• Share on Facebook
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Linkedin
  • Share by email
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Linkedin
  • Share by email

When cultural institutions talk of being impactful, life changing and 'transformative', they mean to transform the other into themselves, says Rosie Priest.

As an arts practitioner, the past seven months have seen me actively question the work I do and why I do it. Seeing my close friends lose their jobs, the institutions I move around in regularly close their doors for the foreseeable and listening to the exhausted cries of arts workers everywhere shouting “ART MATTERS”. I firmly believe it does. But (every story has a “but” moment), I also believe that the arts have been forced to create a narrative that their primary function is to change people’s lives, and this is just a lie. Or at least, for the majority of arts organisations this is a lie. I also don’t think it’s necessarily the organisations fault they have been forced to tell this lie. The nature of continuously shrinking funds means that the arts is being pitted against front–line services. For their survival, organisations are having to speak a language of front-line services – that they are impactful, that they are life changing, that they are “transformative”... Keep reading on Colouring in Culture