{"id":18606,"date":"2015-11-09T13:58:41","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T18:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=18606"},"modified":"2026-03-26T09:59:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:59:31","slug":"why-art-key-social-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2015\/why-art-key-social-change\/","title":{"rendered":"A Student Blog on the 2015 Power of the Arts National Forum: Why Art is the Key to Social Change? by Alicia Haniford (English)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n A Student Blog on the 2015 Power of the Arts National Forum: Why Art is the Key to Social Change? by Alicia Haniford (English)\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

\u201cArt is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those words \u2013 from German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht \u2013 came up a lot at this year\u2019s Power of the Arts National Forum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a very appropriate statement (I\u2019m going to go out on a limb here and say \u201cmotto\u201d) for a conference with the 2015 theme Sustaining Social Change. Let\u2019s think about it for a moment, because I\u2019ve taken far too many English courses to let a sentence like that slide unanalyzed. Brecht\u2019s image is pretty powerful: you usually think of using a hammer to break, not \u201cshape.\u201d But if I\u2019ve learned anything this weekend, it\u2019s that often the force of a hammer is exactly what it takes to create change, and that art is sometimes the best \u2013 or only \u2013 way to achieve that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using art\u2026 to talk about art?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s daunting to come into a room full of professionals and entrepreneurs on Friday night \u2013 every time someone asks me why I\u2019m here, I find myself admitting, \u201cWell, actually I\u2019m still finishing my degree,\u201d like it\u2019s some kind of guilty secret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right up until Jali and Andr\u00e9 D\u00e9d\u00e9 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\u2026 they ask us to dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s more fun to let go and just, well, have fun<\/em>. It\u2019s strangely surreal, seeing a bunch of people in their business getups swaying and twirling; but that\u2019s the power of the arts, in a microcosm. Breaking down barriers. Getting people \u2013 from different places, different jobs, different social backgrounds, different ages \u2013 to connect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That point comes up over and over again on a larger scale. Art isn\u2019t often talked about in terms of utility \u2013 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\u2019 profound passion for music pushed her to recover after being struck by lightning, or about the power of representation generated by Toronto\u2019s Scratch & Mix Exhibition\u2014and these are only two of the myriad of inspiring conversations this weekend\u2014it\u2019s unequivocally clear that art doesn\u2019t exist in isolation. The meaning of a term like \u201ccommunity engagement\u201d can start to fade from overuse, but what it\u2019s describing hits us powerfully when we hear these people sharing their stories. Art isn\u2019t 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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art isn\u2019t just the topic of conversation, it\u2019s the medium. This is art as communication. Art as representation. Art as business, as advocacy, as health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art as change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Alicia Haniford<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cArt is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.\u201d Those words \u2013 from German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht \u2013 came up a lot at this year\u2019s Power of the Arts National Forum. It\u2019s a very appropriate statement (I\u2019m going to go out on a limb here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[159,154,25,849],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alicia","category-power-of-the-arts","category-student-blogs","category-student-voices"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18606"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53679,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18606\/revisions\/53679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}