ART MATTERS

Today, I had the privilege of giving a talk at the Rotary Club of Festival City titled ART MATTERS and I wanted to take this opportunity to share some aspects of my presentation and to explain exactly why art matters to us – to our communities and cities, to our countries, and to our collective future.

Recently I read the article For Art Lovers, Detroit is a Tale of Two Cities in The Washington Post by Philip Kennecott which discusses Detroit’s move to have their art collection appraised as just another physical asset of their bankrupt City:

 “Art, is not an essential asset and especially not one that is essential to the delivery of services in the city,” said FGIC managing director Derek Donnelly.

Yet, when we consider art’s role in our societies – as the definition of invention – as the progenitor of all new ideas, forms, and functions – we realize that art has always been essential to our cities. Art is fundamentally creation; innovation, invention. It represents the original, the new. The exploration. The culture.

Creativity has profoundly changed the world. The wheel is one of the single most important inventions of human-kind and it would never have happened without an artistic mind imagining and creating it.

And today, what about your Apple iphone?

It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.
– Steve Jobs, introducing the iPad 2 in 2011

The leaders of this world know that our future is entirely contingent upon creative thinking: whether that’s in medical discovery or in finding environmental solutions or in designing new technologies.

I believe that creativity will be the currency of the 21st century.
– Gerald Gordon, Ph.D., President/CEO, Fairfax County (Virginia) Economic Development Authority

The future belongs to young people with an education and the imagination to create.
–President Barack Obama

The Arts are not a “non-essential” item; they are a powerful economic driver and we have evidence to prove this:

• Arts and culture industries play a vital role in attracting people, business, and investment, and in distinguishing Canada as a dynamic and exciting place to live and work.
• The Conference Board estimates that the economic footprint of Canada’s culture sector was $84.6 billion in 2007, or 7.4 per cent of Canada’s total real GDP
• Culture sector employment exceeded 1.1 million jobs in 2007
• 10 million Canadians visited an art gallery in 2010, which is 35.7% of the population. This figure grew from 19.6% in 1992 and 26.7% in 2005. (Canada Council for the Arts)
• Canadians spent $27.4 billion in 2008 on cultural products and services according to the study Consumer Spending on Culture in Canada, the Provinces and 12 Metropolitan Areas in 2008 (Hill Strategies Research, 2010). In comparison, this $27.4 billion is greater than the combined spending of consumers on hotels, motels and other travel accommodation
• Canadians currently spend more than double on the arts than they spend on sports events.
• Consumer spending on culture was three times larger than the $9.2 billion spent on culture by all levels of government in 2007/08.

Creativity is the future and that’s why art is more important today than at any other time in human history – as we face enormous scientific and environmental challenges we will need to find alternative, innovative, creative solutions. Our future depends on creativity.

ART MATTERS and it matters a lot.

~ Aidan Ware, Executive Director