REALISE your right to art statement

As UK citizens, we have a right to housing, education and health. Shouldn’t all of us also have the right to a share in the rich visual culture of the nation? Shouldn’t all of us have the opportunity to flourish as visually literate and creative citizens throughout our lives?
 

We live in a compelling, complex and dynamic visual world. Art lies at the core of culture, yet, despite its power to ignite our senses and provoke our thoughts, it remains wastefully detached from the lives of too many of us.
 

If everyone’s right to art was realised, it would:

• Bring personal enrichment, through enjoyment, inspiration, knowledge and the challenge of the unpredictable
• Build the vital role that artists can play in the life of the nation, of communities and of individuals
• Increase the depth and scope of our understanding of other cultures and of one another
• Give people the chance to develop creative skills fit for the 21st century and contribute to the growth and diversification of the UK economy and the imaginative regeneration of communities

If we begin now to put art at the heart of society:
 

• Everyone will have the chance to experience and enjoy the very best in art, no matter where they live
• All children and young people will have opportunities for making art, and for sustained and high quality creative engagement with visual culture
• Visual and design literacy will be recognised as essential to everyone’s personal development, no matter their age or circumstances
• Artists will be acknowledged as the pathfinders and visionaries that they are, generating new and challenging thinking about the present and the future
• All new communities and regeneration schemes will have art and high quality design at their core
• All galleries, museums and visual arts organisations will be hubs for cultural, social, creative and artistic development and learning, with programmes, commissions and collections which reflect, celebrate and examine the abundant diversity of our past and present
• With visual culture relevant and immediate to everyone’s lives, the national conversation about the unexpected and inspirational nature of art will be open to all
  

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Commissioned artwork by Simon Tegala, 2005