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Chapter 9 | Leon Bernier (continued) 4. the artistic creations of young people are the manifestation We live today in individualistic societies, where each of us is doomed to see himself as a singular being. Even if all the privileges attached to birth have not vanished, the structural characteristics of contemporary societies are such that the most and the least privileged, at the beginning, have no choice but to perceive and identify themselves as creating their own lives. That “constraint to individuality” leads to several implications which are more or less difficult to live with, inasmuch as the responsibility for one’s destiny depends in good part on individual choices and actions. It can reveal different faces, one of which is the generalized claim of creation. One can enumerate diverse manifestations of that pretension in the population in general.4 Who doesn’t have a friend who went into painting or into the theatre, or is trying to write a novel? Those pretensions are linked to a good range of commitment and actualization, and all those who create do not have in mind the idea of becoming artists. But those diverse manifestations of “creativity” on the part of our contemporaries nonetheless reveal a deep phenomenon that even statistics on cultural participation are able to take into consideration (Garon et al., 1997). And more qualitative studies, especially those on the motivation and meaning underlying that participation, reveal that a “veritable ideology of art is strongly present in all strata of society” (Pronovost and Cloutier, 1996: 72). The attraction of the young for the arts is a throwback to the more general phenomenon one observes in other societies, a phenomenon that calls on people to find “a personal free space” (Robine, 2000: 260). Some, perhaps not many, will try to become professionals. For others it will become a lifelong hobby, whether as a performer or a member of the audience. 5. to conclude The encounter with the arts and the discovery of oneself as an individual are two aspects of the same process. If, through the requirements of academic training, or later as an adult, more young people turn to the arts, it is a testament not just to the particular cultural activities the youth take on as a heritage, but those which come from their families, schools and society in general, and enable them to discover and become themselves. The opportunities offered to young people to take part in the arts and to do so freely are in themselves important factors. Of course, the outcomes of those personal spaces of freedom are uncertain. But that uncertainty is the foundation of future societies, whether large or small. references
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