Why you should include the arts as part of your resolutions this year

Day 5 of 2019 already — day 15 counting from the longest night and the turn toward light.

Instead of the familiar countdown toward a momentary transition, I’m for a long, slow turning, starting from the solstice through the Lunar New Year in late January to Nowruz, the Persian New Year, to the vernal equinox in March.

That leaves ample time for resolutions. If there’s room for a few more on your list, consider enriching your life through new or increased engagement with the arts.

Normally that means becoming part of a live audience for culture-related offerings or enjoying works that have been reproduced in one way or another.

There’s also direct involvement with art making, like going to a dance or becoming part of a choir, a sketching circle or a theatre group.

Involvement through learning, individually or as part of a group, is also part of the picture here.

Last month I wrote about a recent Hill Strategies Research report on arts, culture and heritage participation that indicates such forms of engagement have been on the rise over the last decade or so.

There’s another kind of engagement that isn’t covered in the report nor discussed very often: becoming part of an organization or project to help make art happen, like joining a board of directors, serving on a committee or stepping up to perform tasks that match your interests, experience and abilities. These are all types of volunteering, but I’m deliberately avoiding the term and all its connotations.

Originally, “volunteer” meant “one who offers himself for military service” for pay, but of one’s own free-will rather than by conscription. They say that Tennessee clinched its claim to be the “Volunteer State” in the 1840s, when 30,000 men responded to a call for 2,800 volunteers to fight in the Mexican War.

Use of the term “volunteerism” in reference to unpaid voluntary work in the community didn’t become common until the 1970s. By this time volunteer management had started becoming a professional practice, rooted in the human resource management techniques of the corporate world.

These are practices that don’t always suit mandate-based enterprise, especially in arts, culture and heritage pursuits. There is room for developing a kind of engagement that goes deeper than simply signing on as an unpaid employee or “associate.”

Working without pay doesn’t mean working for nothing. There are reciprocal benefits. For young people it can be training, developing a portfolio or fulfilling those mandatory volunteer hours; for business people and professionals, networking and enhancing a resumé, and for seniors, keeping up skills and staying in circulation.

There are also public benefits. Volunteer work is a fundamental building block of civil society as we know it. But I’m not proposing a resolve to a deeper engagement with the arts for any kind of return on investment.

What I’m suggesting is that arts, culture and heritage organizations explore forms of membership that resemble becoming part of a church congregation, service club or political party.

This kind of joining entails subscribing, not as paid regular access to a product or service, but in the literal sense: underwriting a mandate or mission with a personal commitment or guarantee. It is true that this kind of association has been in decline for many decades, at least in its more traditional forms. The model would certainly have to be modified to suit 21st century realities. But the basic impulse toward a committed, personal belonging remains strong.

It is possible to imagine a cultural ecosystem in which each organized endeavour dedicated to making or presenting art work is supported, not just with a public for its offerings, but with a fellowship formed around long-term commitment to its purposes. They’d be movements, rather than purveyors of experiences. And it would be a joy to join in.

Martin de Groot writes about local arts and culture each Saturday. You can reach him by email at mdg131@gmail.com.