Sustaining university arts can give us the antidote to our toxic political culture

While writing a foreword to a book to be published next year, all about the joyful topic of arts and academia, I am constantly astounded how our basic expectations of human civility in our daily Brexit-y lives are under threat. Between our ability to be funny about the politics of the day and our seemingly biased media, we have become numbed to the routine of a disdainful pragmatism used by our political leaders, where anything – even referendum interference – is an acceptable means to an end (see The Guardian’s investigation around the Cambridge Analytica scandal). Between the current ongoing fear-inducing posturing of our UK’s current government’s attempt to get Brexit over the line and the rather suppressed and depressing outflow of news from burning rainforests and melting artic glaciers, I ask myself what is in my toolbox that can cut through this quagmire.

This article is asking the question of why we need University-housed Art Schools in our Brexit-y times.