5 secret gifts of the arts

Personal Growth: 5 Secret Gifts of the Arts

1. The arts give us experiences of depth and insight that we can’t get from other sources.
2. The arts teach us how to work within a material. All art forms employ some means through which inner images and visions can become real.
3. Through their capacity for metaphor, the arts allow us to say things that can’t be ordinarily said.
­4. The arts teach us how to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike finance or business in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
5. The arts demonstrate the range and variety of human emotion and feeling, and help us connect with those emotions. We’re able to tap feelings and memories with art that we can’t tap any other way.

Inspired by and adapted from Elliot Eisner, 2002, The Arts and the Creation of Mind. Yale University Press.