We need a society that values its visionaries, those who go against the grain to create new dreams that reveal other ways of being I first voiced my desire to go to art school when I was 16. The school careers adviser asked me what I wanted to do, not what I should do, not what my parents and community expected, but what I wanted. So I told him, maybe art school. His response was alarm. He moved his reading glasses on his straight nose, made a note in his folder and then, after I’d left the meeting, contacted my parents to urge them to re-enrol me in three-unit economics. The only way to grow healthy, robust social fibre is through building an independent and confident culture. And the only way to build a confident culture is through encouraging the arts, in all their forms, by creating the conditions to tell our own stories. Continue reading...