A Student Blog on the 2015 Power of the Arts National Forum: Why Art is the Key to Social Change? by Alicia Haniford (English)
“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”
Those words – from German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht – came up a lot at this year’s Power of the Arts National Forum.
It’s a very appropriate statement (I’m going to go out on a limb here and say “motto”) for a conference with the 2015 theme Sustaining Social Change. Let’s think about it for a moment, because I’ve taken far too many English courses to let a sentence like that slide unanalyzed. Brecht’s image is pretty powerful: you usually think of using a hammer to break, not “shape.” But if I’ve learned anything this weekend, it’s that often the force of a hammer is exactly what it takes to create change, and that art is sometimes the best – or only – way to achieve that.
Using art… to talk about art?
It’s daunting to come into a room full of professionals and entrepreneurs on Friday night – every time someone asks me why I’m here, I find myself admitting, “Well, actually I’m still finishing my degree,” like it’s some kind of guilty secret.
Right up until Jali and André Dédé Vander get up on stage, that is. The apprehension that descends on the room when they ask us all to stand up is palpable. Then, even worse… they ask us to dance.
For the first song, people shuffle awkwardly around, making eye contact with their neighbours and laughing uncomfortably (aside from the guy in front of me, that is, who immediately starts breaking it down). But when the second song starts you can see people starting to relax, letting go of some of their self-consciousness as they realize it’s more fun to let go and just, well, have fun. It’s strangely surreal, seeing a bunch of people in their business getups swaying and twirling; but that’s the power of the arts, in a microcosm. Breaking down barriers. Getting people – from different places, different jobs, different social backgrounds, different ages – to connect.
That point comes up over and over again on a larger scale. Art isn’t often talked about in terms of utility – and to consider it only in terms of utility is, I think, to miss the point by a substantial margin. But hearing about how Kellylee Evans’ profound passion for music pushed her to recover after being struck by lightning, or about the power of representation generated by Toronto’s Scratch & Mix Exhibition—and these are only two of the myriad of inspiring conversations this weekend—it’s unequivocally clear that art doesn’t exist in isolation. The meaning of a term like “community engagement” can start to fade from overuse, but what it’s describing hits us powerfully when we hear these people sharing their stories. Art isn’t a passion but a necessity for our diverse array of speakers and the people their work has affected (and also, I suspect, for many of us in the audience).
This is the whole weekend, from the West African dance Sanaaj Mirrie teaches us on Saturday morning to the spoken word performance Killa Atencio opens with before speaking about her business during a Saturday afternoon workshop to the game of healthy relationship charades the representatives of FOXY pull us into during their dialogue session on Sunday afternoon.
Art isn’t just the topic of conversation, it’s the medium. This is art as communication. Art as representation. Art as business, as advocacy, as health.
Art as change.
– Alicia Haniford
Alicia Haniford is a fourth year English co-op student whose interests include medieval studies, creative writing, and human rights. As a co-op student, she has worked with Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada in addition to the Department of Justice, experiences she recorded for the English Department through her co-op blog.
Haniford spent this past weekend (November 6-8, 2015) attending the 2015 Power of the Arts National Forum. She kindly took some time to blog about her experience.