Can you be a ‘professional’ and an artist?

3 minute read.

The Arts For Essential Workers (afew) podcast launched on Sunday 26 July, and in a number of recent interviews with essential worker ‘professionals’ (e.g. nurses, doctors, lawyers, key retail businesses, blue lights workers, teachers), I’ve discovered an upsetting fact that essential workers believe: at work we are ‘professional’, it would not be appropriate to be an artist.

How does that leave the families of essential workers feeling? How does it leave ‘professionals’ feeling on the inside? By that definition from the ‘professional’ world we discredit the arts and devalue what they bring to our humanity, almost as if the arts are detached from working life and anything artistic should be enjoyed in our spare time.

The sad truth about that is that that leaves ‘professionals’ detached from their identity. For example, in an interview with Dr Keshav Mudgal (an Accident & Emergency doctor in medicine at London’s King’s College Hospital) he discussed with me the difficulty he had juggling his almost ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ type lifestyle. In the hospital he’s clearly expected to behave in a certain manner in that environment, in fact, how can one be expected to be anything but a consummate professional in healthcare? But what about Dr Keshav’s passion for story-telling as an art and acting? There’s no room for his inner artist to breathe when he’s working in hospital.

Does it matter? Dr Keshav lives life with a purpose helping people, is a respected member of society as a doctor, and earns a respectable living. Who needs their inner artist to breathe when you’ve got it all in life?

It matters. Alarmingly 1 in 6 people experience mental health problems in the workplace (c.15%), with women in full-time employment nearly twice as likely to suffer as men. Evidence from the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) highlights that 12.7% of all sickness absence days in the UK are mental health condition related.

Furthermore, 13% of UK employees, that is working ‘professionals’, report being unhappy at work. That’s 4.3 million people in the UK alone (research from ONS Labour Market Statistics, 14 May 2019). The correlation between mental health absence days and those who report being unhappy at work is uncanny.

The results mean that burnout accounts for 44% of reported illnesses from the ‘professional’ workplace. That is burnout caused by being overwhelmed with stress and anxiety (according to the UK’s Health & Safety Executive Labour Force Survey statistics from Oct.2019).

How does this relate to the arts? The question is, can the arts help?

Yes. The arts can help. To incite a change in the ‘professional’ working environment whereby we encourage people to embrace their artistic side rather than shelving it is the place to start. The result means bringing humanity into the ‘professional’ workplace. In fact it’s more simple than that. It’s bringing the best parts of your personality to the fore and letting them shine. Too often do busy professionals cast aside this ‘soft-skill’ approach as it seems to have become non-business-like in the 20th Century workplace. I argue that to ignore this would be ignoring our inner artist. In a sense we are casting aside a small piece of our own humanity and what it indeed means to be human. Realising this has never been more important than now.

Consider this difficult scenario for a health care professional: a nurse on the front-line must deliver the news of a death to a waiting family who has been hoping for a positive outcome. Though tragic for the waiting family, what nobody realises - apart from the nurse - is that this is the sixth time the nurse has had to deliver the news of a death in 24 hours. Has anyone asked the nurse how he is? Has there been an opportunity for him to decompress?

The empathy within us all allows us to ask ‘How are you, really? Then listen.’

You see, allowing our inner artist to breathe at an individual level can have an instant impact no matter where we are. Releasing the art within us releases our imagination and creativity, allowing us to bring our best selves forward for the benefit of others. It does not mean we expect ‘professionals’ to be dancing and singing all day with fake smiles and rose-tinted glasses. It does however mean that we remain aligned with who we really are. It means we can begin to bring art into the ‘professional’ environment. It means we can all contribute to their being less mental health, stress, and anxiety related issues in the workplace.

At Arts For Essential Workers we champion the support of essential workers and their families through the arts. It’s about bringing a new form of two way interactive theatre to essential workers that allows all participants, audience and artists alike, to share stories and benefit from them. We know that through this conversation between the arts and essential worker communities we can build meaningful human connection, which is vital in the digital age.

Our opening night performance will be a livestreamed online show on Thursday the 30th of July 2020 at 7pm (BST). Get your free ticket on Eventbrite here.