Written by:By Douglas Barkey
Despite the evident success of artists, the most common conversation I have had in higher education with parents here and elsewhere has been their concern that their child, who is obsessively creating painting, photographs, poems, music, sculptures, animations, dance, writing short stories…(you name the medium)….will end up a “starving artist”. The conversation usually takes a different turn when I point out that we are standing in a building designed by an architect, they are talking to me dressed by Nicole Miller or Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren, walking in Nike tennis shoes, carrying a Michael Kors handbag and had driven up to the school in a smartly designed vehicle listening to the sound of their favorite musical artist! Most likely they are reading a best-selling novel or relax on the weekend watching a film on Netflix. Both these activities exist only because creative writers have put their imagination to paper and created worlds of fiction and stories.
Finances addressed.. let’s get past the art market and talk about our human needs. We need art, we need creative writers. We need art for the health of the economy and the health of our cultural soul. How does that happen?…how does an environment where the arts can thrive happen? The artist and writer Makoto Fujimura has articulated “culture care” as the essential strategy in building an environment where artists and writers flourish and culture is formed – a process that is generational and that does not happen overnight (Fujimura, 2017).
Why do we need culture care? All the people and more who I listed above benefitted from someone or some organization who valued and invested in their creativity when they needed it the most. Some teacher, a parent, aunt, or uncle, or a foundation, or a collector, or even a business said, “The creative work you are doing is just as important as studying law, learning business, or becoming a star athlete. What you are doing has value, keep doing it…let me help you.” Somebody was generous with their time and resources, and it made a difference for that emerging creative professional. That is the principle of generosity of cultural care applied at an individual level.
We can see the stark reality of our world that seems ever evolving to be more repressive and autocratic. The generosity of artists, who often take on the deepest questions (and their possible answers), have an expansive vision of life that can reveal diverse beauty, meaning, and truths that reach beyond our own context and experience. This vision is a challenge to repressive totalitarian regimes by any name. Those whose power is dependent upon narrowing opportunity to survival level are undermined by artists and writers who are often the first to sense dehumanizing trends and can reveal new perspectives of human potential
A key principle of culture care is stewardship and that is where cultural organization comes into play. Just as we are learning that our survival as a species depends upon our care of the environment, so also do we need to care for our cultural soul. Creative works organizations are steward of culture care, their generosity is helping to care for culture so that future writers may thrive.
References
Fujimura, M. (2017). Culture Care. Intervarsity Press.