Use or ornament? The social impact of participation in the arts

for art to serve social imagination, it has to be organised in ways that allow time for it to be absorbed and adapted, so that it becomes an act of co-creation rather than just an act of consumption or an enjoyable way to pass the evening.15 If it is only an object for the passing gaze, then it is, perhaps, bound to fail. Experiences that are share

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art works better as a way of seeing than as a way of showing. The arts can document and sometimes pre-empt changes in how people view the world around them, pointing to multiple perspectives or clashes, deconstructing and reconstructing, taking people up to the cosmic or down to the microscopic. They can do this in compelling ways that reach large

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