Words shape worlds, the arts reflect them…
When was humanity ever more without their intrinsic connection to the arts than today? Community is disconnected, displaced and disassociated from the body of life that is togetherness. More than that, ‘art’ has become the token label for anything created. But modern films, loud electronic music, onslaughts to my sensory system, they are not art. Culture is freshly born, sustained and enriched with art, which includes, for the purpose of pointed discussion, dance, visual artistic creation (sculpture, script, painting and pen), music and poetry, perhaps more crafts too that I remain either unaware of, or too reluctant to list off in my ignorance.
I happen to think that addiction is a beautiful scientific area of research, so too could it become exposed for the neurological degenerative disorder that it is, if only a devoted team would illuminate reality with cold hard facts based in scientific research, those that must then be represented by The Arts. Child-development theory and educational platforms too, could do with a conceptual overhaul, one decorated with unknown, indefinable, unquantifiable features of life and experience. Nothing is truly known about what and who we are – nothing. But time is changing that and we now know too much not to shift into a collective awareness of what is right, true, safe and wise.
Collectively speaking, we have our work cut our for us. Let us begin with the dearest demographics, those who need us to celebrate the exposure of their pain by entrusting it to the artists, the comedians, the poets, lyricists and survivors. Allowing pain to manifest into visual, readable, emotive content is how we connect people to the cause. Propaganda is driven by the same knowing that minds are easily manipulated and influenced. Shame on those selling things that cause harm by advertising their lies via a widely accepted strategy called, ‘sales and marketing tactics’.
This world is a mess, let us tidy it up, one manifesto at a time.
Artistic manifestos are welcome too, art makes the ‘impossible to confront’ easier to digest and contemplate. It is able to express the unspeakable too. News reports and flashes of suffering imposed on us by charities wanting our money shun a right to psychological safety daily and abuse the human sensitivity that is to feel deeply. Many are unaware of the long-term damage caused by constant exposure to uncensored and unsafe content.
Let us change the world, one step at a time, by asking for very specific changes. Let us plan well, devise strategies of our own, those that do not abuse the knowledge of ‘the human’, that which is exposed and violated daily by any rhetoric, advertising or parliamentary self-humiliation. Having travelled to many foreign lands, I have come to observe how narrow and depleted UK culture is. I do not experience the richness of life here in the suburbs of my home-country, no where near that which I discovered overseas as one of the greatest treasures there is… I am starving in truth, so too, must be the children be, those banished from enrichment pathways from such a young age by a government-driven curriculum agenda.
Can we create new?
The Manifesto for Change project also invites in those who survived the battle within themselves to become the artist or creative they were born to be, while at the same time creating a new system based off what they learned from the experience of ‘becoming themselves’. We invite all who became ‘the artistic self’ to stand beside us as we dig deep and start planning our agendas for change, those that may drive social transformation in the years ahead.
We must begin with the design and development of new infrastructures and services, those the government may not be ready to face the reality of. But we must not sit on our laurels, we mustn’t wait, weighted by a defeatist’s apathy. We must collect the data, do the research, and design utopian community structures and systems that serve all. Should we design the way ahead and the government fail to offer better solutions, then any refusal to follow through with the proposed plan will surely come to reflect a true lack of integrity and ethics. Should parliament fail to comply with our logical, fair and reasonable proposals for change, then a different kind of change will become necessary.
– Webpage authored by Ana Maria Santuario (2024), author of, Manifesto for Change: Dual-Diagnosis and Disparity (2024)
Submit your own Manifesto For Change here.
‘We all have a voice, let us learn how to use it wisely and well.’
– Ana Maria Santuario, 2024.