The Defiant Imagination
August 7th, 2005Why Culture Matters
by Max Wyman
ISBN: 1553650077
Wyman passionately argues that culture is key to economic vitality, community well-being, and national as well as personal identity. His focus is on arts and culture in Canada, yet his ideas deserve a wider discussion.
Why? Because he is a true believer in the power and importance of the imagination, and he wants to provoke discussion:
Without the well-supplied imagination, without the inspiration that contact with creative activity can give us, we risk shortchanging ourselves in becoming the fully developed human spirit. We risk becoming less than it is possible for us to be.
No, statements like this don’t mean Wyman is an out-of-touch idealist. He is aware of studies (and Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class) linking creative types, diversity, and municipal health — in other words, “technology, talent, and tolerance” are the keys to prosperity. He argues that investments in cultural infrastructure will reap economic benefits for local and national governments thinking they are perhaps too cash-strapped to make the money available.
Attracting the right kind of workers isn’t the only reason cultural investments are worth the price. There is also the matter of making sure the right types of workers even exist, by avoiding the “ingenuity gap—that is, the chasm between the need for innovative thought and our ability as a society to provide it.” Wyman notes the “ingenuity gap” but it is Thomas Homer-Dixon (properly cited) who developed the idea. This is something else Wyman does — liberally cite Canadian academics, artists, and writers. In fact, he uses the example of Margaret Atwood in making another benefit of small governmental grants to individual artists clear when he quotes her:
In financial terms—and considering the taxes I’ve paid on the income even from this one book alone [Surfacing] —the taxpayers’ investment in me through this tiny $7,000 grant is possibly the best investment they ever made. If I had been a penny stock, I’d be written up in every financial journal on the planet.
The use of arts in education (not just education in the arts) is also revealed to boost test scores in subjects spanning the curriculum. Prisons in the U.K. with arts programs have sixty to ninety percent fewer “violent incidents.” Wyman is a true believer alright, seeking to engage the unconverted, be they government officials, schoolteachers, business executives, or rank and file tax payers — in artistic pursuits, as he makes the case for the potential benefits of cultural investment and experiences to everyone. He’s not bad at argument by way of analogy, either:
Funding culture is neither an imposition of taste nor an act of charity—it is an investment in the health of the community, in the same way that building roads and hospitals is an investment in the health of the community.
But what I enjoyed the most about Wyman’s call is his willingness to embrace difficulties:
“As a society, we need to be comfortable, in a way we too often are not, with the fact that art asks difficult questions. There will always be (there should always be) scandals.
I found myself in agreement with Wyman most of the time, right down to his assertion that “there will always be a need for the communal experience of art, for the church-going effect of sharing a transformative experience with others.” One notable exception — and the one place I just think he is dead wrong — is in his assessments of threats posed by “new communications technologies.” Here, Wyman tells us that “the virtual world lessens the value of the reflective life.” At this point, I wrote bullshit old man carping in the margin. To his credit, Wyman goes on to say: “Imagination and innovation will be the international currency of the twenty-first century, and the Internet is where they will be bartered.” So he understands that the web will be increasingly important, even if he doesn’t actually “get it.”
The other weakness in the book is the way Wyman skirts defining artistic excellence. He talks about the importance of excellence, of rewarding and valuing it — but he doesn’t really indicate how it can or should be measured. (I also wish the book had an index, but this is a small nit. It does have a good bibliography.)
I suppose the widest possible audience for this book is anyone interested in creativity or anyone who values imagination, and is interested in how arts and cultural activities create meaning beyond the obviously personal. If you want to engage in a dialogue on the importance of cultural output in society, this book is a great resource. Recommended.
