Art, music and all arts enrich life, and they’ve become tools we can all use for wellbeing – to lift mood and ease mental health issues. They open up fuller lives. March is Women’s History Month, and opening up fuller lives is just what women have fought to do for themselves. The arts can be a tool in that movement too.
Art is joyful, fun, creative, liberating. So is music. So are all art forms.
Feminism can inform art and music. The arts can be used to express feelings of injustice, fear, low self esteem, and as lobbying tools to build awareness. Music and art and drama can become activism. This too can help wellbeing, since powerlessness only fuels anxiety and depression, while feeling empowered boosts mood and inspires hope. Through the years women have used music and art to express how they feel about being women – some sharing personal, individual experiences (think singer-songwriters) and sometimes wider and more political in tone.
But maybe the most positive sign is that women’s and men’s music and art now differ so little. Once women painters would paint only interiors, family scenes or still life – these were considered ladylike and polite. Now they are active across all styles. Installation art, public art, performance art and video – all are open to all. At a time when experimenting is most celebrated, women are just as experimental as men – think Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, Lubaina Himid.
Craft and decorative arts were traditionally women’s pursuits. In many ways they still are, but this is developing. And these may be seen as “decorative”, but have for centuries been used themselves to lobby and call for change, as when quilting patterns were used within the abolition movement in the USA. Fashion design, where men traditionally dominated, has seen an influx of women. In music, women were once more likely to be seen as performers than composers or songwriters, but during the last century that has all changed. Women are still under-represented across music and drama in particular sectors, as conductors and directors. But the arts they produce are just as liberating, and liberated.
It is notable how participation in arts for wellbeing is still overwhelmingly female. In my art for wellbeing challenges, no more than 5% of participants are men, and I see this mirrored across the sector, where a majority of practitioners too are women, in visual arts, music and dance for wellbeing. Why is this? Is it the arts themselves that deter men, or the focus on wellbeing – when stigma about mental health is still higher in men? Yes, particular mental health issues may be more common in women – like phobias, extreme fear – but men too struggle with mental health in many different ways. Art and music might help.