Casting Crowns have a song about the diversity of the church being its strength, reminding us,
‘It was the rhythm of the dancers
That gave the poets life.
It was the spirit of the poets
That gave the soldiers strength to fight.’ (‘City On A Hill’, Casting Crowns)
I spend much of my life trying to champion creativity and arguing for the value of the arts – a value which cannot be measured in monetary terms alone. Yesterday, I took my grandchildren to the National Emergency Services Museum in Sheffield, a wonderful place tracing the history of the emergency services in the U.K.
What stunned me there was my granddaughter’s reaction to a Victorian painting depicting a firefighter carrying a young girl from a blazing house. What was he doing? Why was she asleep? What happened? Would she be OK? This five-year-old girl poured forth questions about this painting and later, she said this was the most memorable part of the visit for her.
I found the painting sentimental and not particularly interesting. She found it romantic, symbolising bravery, heroism and strength. She gazed at the smoke billowing in the house as I explained the fireman was rescuing the girl from a house fire; she wanted to know why the girl was in a nightgown (I explained the fire must have started when she was asleep); she spent at least fifteen minutes in front of this painting and wanted to see it again when she got home (grateful thanks to the Internet for that!) and then went on to copy the painting herself. She was clearly inspired by it.
The arts have the capacity to capture our attention and to help us see life in different ways. I suspect my granddaughter learned more about the history of fire-fighting from this one painting than from all the vehicles and artefacts on display, because that is the way she is made. My son would have been drawn to the vehicles, to the engineering, to the precision of rescues because that is how he is made. As Casting Crowns remind us, diversity is not meant to provoke envy, competition or disdain, but to enable us to live alongside each other in harmony.
We live in a society that claims to be rational and pragmatic, but we need painters and poets as much (if not more) than politicians. The Government’s advertising campaign last year urging ballet dancers to retrain in IT was reprehensible. There is nothing wrong in ‘re-skilling’, but the notion that our society can function without the arts leads to a soulless society which most of us would shun.
My visit yesterday made me see the emergency services with new eyes, thanks to the skill of an artist and the wonder of my granddaughter. May we all see the world not only through the wonder of a child’s eyes but through the insight, foresight and vision of those people we call the creatives.
