by Edel O'Shea
We should never impose
limits on creativity, provided its purpose is not intended to cause harm or
provocation. More specifically we should not hesitate or ponder the source of
the creativity regardless of which platform is used to generate it.
Why then is there
hesitation regarding the author, poet, musician or actor among many other
creators? Creativity, in all its forms, is intuitive, colourful and speaks to
us all one way or another but in order to engage fully with its potential we
must ensure diversity among its creators.
In the UK, for example,
a study by the University of Warwick reported that participation and audience
members in the creative industries were predominantly from white middle-class
well educated backgrounds. This stark reality points to a major deficit of
diverse talent in the arts leading to hollows in our potential creative
breeding ground.
Meanwhile in Ireland
we’ve made some efforts to nurture the creative seed multi-culturally, however
the Art’s Council of Ireland issued a report suggesting restrictions that
hinder culturally diverse artistic expression. Some board restrictions cited
include; lack of funding to support a diverse arts sector on a local and national
level, the absence of minority participation to sit on the Art’s Council and
represent those communities and the short term relationship minority ethnic
communities have with arts organisations meaning there is no long term
permanent partnership between organisation and community to ensure higher
participation and engagement.
Across the pond in
Hollywood USA we see a similar trend of poor representation of our culturally
diverse media society as what’s portrayed on TV and film and the actors chosen
to play certain roles does not mirror the current vibrant ethnographic living
in its own back yard. It is also suggested that current successful American TV
shows, such as The Walking Dead, display diversity simply because it’s
currently trendy to do so, leading to a significantly commercially viable
source for Hollywood’s producers. This purely commercial angle displays a
profit before artistic benefit approach, which can only widen the gap between
diversity and dominant mainstream commerciality.
Expression is paramount
for the exchange of new knowledge and ideas but what’s missing is the enveloped
concept that, trendy or not, ethnicity or gender should ideally be invisible,
to both participant and creator, if we are to mesh just expression and the
explorations of creativity evenly across all lands.
In Africa, for example,
its emerging writers are continuously written and spoken about by media and
critics as if they are only viewed as a representation for their continent,
solely as a citizen, rather than individuals of vital expression were borders don’t
exist. This makes me wonder how we’ve missed the point of artistic creation,
meaning there is no point as such, just a need for a simplistic outlet for all
to participate, observe and create to increase our cultural awareness, process
new concepts and thus continue to evolve. It’s important to acknowledge the
distinction between the trendy buzz talk on new African writing and what
exactly it is; simply that, new writing like any other and it deserves the
right to be read and critiqued impartially without constant mention of where
the author resides.
If cultural diversity
is misrepresented or unaligned in reality then it becomes observable that upon
creating a piece of TV, film, theatre or prose that the very creativity used to
reflect our world is then corrupted by the inequality and racism that defines
us in everyday terms.
Not only is the poverty
gap widening but similarly it appears the abundance of our creative capital is
unfairly distributed with poor opportunity to engage and create relating to
both gender and race.
If we are to reject or
question the existence and practice of interculturalism within the creative
arts we are implying a notion that serves only to restrict our world’s
collective concepts and beliefs and deny us the fruitfulness of vast and varied
creative collaboration that we all thrive on.
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1 Neelands, J., Belfoire, E., Firth,
C., Hart, N., Perrin, L., Brock, S., Holdaway, D., Woddis, J. & Knell, J.
(2015). Enriching Britain: culture, creativity and growth. Retrieved
from
2 Jewesbury, D., Singh, J. & Tuck, S.
(2009). Cultural diversity and the arts research project: towards the
development of an arts council policy and action plan. Retrieved from http://www.artscouncil.ie/uploadedFiles/Main_Site/Content/Artforms_and_Practices/Arts_Participation_pages/CULTURAL_DIVERSITY_AND_THE_ARTS_RESEARCH_REPORT.pdf
3 Julious, B. (2015, March 25). Hollywood ‘race
casting’: what the industry is getting wrong about diversity. The
Guardian. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2015/mar/25/deadlines-race-casting-article-tvs-diversity-wrong
4 Julious, B. (2015, March 25). Hollywood ‘race
casting’: what the industry is getting wrong about diversity. The
Guardian. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2015/mar/25/deadlines-race-casting-article-tvs-diversity-wrong
5 Selasi, T. Taiye Selasi: stop pigeonholing
African writers. The Guardian. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/04/taiye-selasi-stop-pigeonholing-african-writers
6 Oxfam (2015). Richest 1% will own more than
all the rest by 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2015-01-19/richest-1-will-own-more-all-rest-2016
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