Art makes life worth living

Why society, and churches, need the Arts.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A choir sing at the front of a church while an audience looks on.

St Martin-in-the-Fields choir performance.

Arguing for the significance and role of the arts and culture during an election in an era where a cost-of-living crisis has followed austerity and a pandemic, may seem to be a hard task. The Arts being thought of often as frivolous and unimportant in comparison with the basics of survival. Yet it is essentially a task that the current government has attempted, as in June 2023, a ‘Creative industries sector vision’ was published which included a commitment to an additional £77 million in funding.

At that time, the government estimated that creative industries generated £126bn in gross value added to the economy and employed 2.4 million people in 2022. A range of research has also been examining the way in which creative industries and the arts can positively impact wellbeing, for example through public health interventions.

The foreword to ‘Creative industries sector vision’ stated:

“Our creative industries are world-leading, an engine of our economic growth and at the heart of our increasingly digital world. From 2010 to 2019 they grew more than one and a half times faster than the wider economy and in 2021 they generated £108bn in economic value. In 2021, they employed 2.3 million people, a 49% increase since 2011. Their impact reaches beyond their borders to other sectors, with advertising, marketing and creative digital innovation supporting sectors across our economy.

The importance of the creative industries also goes well beyond the economy. They provide the news that informs our democracy, the designs that shape our cities and the content and performances that enrich our lives and strengthen our global image. The sector has proved that it is an essential positive force for society, bringing joy, inspiration and opportunity to our lives. The creative industries form the national conversation through which we define our shared values.”

The arts and culture help tackle social injustice as theatres, museums, galleries and libraries are the beating heart of our towns and cities bringing communities together and making life worth living.

This positive view of the creative industries was echoed in a report ‘The arts in the UK: Seeing the big picture’ published in November 2023 by management consulting firm McKinsey. The report described the UK as a “cultural powerhouse” with a globally recognised arts sector and 91 per cent of UK adults engaging with the arts in the previous 12 months.

The Arts Council estimates that art and culture contribute £10.6 billion to the UK economy as the UK has a creative economy worth £27bn and culture brings £850m to UK, through tourism, each year. They also contend that the arts and culture help tackle social injustice as theatres, museums, galleries and libraries are the beating heart of our towns and cities bringing communities together and making life worth living. In addition, our creative industries are successful throughout the world - our leading cultural institutions are a calling card worldwide and have important trading links from the US or Germany to China and South Korea. Last year our National Portfolio Organisations earned £57m abroad.

Churches feature within these arguments because they often host or organise cultural events, exhibitions, installations and performances which contribute towards the economic, social, wellbeing and tourism impacts achieved by the arts and culture. The Arts are actually central to church life because, as well as being places to enjoy cultural programmes such as concerts and exhibitions and also being places to see art and architecture, many of the activities of churches take place within beautiful buildings while services combine drama, literature, music, poetry and visuals.

The artist Makoto Fujimura has suggested the creation of cultural estuaries in churches, schools and informal associations as a strategy for enhancing culture. Estuaries are where salt-water mixes with fresh in a confluence of river and tidal waters. They are environments not of protection but of preparation as critical nursery areas for fish that come downstream after hatching.

This suggestion has been taken up by Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, who advocates for churches to minister in and through the 4Cs; commerce, culture, compassion and congregation. He writes in ‘A Future that’s Bigger than the Past’ that:

“… the image of an estuary is helpful for a church regarding itself as a meeting place of human and divine, gospel and culture, timeless truth and embodied experience, word and world.

Churches work hard to make themselves inspiring locations where people are drawn into a sense of the presence of God; but they can work equally hard to make themselves hospitable locations where people of varied backgrounds may gather in a spirit or mutual appreciation, generous regard and constructive challenge. The two purposes of church need not be mutually exclusive.”

The arts, he suggests, provide a perfect example of how such an estuary space may flourish with participatory, aspirational and commercial activities all taking place in the same space. In a short time, he suggests, “a secluded, secretive space may be opened out to become a centre of community activity, energy, and creativity.” All that’s needed “is for a church to let go of the need for direct outcomes and linear trajectories and to let the Holy Spirit govern the interactions and catalyse its own surprises.”

The Bible adds to this missional assessment of the importance of the arts. At the point we are told of human beings as having been made in the image of God the one thing we know for certain of God is his creativity, making our own creativity central to our understanding of how we live in his image. Later, the very first people to be spoken of in terms of being filled with the Spirit of God are the artists and craftspeople who make the Tent of Meeting for the people of Israel as they journey through the wilderness. The Bible, itself, is a library of various genres of literature with many of its texts having been preserved through oral performance, whether spoken or sung.

Given these theological, missional, social and economic reasons for seeing the arts and culture as central to personal wellbeing and to national life, in this election period it surely makes sense to check the commitment of politicians in all parties to maintaining and developing the cultural industries and the vital place that the arts and culture have in the life of our nation.

Review

Culture

Sport

6 July 2024

5 min read

Shootout: what penalties say about life

Football is a global language and the shootout is the end to Shakespearian tragedy.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

England v Columbia: 2018 World Cup shootout.

It is hard to pity entitled, overpaid footballers. Until, that is, it comes down to penalties after extra time. Even when you do not care who wins, the drama of the penalty shootout is so intense and all-consuming that every heart rate quickens.

Is there a more exquisite form of sporting torture?

Sport is laden with cliché, and the refrain, ‘it’s come down to the lottery of penalties’ is an established part of the lexicon. But is it just the spin of the roulette? That you can’t prepare effectively for the cauldron of the stadium?

Not according to Geir Jordet, it isn’t. The Norwegian Professor of Psychology and Football is on a mission to convince the world there is lots you can do to get ready and those that don’t are more likely to fail.

There is skill involved in taking a penalty, an ability that can be honed with practice. Individual players can be trained to take their time (but not too long), to establish a routine that helps them take control of the situation, to take careful breaths, and to focus. They can be helped with blocking out the trash talk of opponents, especially goalkeepers, who subtly try to get under their skin in the seconds leading up to a penalty. Extensive research can be carried out by data-rich backroom staff to help with preparation. And behind all this is the recognition that taking a penalty is a team effort, not an individual one.

This latter observation feels especially counter intuitive. There is nothing more lonely than the appearance of one man or woman taking the long walk from the centre circle to the penalty spot. But teams can support one another with words of encouragement and touch. Not just in the grasping of each other’s shoulders in the centre circle, but in reaching out to those who both score and miss. One reason Geir Jordet advises that the manager should choose penalty takers rather than look for volunteers is that they then can take full responsibility for the outcome. It is hard to believe there are still times when a manager looks around at players after extra time, hoping to see in the eyes who is up to the task. These duties should be sorted out in advance, with back-up plans for when players are injured or substituted.

Deciding war between opposing tribes based on an individual contest was quite common in the ancient world – effectively moving to the penalty shootout before the game, to save the effort.

Jordet, in his stimulating book Pressure: Lessons From The Psychology Of The Penalty Shoot Out says that anxiety is normal and should be embraced. Greater openness round mental wellbeing is allowing the modern professional to admit this. Erling Haarland, one of the world’s most accomplished goal scorers, has shared the fear he regularly feels round taking a penalty; it is hard to imagine a player from the 1970s saying the same.

Missing a penalty in the shootout is inevitable; the only way it can conclude. And statistics show that the world’s greatest players, like Lionel Messi, are not notably better at converting penalties than others. On average, the best players have around an eighty percent success rate (which, significantly, is one missed penalty out of five in a shootout). As in other professions, the best results are achieved by creating systems and cultures that can adapt quickly and honestly to errors and learn from them without humiliating those who fail.

Reading the book cast my mind back to the archetypal shootout between David and Goliath. Deciding war between opposing tribes based on an individual contest was quite common in the ancient world – effectively moving to the penalty shootout before the game, to save the effort. Perhaps David should have lost it, and not just because of his size. Beforehand, he had a serious bust up with his side and those who did not see him as a team player. Then Goliath trash talked him like Emi Martinez is famed for with Aston Villa and Argentina. And finally, he ran up to take his shot very quickly, without much reflection. But then again, Geir Jordet would be the first to point out that preparing badly for a contest does not mean you can’t win it – just that you are less likely to.

Football is a global language and the penalty shootout is like the cataclysmic end to a Shakespearian tragedy. English fans are long suffering audiences of this trauma – from Italia 90 to Wembley 2021, via the 1996 Euros when football was coming home until a last minute wrong turning. But many other nations have under-achieved at penalties, like Holland and Spain and, more recently, France. Roberto Baggio of Italy missed the decisive penalty in the first World Cup Final to go to penalties in 1994. He says of it:

‘I failed that time. Period. And it affected me for years. It was the worst moment of my career. I still dream about it.’.

The personal stakes are as high, if not higher, than the nation’s.

We are left with the feeling that hugely divergent outcomes can emerge from the smallest and most random of causes. The human tendency is then to rationalise the outcome in ways that make it seem inevitable. Geir Jordet is aware of this in football, but in other walks of life, we continue to build up wobbly cases on shallow evidence as a way of warding off anxiety or the fear that others will think we are clueless if we admit to the existence of chance. Most people are right less than eighty percent of the time; something we might hold in mind when the next England players make that solitary walk to the penalty spot.