Disclaimer: This is not an attempt to discredit cultural democracy; I am convinced that access to the arts and the stimulus towards personal creativity are basic human rights and needs. This is, instead, an attempt to analyze my growing uneasiness when I read yet another arts fund, council, or ministry in Western Europe is opening a strand for “everyday creativity.”
I was born and raised in the privileged Northwestern part of Europe in the mid fifties while Europe was still recovering from WWII. Democratization of culture was an integrated part of the construction of the welfare state. Even though the arts weren’t that much part of my upbringing, creativity was—in school, in youth clubs, in choirs. And it was there that I discovered arts as the most nourishing and empowering guide for the rest of my life. It became the biotope that would lift my senses and give me joy. Willing to share that experience with everyone and anyone, I chose for a career in the arts. And, in the process, I fought against mechanisms of exclusion—the clear-cut borders between so-called high and low art—and for the recognition of vital contemporary art forms.
In the beginning I had a hard time explaining to partners, colleagues, and audiences that what we at Frascati in Amsterdam did—produce theatre with refugees and present breakdance and hip hop contests and other types of performative culture in a cutting-edge black box theatre—was not an attempt to mix the arts with social work but to feed our art form and its audiences with new impulses and to make this public space accessible for all.
It was only recently that Farooq Chaudhry, the amazing and wise producer (and catapult of Akram Khan’s career), made me understand what has been my leading principle over time. As he taught the participants of a training I organized: “Diversity is complex, culture is confirmative, and art is disruptive.”
What we showed at Frascati in the first decade of this millennium was disruptive art—even while it was confirmative for many of the artists and other citizens, healing and empowering them.
Comments
The article is just the start of the conversation—we want to know what you think about this subject, too! HowlRound is a space for knowledge-sharing, and we welcome spirited, thoughtful, and on-topic dialogue. Find our full comments policy here