Liber-art-ion

Today is the 12th October 2020 and I found this evening when I checked my various social media pages a lot of  the same posts circulating on many people's stories, criticizing the government's new ad campaign targeting those in the arts in order to get them to consider new career paths. An attempt in my eyes that belittles the creative lives of artists in any field who's economic lives have already been crippled by months of lockdown. 

I will not try to argue that we should fully reopen theatres and music venues right now as we enter the second wave of this pandemic, but I will point momentarily to the examples of our European neighbours who got there's open and let the arts flow freely through society again and point out very clearly that none of these countries are experiencing any higher relative level of the virus as there currently are in the UK. 

The point I would like to make is that arts in all their forms mean something to every single person on this earth whether they like it or not, and it is some peoples jobs to create that art and work on it and develop it in order to distribute it to the masses. To force those people through lack of government aid and advertising to change their professions is denying them and the whole of society an integral part of what it is to be human and experience life

My whole life I have experienced a kind of pressure especially from people close to me to not be as in touch with my artistic side because it wasn't "scientific" enough and wouldn't get me a so-called real job. And as I write this and compile this I look at my own photographs on my walls and see how far I've come in my own artform and how valuable that has been to my personal development. On my speaker plays a song by local acoustic artist and prior to that somehow Bonnie Tyler was playing. Both songs give me comfort in different ways , one makes me be introspective and think about my life and where I'm going next , the other allows me to get up and dance with my flat-mates and forget the fact that its pissing it down outside. That is why in the project I sought to make sure to show that people had experienced art in these troubled times that had held their hand through those lonely nights when they couldn't see or hear from family and friends. Films , music , television and books all those pieces of art remained there as constants in a world where everything was stripped away. Dance and painting in all its forms are what many people took up to fill their time as jobs and state education stopped, sites like Etsy blew up as people found new creative talents that could help bring joy to people who bought their products and could give them a bit of spare cash. I could ask politicians why it is they aren't being penalized if actors are , why are they getting a pay rise when a local orchestra musician is struggling to pay her bills.

For a government to tell people who have professions based on their very passions to find other jobs is abhorrent, it denies people of not only the fruits of their hard work but of their childhood dreams and support systems. It denies students of the lo-fi and classical music they study their STEM subjects too (which by the way are also art forms in their own right). They deny the little kid of their afterschool dance and drama classes which allows them to express themselves. They deny the commuters to and from their office jobs or in the their home offices of their radio or Netflix shows. They deny humans their own humanity

We're trying so hard to keep people alive, but don't you dare think we wont notice or get angry when you try and belittle and destroy the things that are worth staying alive for.

Yours sincerely 

An emotional Thomas