Why not have Art in your Daily Diet?

I often ask myself what life, my life, would be without the imprints of the arts. There is, however, a difference between consuming art passively and engaging with it as an active process. From the buildings we live in to the food we eat and even the ways we wind down from tiring days, there is some form of art involved. [ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type="show" ihc_mb_who="1,2,3,4" ihc_mb_template="1" ] Many forms go unnoticed because of their ubiquity or their reduction to the mundane, yet it’s never too late to reverse this condition and see the art in them. When doctors and dieticians prescribe a care course, such as the basic “5-a-day,” they do so in an effort to empower the average body to function properly. The nutrients necessary for your cells, organs and systems to operate can always be taken at levels higher than those provided for in a 5-a-day plan – as evidenced through proliferation of the sports nutrition industry which was valued at USD40.0 billion in 2021, according to analysts Grand View Research – but anything less is considered underserving your body. I believe the same applies for art. While many people eat for sustenance, there is a difference when it comes to eating for enjoyment and nourishment while still sustaining yourself. Traditional Setswana crafts are one such treasure that often goes underappreciated. This dwindling appreciation thus risks their presence in our collective cultural diet. The countryside is losing architectural features such as mud huts with courtyards fashioned out of earth, dung and wood. The rondavels that some of the younger generation may term structures of old have been fading over the years in favour of square dwellings both out of lowered skill and interest in their construction and their service to community – as outlined by the Hospitality & Tourism Association of Botswana. History teaches us that the patterns that were marked on their walls – much like those of Ethiopian, Ghanaian or Moroccan civilisations – were more than the fanciful doodles of whomever had time that day. They were, and still are, important parts of the annotation of the histories of different cultures across the country. As such, the consumption of such creative outputs not only serves to create linkages across generations but also to feed the cultures from which they stem. When Philo Taylor Farnsworth first introduced television to the world in 1927, it is unfathomable that the 21-year old would have imagined that it would become such a phenomenon. The diversified means of consuming recorded images has taken the moving image from the public domain – where going to the movie house was a social affair with all its trimmings of classism – to now being something that one can do on their own without disruption. The advent of streaming further cast rifts in that where homesteads would often gather at a single time to watch a favourite or popular show, these binding ties have been cut as mobile devices enable isolated consumption. The uniting nature of art through its communal consumption has thus been compromised to some degree. It not a far reach, then, that other art forms that don’t necessarily meet the consumer at their beck and call have continued to feel inaccessible to many. Art galleries, music halls and rudimentary festivals continue to struggle in contexts such as Botswana. A simple search reveals that museums across the country are the first references for galleries in Botswana. While projects such as “Our Broken Planet: How We Got Here and Ways to Fix It” at the Natural History Museum in England seek to reposition the role of museums in serving the public at large through creating innovative means of access, such institutions in Botswana are still bound by structures from a time long gone, thus jeopardising their contemporality. Again, this is not too far gone to be saved. We, the people, must get involved. Just as a farmer would produce a crop that is in substantial demand having recognised the benefit in it, so too must people seek out spaces to consume art so as to motivate their sustainability. Such social investment can work across the fields of literature, architecture, fine art, sculpture, weaving and culinary arts in much the same way that it has worked for music and dance. The communal diet must factor in art, and as many forms of it as possible, so as to support the viability of success for even the outliers and avant-garde. [/ihc-hide-content]

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Why not have Art in your Daily Diet?

Many forms of art go unnoticed because of their ubiquity or reduction to the mundane, yet it is never too late to reverse this condition and see the art in them. But we, the people, must get involved to make things at once sustainable for the soul and functional for the senses

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Why not have Art in your Daily Diet?

Many forms of art go unnoticed because of their ubiquity or reduction to the mundane, yet it is never too late to reverse this condition and see the art in them. But we, the people, must get involved to make things at once sustainable for the soul and functional for the senses

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