The arts help relieve the pain in our world

24-07-2025

Opinion
Use your words.
We say this to toddlers to encourage them to express themselves. We want them to attach words to emotions and feelings, to attitudes and experiences because it is both healthy and necessary as a way of understanding themselves and their place in the world.
It is good advice, and needed now more than ever. Not just for the toddlers among us, but for all of us.
Let's use our words.
It's summer in Manitoba and words are all around us — raised in song at the Jazz and Folk Festivals, spoken on stages at Winnipeg Fringe, shared in so many different languages during Folklorama.
These festivals put arts and culture front and centre in our community. Where would we be without it? Alone at home. But when we use our words, we can join together in story and song to create something beautiful and meaningful. We can build community. Together.
Between the Canada Council, the Manitoba Arts Council and the Winnipeg Arts Council, more than $20 million is spent annually in this province supporting the arts in various ways. Even if we don't 'get' or enjoy the finished product, the mere fact that the creation has happened improves the life of our community by having individuals or groups engage in making something out of nothing more than an idea and their imagination.
That is the magic and the power of the arts. To create something out of seemingly nothing.
But ideas are not nothing. Words are not nothing. And imagination is definitely not nothing.
I have always gravitated towards words and writing, and acting or spoken word performance, as I can barely draw a stick figure and singing in key is not my strong suit. So I was excited to bring my two creative passions together recently.
I initiated a group of older adults to work together over the course of five months to, first, write original stories of a personal transformation, and then to perform them for an invited audience.
We called it From Page to Stage. We had no public funding and only a private residence for our meeting space and performance — and it was perfect, despite my original fantasies of a sold-out show at a large public venue.
I wrote about my mother's death and her legacy to me of how to live, now, without her.
Others wrote about identity formation from childhood through to old age, about processing childhood trauma, about coming to peace with life choices made.
Over the weeks, our stories evolved as we encouraged each other to go deeper, further, to be more clear about the heart of our story. Then, in early May, we performed those stories for our invited guests. Our collaborative creative act brought understanding, a few tears, and some healthy healing to us individually — and also to our audience. For who among us has not grappled with matters of personal transformation?
Words matter and when we share them — carefully, creatively — great things can happen: understanding, healing, forgiveness and letting go of things that weigh us down so that we can keep going.
Ordinary people with ordinary words can do this great thing.
We don't need to be international mega stars performing on huge stages with massive light and sound shows. We can be ourselves, with a story to tell and the courage to share it with others. From a stage of some kind, for an audience of any size.
This is why I am working with community-level artists and creatives to help build The Valiant Theatre — a project that aims to bring a community performance space for all to Winnipeg's inner city.
There is no glory in this work, yet. It is hard slogging trying to persuade anyone who will listen that a donation to this creative cause could help change not only the profile of the Valiant's Logan Avenue location but also the heart and spirit of the city in which it is located.
International stars and mega concerts downtown are at one end of the creative spectrum. From Page to Stage is at the other. Both are creative acts that our community needs — for entertainment and enjoyment, for connecting and understanding.
Now more than ever, our community needs the arts. Because the arts are, as singer Allison Russell said from Folk Fest's main stage, 'not a luxury. The arts affirm our highest humanity.'
In every form, the arts have the power to move us — and also to stop us in our tracks to listen and to hear, to see and to witness the story being told and the person telling it.
There is no panacea for what ails the world today. But the arts have a serious role to play in finding the healing it needs.
While $20 million sounds like a lot of money for the arts in our city and province, it is a tiny drop in the bucket of what could be if we had the courage to commit to the creative act as the transformative one it can be.
Let's use our words, dear Winnipeggers, dear Manitobans. Let's use our words to tell our stories to change our world. Let us fund the arts as if art could save us all. Because it just might.
Amanda Le Rougetel is a writer and community educator.