From Adele to Zephaniah, creative adults in England add to its economic wealth. Children whose imaginations have been stimulated by the arts are likely to be more resilient and adaptable – for a lifetime. Active involvement in music, painting and drama as a boy made me a better health professional decades later, as well as a much more compassionate citizen. Many sources of national wealth (from North Sea oil to North Sea fish) are finite, but the only limits on creativity are education and confidence.
If schools in 2021 are facing “a creativity crisis” (‘Creativity crisis’ looms for English schools due to arts cuts, says Labour, 15 July), that may impoverish us all in future. Shrewd investment in “creative arts students and teachers” will always give a return – and who knows what surprises? In 1799, Blake wrote about artistic visions: “particularly they have been elucidated by children, who have taken a greater delight in contemplating my pictures than I even hoped. Neither youth nor childhood is folly or incapacity. Some children are fools and so are some old men. But there is a vast majority on the side of imagination”.
Woody Caan
Duxford, Cambridge
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