Soften up and give art the full support it deserves

Making our souls sing is, among many things, what good art can do.

It can unravel the secrets and mysteries of our lives and tries to make sense of our social and political craziness. I've been thinking how art and its makers enrich our lives.

So, watching five talented young people as they received awards last week made me feel sad about how the work of an artist is often undervalued.

Universities are struggling with funding for research in the arts and humanities.

Money for these disciplines is not as readily available as it is for scientific and professional degrees.

The Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year awards made me think about how often the arts and humanities, the soft subjects, are relegated to the financial sidelines. Soft, by the way, doesn't have anything to do with being easy or with their practitioners being soft in the head. It refers to those learning areas that, according to Brenda Schmahmann, ask questions that can never be fully and completely answered.

The five delighted winners told of how they had been encouraged by their families, how they do what they love.

I thought of a parent I once heard saying how sorry he was about spending money and energy on his son's extra lessons for accountancy, which he hated. One day it dawned on him that he should be spending money for extra lessons in the subjects his son loved, which were design and art.

If anyone thought art is only pretty and decorative - which of course it can be too - it's not. It can be serious and useful, and worth good money invested in it.

Quoted in an article by Mandie van der Spuy, the late Professor Alan Crump said: "Art inevitably expresses the nature of society: its pressures, hopes, insecurities and aspirations, particularly in a country like ours, which has undergone so many radical changes over so short a time."

So when the time comes , and my children want to study fine art, dance or music, I hope I will be brave enough to encourage the soft studies as options.

And that funding for these will be available.