenuously argue for creativity as a right for everyone, including for instance if they are experiencing mental health problems. For some, perhaps many people, creativity will have a therapeutic value and we will recognise that and be interested in it.
Art is always both/and, never either/or.