“Imagine art which is capable of rekindling values of care, kindness, compassion, action-taking, social justice and cooperation.”
Carmen Salas, 2020
In 2021, the National Arts Council of Singapore commissioned a report on the impact of the pandemic and the ‘new normal world’ on the arts. Of the 5 macro-trends observed to be of relevance to South East Asian artists and artistic practices, one stands out as a major shift in consciousness when it comes to the role of artists and creative practices in working towards societal transformation: Arts for a Cause. Younger generations seek to reflect their own values and their aspirations for the future with their creativity and cultural contributions.
“It is about shifting the focus from the art piece to the art practice and from the artist to the community, art can influence society with its practices.”
Dom Barra
Carmen Salas expressed a dream she had, back in early 2020 when the pandemic first began, that expresses this trend captured by market researchers one year later.
I had a dream last night. In my dream, our cities, communities and the natural environment are the museums and galleries of tomorrow. In my dream, the traditional exhibition spaces and art objects (material objects) no longer exist, and artists, cultural agents and creative practitioners collaborate with citizens, communities and professionals from other sectors (scientists, farmers and politicians) to design better systems and to co-create activities and programmes that encourage creativity and bring about social change.
Carmen Salas, What should we expect from art in the next few years/decades? May, 2020
At Ymmärrys ry, we are thrilled to see, after the fact, that what we have attempted to manifest with the conceptualization of our creative practice and our aspirations as a team is a reflection of a larger shift in consciousness and perspective about the role of the arts, and design, in the world today. This shift is not only visible in the art world or in trends reports, but can also be seen in leading peer reviewed journals from the environmental sciences.
“In the last decade, artistic engagement with climate change has been framed primarily through its ability to provide an accessible channel to connect with phenomena that are unpredictable, often difficult to comprehend and seem remote in time and space…”
Galafassi, Diego, et al. “‘Raising the temperature’: the arts on a warming planet.” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 31 (2018): 71-79.
Creative environmentalism is the term used in the literature. However, we propose the idea of ‘transformative creativity’ instead, as the social experience of collaborative creative practices provide evidence of change in individual, and thus, cultural attitudes. This macro-trend is one we’ll be keeping an eye on here, in our blog.
