Do the arts really heal?

I’m starting my 11th year as Director of this wonderful community school here at the Universityof Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. It’s been a privilege to work here with such amazing faculty, outstanding facilities and wonderful students.

My official hire date was ten years ago on 9/11/01. What an incomprehensible event that no one who was around on that date will ever forget. A tragedy of this magnitude and the aftermath that has evolved from it has changed our world and how we live.

How do we balance the reality of our everyday world with the world of the arts?
Do the arts solve the problems of the world? Do the arts provide jobs to those who need work? Do the arts help resolve personal conflicts that we have? Do the arts make us smarter?

My personal belief is that the arts do not need to answer these questions. The arts exist solely as the arts and should be respected and honored as such. The arts are ethereal; they are transient; they are confusing; and they are complicated. But they are art.
And that is where we come in. Arts education exists to assist people in their own personal arts journey. The journey can be a straight forward path, or it can be replete with bumps, hills, missed entrances and one way streets. The journey may be filled with colorful and exciting landscapes that capture your imagination or it may be colorless or dull.

It’s our job to help our students find the smoothest and most imaginative journey through the arts. That’s called motivation.

So what does this have to do with that fateful day 10 years ago?

The arts are transforming. They transform one by one. The arts don’t magically make the world a better place and cause all of us to get along with each other. Rather, it is a personal journey. And our personal journey through art transforms us and gives us space to regroup and catch our breath before we go out to face the challenges of the world. Even our young students know this. I read the essays our students write for our scholarship program and over and over they describe how their art helps calm them or makes them happy or excited. As one nine year stated, “what keeps me going is the wonderful feeling I sometimes get when I’m playing the violin.”

And that is why we need the arts so desperately today.