Art is for EVERYONE

I have danced my whole life. Even when I was in the womb, my mother took a dance class and so I’ve consistently joked that I started dancing as a foetus. However, I would never have identified myself as a dancer or an artist – that word is reserved for professionals. The elite people with real talent. The people whose work is worthy of payment.

What we sometimes forget is that we are all born artists: we sing in the shower, we dance in the kitchen, and we doodle on paper. As the singer and actor Phylicia Rashad said: "Before a child talks they sing. Before they write they draw. As soon as they stand they dance. Art is fundamental to human expression." Thousands of years ago, humans told stories through pictures drawn on cave walls, through the composition of ballads recounting tales of adventure, through gesture and movement as they danced around a campfire. It’s both healthy and necessary for everyone to be artists.

Young children don’t doubt their innate artistic talent, but they are proud to demonstrate their creativity and imagination through art. It isn’t until children start to go through their public school years that they lose this confidence in their creativity. We emphasise academics and memorization of facts and figures and devalue the arts. It is apparent in how subjects in school are hierarchized: focusing always on language and maths, followed by science and social studies, and then if there’s some time we might squeeze in a music class or a craft activity.

Historically, we have permitted the rich, mostly white, cis-gendered male elite to decide what art was “valuable” However, they do not account for the majority of people on earth. We are all unique individuals with various preferences and so our art should be as diverse as the people who inhabit the earth. Once I started to understand this dynamic, I started to shift my definition of “artist” to anyone who expresses themselves through an artistic medium.

Arts gives us the ability to express ourselves and communicate our own unique emotions, thoughts, and experiences. When you look at someone else’s artistic expression, you are seeing the world through their eyes and when you create, you are allowing others to see the world through yours. Your perspective matters. Your experience matters. Your thoughts and emotions matter. Even if your work is never displayed in an art gallery, the process of art-making holds much more value than the product. Art-making has been shown to have many benefits for the artist such as: relaxation and stress-relief, which in turn can help reduce blood pressure and the symptoms of stress-related illnesses. Practising art-making makes us more open to alternate ways of thinking which means we can more easily innovate and solve problems.

Art does not require any special equipment either! You can explore your feelings through creative movement using only your body; or compose your own song using just your voice; visual art-making can be as simple as using a pencil or those colouring pencils you’ve got laying around or you can use elements of nature to create some ethereal land-based art. Use what you have, tune into your breath and let your body move you through the art-making process instead of your conscious mind. When you have finished, admire your work through the eyes of wonderment that a child would. What does the artwork say to you? How does it make you feel? It is this journey… the process of art-making that is important – not the product. The “finished” (it may never truly be finished) product is a bonus; a memento of your journey from within.

Art is not for the elite. Art is for everyone.