What is the point?

Community artists are often accused of instrumentalising art. We can be said to instrumentalise something when we use it to achieve a different goal than that for which it is designed. In the arts, the argument goes like this. Art is intended to create aesthetic experiences, therefore to use it for another purpose, such as social change, is a distortion of its essential character. This is a version of the art for art’s sake argument. Unfortunately, it is full of holes.

First, it depends on a shared idea of what art is and what constitutes an aesthetic experience. It doesn’t take much knowledge of art history to see that there is not now, and has never been, such a consensus. People have always made art, but they have made it for different purposes at different times and in different cultures.

Secondly, art has always been instrumentalised, for instance as a…