‘Visual art can literally change how we see things.’

Art warming: Ahead of a Woodbrooke conference next month, Catherine Henderson says we need the arts to help us imagine a new world

by Catherine Henderson 9th August 2019

In the early 1980s I attended a meeting where the artist and co-founder of the German Green Party, Joseph Beuys, was speaking. He was mesmerising. In his trademark hat and coat he strode to and fro, describing with his arms as much as his words a world where money flowed through the veins of society – a vision of a living, green economy. It was a completely different way of seeing things: his imagination had conjured up another way of being.