Exploring how arts and culture cultivate connection, belonging, and thriving communities.
For those of us who work in the arts, the conversation has changed.
Increasingly, we're asked to demonstrate our impact in measurable ways. That's a reasonable expectation. Public investment should be accountable, and fortunately, the evidence is compelling. Research consistently shows that participation in arts and culture contributes to improved mental and physical health, stronger educational outcomes, greater social cohesion, and significant economic vitality.
These measures matter. But they also risk obscuring something more profound. The arts don't create healthy communities by improving economic indicators. They improve economic indicators by cultivating healthy human beings.
The most important things the arts cultivate - belonging, identity, purpose, courage, wonder, hope - are difficult to quantify. We measure the outcomes because they're observable, but those outcomes are ultimately the visible expression of something deeper.
To understand why arts and culture have such remarkable effects on individuals and communities, we have to examine the human needs they fulfill.
Most of us remember Abraham Maslow from first-year psychology: once our basic needs are met, we seek belonging, purpose, creativity, and self-actualization.
Perhaps it's time to turn the pyramid upside down.
Not because food, shelter, and physical safety don't matter, but because we've underestimated how fundamental meaning, belonging, creativity, and expression really are. They aren't simply rewards for a life well lived; they're part of what makes life worth living.
Across every culture and every period of human existence, people have gathered to sing, dance, tell stories, paint, and create. Long before there were schools, governments, businesses, or even language, there was music. The impulse to create isn't an accessory to being human; it's part of what makes us human.
As Artistic-Executive Director of Cantabile Choirs, and with a background in psychology, I have the privilege of witnessing this across every stage of life – babies, children, youth, adults, and seniors. Different stories. Same needs: to matter, to belong, and to contribute to something greater than ourselves.
In our rehearsal halls, music becomes the place where those needs are met. A place of emotional safety, shared purpose, and genuine belonging. For some young people, it is the first place they feel truly seen—the first place they discover that their voice isn't something to hide, but something to offer.
A choir is a powerful metaphor for community. It literally develops voice while teaching that our voices reach their fullest expression in relationship with others. No one carries the music alone. The whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.
Perhaps this is what the research is really telling us. Healthy communities emerge when people feel connected, discover purpose, develop empathy, and contribute their unique voices to something larger than themselves.
The measurable outcomes - improved health, educational success, stronger communities, and economic vitality - are not the purpose of the arts. They are the evidence of what happens when those fundamental human needs are met.
That, to me, is the enduring value of arts and culture: not because they sit at the top of some hierarchy, but because they fulfill some of our most innate human needs.
Geoffrey Sirett, Artistic-Executive Director, Cantabile Choirs
Article published in the July 2026 issue of the digital magazine We Are Kingston - Read it here!