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The creative act
The Director of Strategy and Creative at the Royal Society of Arts introduces this special issue of the Journal, which explores the arts in all their forms.
Welcome to the latest edition of RSA Journal: the arts special.
This is a particularly special edition of RSA Journal. As the Royal Society of Arts introduces its new visual identity and takes its place as the home of creativity for the common good, this edition celebrates the arts.
Creativity is one of the most natural human instincts: the urge to look again, to question, to imagine what might be possible. It lives everywhere – in science and technology, in classrooms and communities, in business and design.
Sometimes creativity changes the world, sometimes it simply changes how we see it. Often, it is so ordinary that we barely notice it. As legendary music producer Rick Rubin wrote in The Creative Act, it can even be as simple as “a new route home to avoid a traffic jam.”
If creativity is the impulse, the arts are the sandpit: the place where we play, experiment and rehearse; where we explore, express and imagine. We often see the arts as under threat, underfunded, underappreciated. And yet, as you’ll discover throughout these pages from our Fellows and contributors, they are the clearest path we have back to each other, and to the progress we can imagine together.
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From illustrations to immersive theatre, Viking poetry to Victorian novels, this edition demonstrates how the arts, whatever their form, move us, spark dialogue and inspire societal change.
Our cover features Sir Quentin Blake, FRSA, the Royal Designer for Industry whose illustrations have delighted book lovers, theatre-goers and magazine readers for more than 70 years. As the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration opens in London, Nicholas Wroe explores the breadth of Blake’s imagination and influence.
Other highlights include Pawlet Brookes, MBE, FRSA on the contribution to classical music made by composers, musicians and performers of African and African Caribbean heritage; Ally Zlatar on the intersection of art, philosophy and mental health advocacy; and Daisy Carter of the RSA’s Social Impact Team on civic creativity.
Throughout this issue runs a common thread: creativity powering the common good and convening conversations around the defining questions of our age.
Featured articles
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The creative act
Introducing a special issue exploring the arts in all their forms
Feature
The work of art
Do we need to start treating arts and culture as central to economic renewal?
Feature
Drawn together
The Uffington White Horse as a relationship between landscape, community and time
Feature
Hungry for change
The romantic myth of the ‘starving artist’ versus the lived reality of eating disorders
Feature
Loosening canons
Black artists within classical music have long been central to the form's innovation
RDI spotlight
Kate Blee
Meet cross-disciplinary artist Kate Blee in our latest RDI article
Arts in the spotlight
Where art meets access
Discover how a Moby-Dick adaptation has centred accessibility in immersive theatre
Feature
History in runes
The Viking world was not shaped just by warfare, but by poetry, riddles and storytelling
RSA NextGen
Neisha Hussain
The senior youth delegate to the UN is passionate about the rights of women and girls
RSArchive
Our mutual friend
Discover how the Society influenced the daily life of one of our Fellows, Charles Dickens
Feature
Fellows' ink
Highlighting books recently published by Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts
Last Word
Hauntology
Artist Helena Traill FRSA imagines how the present is haunted by ghosts of the past