0.3.5 Key Learnings From Art, Media and Culture

Version 1.0 March 2013                                               Previous Version

Art – music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, novels, plays, movies, comedy – transmitted in all sorts of ways – books, newspapers and magazines, radio, television, internet, and so on – pervades all areas of our lives and most of us revel in it.  Here, we explore art, culture and the media, and how it is assessed, not as art critics, but in relation to how they help us to explore and express insights, values, traditions, identities and discoveries and how they affect what we believe. 

For some, “art� means high culture, expensive art that is shown in galleries, serious theatre, or concert halls, that is appreciated only by the sophisticates – those who understand it.  For the sophisticates, pop culture – computer games, TV series, popular Western music, paperback fiction and so on – is not “art�.  But we use art and culture in the widest sense of these words.

For some, artists should always strive to make beautiful pieces or performances.  Instead, many artists strive for what they see as the truth rather than beauty.  Some expect artists to create paintings or sculptures that look like something real – to represent things – and think abstract art is rubbish.  But many artists seek the truth that is hidden in reality, and go beyond simple representation.  It can all be valid.

Art can provide insight, sometimes by confronting us with strange ideas.  Sometimes art shows us specific resolutions to universal problems, which broaden our perspectives.  The arts can sometimes provide an indescribable experience of something which feels more fundamentally real than ordinary reality – seemingly transporting us into another realm.  The arts also often provide simple distraction, amusement and entertainment. 

We look at how the media distributes art and culture, as its ‘content’, as well as news and current affairs.  We consider what formal and informal media guidelines or controls we should support to promote values such as “authenticity� and “balance�.

Art and culture, distributed through different media, give us a huge variety of ways to embellish our universal narrative and provide insights into our role within it, filling out and colouring our personal narratives, the multiple stories in which we find our meaning and purpose.

We end up coming to this summary of our conclusions.  You may be able to phrase this better.  In subsequent pages we expand out and justify each one of these points.