A Call To Action...

To the artists, the writers and the creatives: we need new stories to help us shape this new world of ours.

Since the dawn of humanity it has been the tales we tell and the art we create that has helped us make sense of who we are, how we feel, how we behave, and who we could become.

The phrase of the moment is "unprecedented times", which means we don't have the frameworks to make real sense of what is happening and how to react.

Post-apocalyptic movies are all we are familiar with, and they are really not helpful just now.

We need new narratives and it is, and has always been, the storytellers who have shaped our understandings.

So to all the artists, writers and creatives: now is the time to help build our new reality.

Please share the message.


(an easily sharable version for social media use)

A combination of different strands came together, leading me to create the above statement and put it up on different social media platforms.

The hope was it might get shared and inspire some of the creatives who are now in self-isolation with their greater-than-average imaginations.

By their nature, most artists are able to conjour up unimagined worlds. This allows for amazing creativity, but can also lead to incredible levels of fear and anxiety.

A few days ago I was thinking about these "unprecedented times", and the fact we don't have any real narratives to deal with it. I explored this a bit in my last post where I mentioned Zombie Apolocalypse movies being the nearest thing we have, and that's extremely unhelpful right now.

Then yesterday I was introduced to a quote by Pablo Picasso, "Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth." This lead to a discussion about how art doesn't just reflect reality, it helps us to make sense of it.

From nursery rhymes and children's stories, to the TV programmes and films we watch, to the books and magazines we read, to the music we listen to, to the paintings, photos, scultptures and other art forms we look at - these things shape how we view the world.

This is the power of art, the power of storytelling in whatever medium.

So I was mulling this over - how we are lacking the narratives, and that artists create narratives - when this morning my wife put up a post:

This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
― John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

This triggered the thought of putting up a call to action to artists and creatives - to give us something else to focus on - to harness that creativity to help make sense of what is happening, rather than our imaginations running wild in fear and loss.

At a point where photographers, musicians, performers and many different kinds of artists and craftspeople suddenly have no work, no audience, and no income, then it's easy to feel completely overwhelmed.

In addition to feeling extremely vulnerable, we feel useless. What good is an ability to take photos, or paint a picture or write a poem when people are ill or dying?

But here is a different narrative. What if our skills do have a use? What if we can find ways for people to make sense of this new, unprecedented world?

However, while I have had a little bit of positive response to it, I've also been hit with some negativity too - from people implying I'm concentrating on the wrong things, to having my head stuck up my own arty arse, to even my turn of phrase.

Aye, well, I'm a photographer, not a poet.

I thought what I'd written was clear, but apparently not, which has lead to me feeling the need to expand on it all in this post.

Meanwhile I'm swithering again from feeling I was doing something positive to feeling foolish for having stuck my head above the parapet.

It looks like this blog is going to be used much more again for writing, now that I'm not going to have any more Photography clients for quite some time...