(OR WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE A GO AT PHOTOVERSE)
It is of course the age-old question - in a world where truth is increasingly subjective and facts are at the mercy of media and political rhetoric, why do we still need theatre, poetry, art and indeed THE ARTS ? Critics would say, of course, have always said, that they are mere side-liners to the main political and economic events of the wider world… indulgence, entertainment, distractions, and to put that into the Hurtwood context, potential distraction from the serious business of exam success and mark totals. Unless of course you accept the centrality of creativity to personal success in its broadest sense – the ability to make sense of ourselves and our place in the world. Creativity – in all its rich possibilities of imaginative engagement – writing, visualizing, recreating – assumes our ability to see more than just the literal ‘what’s there’, and assures us that there is more than just the drudgery of the immediate – the revision, the cramming of facts, the essays. Yes – your exams matter enormously, and their results WILL shape your future choices and paths. But your ability to see more – of human vision and achievement – that will enrich and enlarge all that endeavour as you embark on your wider working worlds after school.
Having chosen the creative hub that is Hurtwood already suggests that you value the arts; why not then, engage in a little specific and personal creative writing or photography? Look at the visual and verbal stimuli on the Student Hub, and respond in your very own way. Your work will be entirely yours – unless of course, you are so good that you win… and then you will have to share it with the world! Otherwise you will just have the satisfaction of having had a go at self-expression, you will have looked a little more closely at our exciting and miraculous world, and have had something to say about it. You will be in the game more fully.
The poet Yeats, beleaguered by the building crises of the 1930’s and the drift to war, observed in the poem Lapis Lazuli that ‘All things fall’ – nothing lasts forever. However, he continues, those things ‘are built again’, and ‘those that build them are gay’ – meaning in his context, joyful, happy, creative. Art fulfils, he asserts, even when life seems pretty grim. Using our imagination – to capture an image on our phones/cameras, to put our feelings and thoughts into words, into a poem…. These things matter, and fulfil in very important ways. Why don’t you have a go? You have nothing to lose, and much to gain.