The Socrates Project: Why We Need the Arts Now More than Ever

The pandemic has closed the multiplex, the art gallery and the concert hall but left us at home with movies, books and music. It’s a situation that exposes the hidden impulses that bring us to the arts: Stories, songs, pictures … they offer comfort and risk, mystery and pattern, wishful thinking and spiritual transcendence. But most of the arts are an expression of community, exactly what we need in these times. In this video Kate Taylor talks about why we need the arts now more then ever through an online moderated discussion with Simon Houpt. Kate Taylor - Award-winning, critic and novelist Kate Taylor is a long-time staff writer in the Arts section of the Globe and Mail, where she currently serves as the visual art critic. She also writes about film and cultural policy. In 2009-2010, she was awarded the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy Journalism and studied Canadian cultural sovereignty in the digital age. Simon Houpt - Simon Houpt is a reporter with the Globe covering media, sports, and the arts. Prior to The Globe, Houpt worked on CBC’s show Undercurrents. He is the author of Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft.