Professorial Beacon Lecture Series: Professor Angela Pickard

How can the arts save humanity?

Wed 26 February, 5.15 - 7pm, OS.0.01, Old Sessions House, free

In a world full of uncertainty, instability, global challenges and intersecting crises, we, as humans, often search for ways to nurture care, empathy and justice, to cope with and improve our lives.

Arts (dance, theatre, music/singing and visual) artists and arts activities have long reinforced our sense of shared humanity through social, emotional, creative, cognitive and political engagement.

The arts engage us in activities that enable qualities and experiences that make us human, such as the ability to connect. Through connection, creative meaning making, artistic risk-taking and critical thinking, arts engage people in holistic body and mind and creative experiences.

Arts can enable autonomy, sense of belonging and purpose, raise awareness of complexity and diversity in society, and increase social capital. There is also a growing international commitment to promote engagement with arts as having health and wellbeing.

The word humanity is from the Latin humanitas for ‘human nature, kindness, compassion’. Humanity includes all humans.

In this lecture Professor Angela Pickard, Professor of Dance Education and Director of the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health, will draw on aspects of sociology, psychology and pedagogy, and share ways that arts can nurture, benefit and ‘save’ humanity. She will also question power structures in the arts and whether the arts are equitable, diverse, and inclusive of the individuals, communities and societies in which they represent.

Professor Pickard asks some big questions: who is excluded from arts experiences? Who chooses who is included/excluded in the arts and humanity? Who values and cares about the arts? Do and can the arts really change lives, behaviour, choice and power? And what is the future of the arts and of humanity?