Art for arts' sake

"When you play music you discover a part of yourself that you never knew existed."

Bill Evans (1929 - 1980)

It's always disheartening to read another diatribe railing against funding for the arts such as this pot-shot aimed at Guernsey's new Performing Arts Centre.

As a little aside, I have a feeling I know where these moans come from. What image does the phrase 'the arts' conjure up in the imagination of the uninitiated? How about bespectacled goatee-laden twenty-something slackers musing over a Jackson Pollock? Or tails-wearing toffs at the opera tutting condescendingly in the direction of the less well-bred in the cheap seats? Or maybe grey-headed choir biddies warbling away well past their prime? Or am-dram divas exclaiming 'darling' somewhat more than is strictly necessary?

"The arts! It's all airy-fairy namby-pamby elitist twaddle!'

I doubt anyone would condemn 'music', 'dance', 'drama', 'film', 'photography', 'painting', 'sculpture', 'architecture' and 'poetry' in one breath. This phrase 'the arts' brackets disciplines which have little more in common than they they exist in a world of aesthetic ideals. With this phrase at their disposal, the naysayers are empowered to smash it all up in one go with fists of fury under the guise of egalitarianism.

Enough of that, back to the point - why fund 'the arts', or more specifically, education in performing arts? I could digress again and drivel on about the evidence for causative relationships between performing arts and improved school discipline, academic achievement, crime reduction and societal well-being. But the research is all out there anyway, the arguments have already been made.

In the aforementioned spirit of aesthetic ideals, let me offer an alternative defence. A student may spend years acting in plays or playing in school orchestras. He may detest every minute of it. But one day he may stand up and perform a Shakespearean soliliquy and find the text gets under his skin, the audience evaporates, and it his entire soul is dragged inside the play. Or, performing a Beethoven trio, he will suddenly be aware of a feeling of total unity with the other two players and of the perfection of musical structure and form unfolding at their command.

Those involved in performing arts education know what they want to achieve. It's not to solve society's ills, even if that is a handy side-benefit. They want to give every student a taste of profound and intangible truths.

Without public funding for the arts, both at the elite and grass roots levels, our children can never discover that part of themselves which they don't know exists.