Dr Ken Fox, Principal Lecturer for School of Media, Art and Design, explains why the arts and creative industries are still so important for modern society.

In a world that appears to have moved, at least politically, in a more narrow-minded, insular, intolerant and mean-spirited direction we should celebrate arts and culture that challenge these views.

In an age when all cultural and artistic activity must be justified and monetised it is heartening to note that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s most recent statistics show that:

• The value of services exported by the UK Creative Industries in 2014 was £19.8bn, an increase of 10.9 per cent from 2013.
• Exports of services from the Creative Industries accounted for 9.0 per cent of total exports of services from the UK in 2014.

If politicians and policy makers are resistant to the intrinsic value of arts and culture to society’s well-being, statistics show that the UK’s creative industries from fashion to film, games design to publishing, pottery to poetry contribute enormously to the economy.

A small but welcome drop in the ocean is the recent announcement by the Department of Education of a £300 million investment in schools for music and arts. Every pound invested in the arts and cultural activities produces returns that are incalculable in terms of a society’s well-being but also calculable in terms of contribution to the wealth of the nation.

Although poetry can sometimes be seen as a minority interest it has the power to move us all, to help us find a sense of emotional and spiritual nourishment in the current age of the philistine.

Kathleen Jamie is a Scottish poet and non-fiction writer; Professor of Poetry at Stirling University, winner of the Costa Poetry Book of the Year 2012 and the prestigious Forward Prize for poetry.

Kathleen Jamie’s poetry collections The Tree House (2009), The Overhaul (2012) and The Bonniest Companie (2015) place her at the front rank of contemporary poets. Her non-fiction works including Findings (2005) and Sightlines (2012) find a way of being in touch with landscape, seascape and nature that transports the reader to that place, that moment, that feeling. Kathleen Jamie’s writing works like the transporter system in Star Trek, no passport required, just some concentration followed by transcendence.

Journalist Jackie Kay from The Herald newspaper said of her work and the continuing importance of poems as where “people turn to when they want to understand the nuance of political and social change. Jamie’s book (The Bonniest Companie) will stand as a guiding light.’

Kathleen Jamie will visit Canterbury Christ Church University on Friday, 25 November to give a masterclass to our creative writing students and an open reading at the Sidney Cooper Gallery at 6pm as part of the Writing Comes Alive series organised by the School of Humanities.

Find out more about studying Creative Writing at Christ Church.