An Artists Privilege
The Benefits Of Public Art
It's funding time in Australia and its all systems go! The two crucial questions asked in all submissions are: "What are the aims and objectives of the project?" and "What will be the benefit to community?"
There are a variety of areas within which Community Arts Workers thrive in Australia. General Community Work, Public Festivals, School Residencies and Broader Youth Work Strategies, Health Care Settings and Corrective Strategies such as Prison, Rehabilitation and Street Work. Mural Art combined with other artistic strategies has an integral part to play in all of these areas.
The reason Mural Painting is ideal for this type of community work is because it can bring a variety of people to work together collectively for a common aim with a tangible project outcome that the community can own and be proud of.
Art is very therapeutic because it allows people to express ideas and emotions that they may not have been able to otherwise. This is why there is a whole discipline based around what is generally known as Art Therapy. For the purposes of rehabilitation artistic endeavour can have the quality of being soothing and provide a release from tension. It can help to improve self-esteem as well as perhaps assisting the individual in a cathartic way by stimulating personal reflection and self expression along with reflection on group interaction. The benefits to individual participants are improvement of self-esteem, involvement in community dialogue, self-expression, group expression, and learning problem solving and conflict resolution skills in a safe, structured and controlled environment. Mural painting is also a recreational outlet, a constructive past time, and a learning environment in which artistic skills can be developed. Outsider Art is a stream of art, which claims that artists who would otherwise have been regarded as insane have made many of the greatest achievements in the modern art world. This field of investigation often calls into question societal values and makes us wonder who is mad???? individuals or society as a collective. For examples of and a discussion of this theoretical field see Outsider Art. "These early artists and collectors demonstrated an awareness and appreciation of the work of untrained artists, many of whom were rural African-Americans, eccentrics, isolates, compulsive visionaries, or the mentally ill. However, their enthusiasm was not shared by the established institutions of the art world." The execution of a
Latest Articles