creative forces

Blog # 20…April 2013

Creativity and social awareness often seem to go hand-in-hand…so many artists of all kinds are strongly connected to the sounds, sights, shapes and smells of the world around them, and to the state of the environment and its inhabitants, or maybe they’re artists because they are already attuned to their surroundings.

Whatever the sequence,  a lot of public figures are using their names and face recognition to call attention to issues and causes – Sarah Harmer defending the Niagara Escarpment, Matt Damon working to supply clean water to communities in Africa, and the members of PEN International  speaking out for the rights of writers imprisoned or exiled around  the world.

In his recent book, Celebrity Diplomacy, Andrew Cooper observes, “Celebrities bring optimism and ‘buzz’ to issues that seem deep and gloomy. Even if their lofty goals remain elusive, when celebrities speak, other actors in the global system listen.”

A week ago, I spent some time at a new initiative called the SPUR Festival. Launched in Toronto, SPUR has plans to be “Canada’s first national festival of politics, art and ideas.” Shyam Selvedurai spoke of his arrival in Canada as an immigrant from Sri Lanka; Guillermo Verdecchia, Michael Healey and Hannah Moscovich looked at how playwrights present stories that may move us to action or new ways of thinking and Hendrick Hertzberg, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, closed the day with a discussion about money and political influence.

I love this kind of cross pollination, getting us out of our narrow notions of what art is or where you’ll find it - Helen Walsh, the festival director and her colleagues at Diaspora Dialogues and The Literary Review of Canada are to be congratulated for getting it on, spurring the action so to speak..  Serious discussion and fun are two other mash ups that I like… earlier in the week, SPUR ran a session on political satire, makes me appreciate how lucky we are to live in a place where we can engage in it safely…more about that in my next post.

Do these efforts - watching Sean Penn get his hands dirty helping rebuild in Haiti or singing along with Bono at a Band Aid concert-   accomplish anything in the long run?  Does the fun scoop up some folks and make them think a bit more deeply about issues of equality, fairness and generosity?  The majority of people who attend events like this are probably pretty well endowed with those qualities already, but I’m optimistic.  Like the Chinese proverb about the man moving the mountain…little by little it will be moved... and, bit by bit, peoples’ ideas are moved too.

If you’re reading this in Winnipeg, you’ll have the SPUR festival in a couple of weeks - April 26-28… tell your friends.