Fun Friday Resources: Art Helps... Really?? Who Knew?

Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be a spate of articles about research indicating that one art form or another — music, dance, art — is therapeutic for all kinds of physical/mental issues.

You don’t say.

Before I comment, here’s a list of stories I’ve come across recently:

• The inestimable Austin Kleon: Part of a cure

• How Music Can Awaken Patients with Alzheimer’s and Dementia

• Study: Memories of music cannot be lost to Alzheimer's and dementia

• Can Going to a Museum Help Your Heart Condition? In a New Trial, Doctors Are Prescribing Art.

• Neuroscientists reveal the number one exercise for slowing down the aging process, and the original study

• How to improve the school results: not extra maths, but music, loads of it (British)

• They were homeless. Now they’re center stage at the opera.

You get the idea.

Here’s what we need to keep in mind and shout from the rooftops: none of these stories should be a mystery or a surprise. The mistake that society seems to be making is to think that “art” is something we can apply to a problem, apply to people, as if it’s medicine or something.

And certainly it seems to be effective medicine, doesn’t it? It’s like when we used to point out how useful the arts are to improve standardized test scores. Yes, it works, but that’s not the point.

The point is that all the above studies/reports work because the arts are built in to our brains. We are human because we create. We create because we are human. If nothing else, the Alzheimer’s stories should prove once and for all that music is inseparable from our brains. Dance is inseparable from our brains. Drawing/painting/coloring is inseparable from our brains.

The arts work as a “solution” because they are coming from inside us. They are not something that can be “applied” like some kind of ointment. It should come as no surprise that people blossom when given the opportunity to connect with creativity, because the harsh truth is that people wither without creativity.

It. Is. Who. We. Are.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.