Valuing Arts and Arts Research

Arts have a significant impact on the way we understand the world. It is widely accepted that arts are able to inspire people and direct attention to things that really matter; they help not only to understand how the material world affects us, but also to acknowledge the importance of these influences on our wellbeing. Moreover, through the process of creative engagement, individual reflections can become shared cultural experiences and vice versa. Where the social and natural sciences produce verifiable evidence based on data, the arts and artists can create singular perspectives that have wide resonance. Recent decades have witnessed the emergence of an arts research paradigm that ‘uses the arts, in the broadest sense, to explore, understand and represent human action and experience’. There is, in particular, an increasing number of creative practitioners responding to issues related to environmental change. This report aims to clarify the role of artists and arts research in landscape and environmental research today