Advocacy of Commons
Recently we’ve been reading and learning about a subject called ‘The Commons’ and what that term means exactly. Jay Walljasper defines the commons as: “What we own together, and how we cooperate to make things happen.” So for this class assignment we were to pick a commons that we believe fits Walljasper’s criteria and elaborate on the future of this common. For this essay, I will be identifying, analyzing, defining the challenge, and arguing the concern for my common topic of: the value of art and creativity. Nowadays, art and creativity is valued more for wealthy status instead of being valued for the imagination behind creativity and the essential meaning of art value.
I decided to choose the value of art and creativity for my choice of commons because in All That We Share, I read through the section of “Art for Everyone’s Sake” and came upon the question that Walljasper always asks himself: “Is art a commons? Or is this sense of collective creativity a violation of the individualistic nature of artists themselves?” (Walljasper 211). This question began to make me think about how art and the value of art was once used for the story and imagination artists once displayed on the ceilings of buildings and the possessions communities once cherished because it had a story and value behind the making of it.
Scott Adams, an American cartoonist, once said: “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Art was once valued for the quality, production, and expression to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, or of more than ordinary significance. Creativity is having the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, and relationships to create meaningful new ideas, forms, and methods. These definitions of art and creativity do play into the definition Walljasper has about the term commons. People once shared art and the idea of creativity for the use of appreciation and expansion of the...