Reading daily updates from twitter and facebook its clear that there are a huge number of people outraged by the endless cuts and government games, playing with peoples' lives and there is an equally huge number of calls for support which rightly deserve our attention.
I find myself torn - as someone utterly committed to the arts and education - but I equally understand the basic needs of a decent nhs etc. I've also found myself lobbying to save the forests - which seems ludicrous that one should need to argue to keep a landscape that would take hundreds of years or more to replace for the pitiful one-off sum of £250 million. (Looks like we might have won that one!)
This week I have spent many hours at a hospital visiting my Grandma who is deeply ill, having suffered from a massive stroke. The hospital is full and staff are clearly very busy - one patient sat on the ward waiting to go home having had a comfortable chair and table placed in the middle of the ward because her bed was needed before she could go home. Actually, she was treated with immense respect and seemed quite happy to sit and have another meal brought to her and the company of other patients, so whilst I realise its by no means ideal - I don't want to play the outraged writer that the newspapers have been playing. The staff have been fantastic.
In such times, you can't help but wonder why we bother with all the other 'things' though. And for once my Grandma has shown me why - she is unable to speak and hardly awake, so I sat with her and sang to her. I started with some simple lullaby's and gentle Indian songs which I have been using most recently in schools. She took my hand and began to move to show me she was there. Then I moved on to South Pacific songs - we spent a lot of hours watching that when I used to visit her as a child - and I promise you she was tapping her toes! That hour was one of the most connected hours I've ever had with her and was healing for both of us.
...so why do we bother? Because the arts go far beyond any literacy or numeracy. Yes they're important - but ways of expressing ourselves and relating to others are central to who we are. I'm privileged to have the confidence (or undeniable need) to sing in the middle of a ward when words aren't enough, but my work for Sing Up and Creative Partnerships is all about making these approaches (not just singing or music) the norm - or at least a possibility; so that people are emotionally literate and able to draw upon a culture which copes with and expresses life and death situations.
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