We need the arts. 

We need the inspiration, we need the passion, we need the pure, escapist joy. 

We need the awe.

Researchers have linked the feeling of awe with having physiological, psychological, and social effects on our bodies and minds. 

“That awe, wonder and beauty promote healthier levels of cytokines suggests that the things we do to experience these emotions - a walk in nature, losing oneself in music, beholding art - has a direct influence upon health and life expectancy,” said psychologist Dacher Keltner, a co-author of a study at Berkeley, University of California.

Seeing a Francis Bacon or Pablo Picasso right in front of your eyes is a special and sought-after. We have generated a passion and excitement for the work of these great artists so much so that when stood in front of them, you feel awe. 

These awe-inspiring masterpieces sit among many more at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich. 
In the museum’s lower galleries, as part of the current What Is Truth? season, Jeffrey Gibson’s exhibition no simple word for time, hits you in the face with colour and excitement. You stand in your tracks to take in the floor-to-ceiling murals, abstraction and colour, in wonder at this vibrant artist. 

Awe is felt towards the need for the bravery of LGBTQ+ artists and subjects who feature in the current Liquid Gender exhibition, which explores the relationship between truth and identity. Leilah Babirye sought asylum in the US after being publicly outed in her native Uganda.

There she saw drag queens for the first time, inspiring a series of vibrant works on paper titled Kuchu Ndagamuntu (Queer Identity Card) (2021), which depict the many faces and identities of her ambiguously gendered subjects.

This bravery was echoed at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival’s launch event, Mo & the Red Ribbon - a performance so vividly encapsulating of human courage it has stayed with me, hauntingly, and will do so for a very long time. 

French company L’Homme Debout brought their 25ft tall puppet, Mo, to the streets of Norwich, moving through the city as they performed a movingly poetic and tragic story of a child’s migration across the ocean.

During the performance, there was a buzz of people excitedly commenting and discussing where the story – and puppet - might go next. There was a rippling of awe throughout the crowd of thousands of people who filled the streets of Norwich.

The following day around the city, you could hear people tell their friends of the breathtaking but hard-hitting production the night before.

The struggle for artists to make a living from their work – let alone make money – is no new story. Neither is the struggle for arts organisations to be financially stable.

The recent funding cuts to arts is short-sighted. The arts are one of the greatest ways in which awe is brought into our lives – without having to see one of the seven wonders of the world, that is.

There is a darker feeling of awe in The Camera Never Lies: Challenging images through The Incite Project, the fourth show to join the What Is Truth? season and the Sainsbury Centre. Awe towards the bravery of the subjects featured and those who venture into treacherous war zones to photograph and document.

The show exhibits many images which have come to represent historic, global events. 

We stare back at the portrait of Migrant Mother, in awe of thirty-two-year-old farmworker Florence Owens Thompson’s hardship and strength during the Great Depression. 
We look on in silent, melancholy awe of the man who felt jumping from the Twin Towers was his only option on September 11, 2001. 

We wince in awe at the sheer terror portrayed in Nick Ut’s image of the Napalm Girl – and the actions of Ut which saved her life from her burns. 

We awe-fully fall the dark, piercing stare from the Shell-Shocked Marine, who couldn’t take any more of the The Battle of Hue and was photographed by Sir Don McCullin, never blinking the entire time. 

The arts are not only a catalyst of joy and pleasure, but a fundamental right to feel awe. They are an essential source of inspiration and hope in a changing world.

We need the arts.