Art makes life worth living

Why society, and churches, need the Arts.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A choir sing at the front of a church while an audience looks on.

St Martin-in-the-Fields choir performance.

Arguing for the significance and role of the arts and culture during an election in an era where a cost-of-living crisis has followed austerity and a pandemic, may seem to be a hard task. The Arts being thought of often as frivolous and unimportant in comparison with the basics of survival. Yet it is essentially a task that the current government has attempted, as in June 2023, a ‘Creative industries sector vision’ was published which included a commitment to an additional £77 million in funding.

At that time, the government estimated that creative industries generated £126bn in gross value added to the economy and employed 2.4 million people in 2022. A range of research has also been examining the way in which creative industries and the arts can positively impact wellbeing, for example through public health interventions.

The foreword to ‘Creative industries sector vision’ stated:

“Our creative industries are world-leading, an engine of our economic growth and at the heart of our increasingly digital world. From 2010 to 2019 they grew more than one and a half times faster than the wider economy and in 2021 they generated £108bn in economic value. In 2021, they employed 2.3 million people, a 49% increase since 2011. Their impact reaches beyond their borders to other sectors, with advertising, marketing and creative digital innovation supporting sectors across our economy.

The importance of the creative industries also goes well beyond the economy. They provide the news that informs our democracy, the designs that shape our cities and the content and performances that enrich our lives and strengthen our global image. The sector has proved that it is an essential positive force for society, bringing joy, inspiration and opportunity to our lives. The creative industries form the national conversation through which we define our shared values.”

The arts and culture help tackle social injustice as theatres, museums, galleries and libraries are the beating heart of our towns and cities bringing communities together and making life worth living.

This positive view of the creative industries was echoed in a report ‘The arts in the UK: Seeing the big picture’ published in November 2023 by management consulting firm McKinsey. The report described the UK as a “cultural powerhouse” with a globally recognised arts sector and 91 per cent of UK adults engaging with the arts in the previous 12 months.

The Arts Council estimates that art and culture contribute £10.6 billion to the UK economy as the UK has a creative economy worth £27bn and culture brings £850m to UK, through tourism, each year. They also contend that the arts and culture help tackle social injustice as theatres, museums, galleries and libraries are the beating heart of our towns and cities bringing communities together and making life worth living. In addition, our creative industries are successful throughout the world - our leading cultural institutions are a calling card worldwide and have important trading links from the US or Germany to China and South Korea. Last year our National Portfolio Organisations earned £57m abroad.

Churches feature within these arguments because they often host or organise cultural events, exhibitions, installations and performances which contribute towards the economic, social, wellbeing and tourism impacts achieved by the arts and culture. The Arts are actually central to church life because, as well as being places to enjoy cultural programmes such as concerts and exhibitions and also being places to see art and architecture, many of the activities of churches take place within beautiful buildings while services combine drama, literature, music, poetry and visuals.

The artist Makoto Fujimura has suggested the creation of cultural estuaries in churches, schools and informal associations as a strategy for enhancing culture. Estuaries are where salt-water mixes with fresh in a confluence of river and tidal waters. They are environments not of protection but of preparation as critical nursery areas for fish that come downstream after hatching.

This suggestion has been taken up by Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, who advocates for churches to minister in and through the 4Cs; commerce, culture, compassion and congregation. He writes in ‘A Future that’s Bigger than the Past’ that:

“… the image of an estuary is helpful for a church regarding itself as a meeting place of human and divine, gospel and culture, timeless truth and embodied experience, word and world.

Churches work hard to make themselves inspiring locations where people are drawn into a sense of the presence of God; but they can work equally hard to make themselves hospitable locations where people of varied backgrounds may gather in a spirit or mutual appreciation, generous regard and constructive challenge. The two purposes of church need not be mutually exclusive.”

The arts, he suggests, provide a perfect example of how such an estuary space may flourish with participatory, aspirational and commercial activities all taking place in the same space. In a short time, he suggests, “a secluded, secretive space may be opened out to become a centre of community activity, energy, and creativity.” All that’s needed “is for a church to let go of the need for direct outcomes and linear trajectories and to let the Holy Spirit govern the interactions and catalyse its own surprises.”

The Bible adds to this missional assessment of the importance of the arts. At the point we are told of human beings as having been made in the image of God the one thing we know for certain of God is his creativity, making our own creativity central to our understanding of how we live in his image. Later, the very first people to be spoken of in terms of being filled with the Spirit of God are the artists and craftspeople who make the Tent of Meeting for the people of Israel as they journey through the wilderness. The Bible, itself, is a library of various genres of literature with many of its texts having been preserved through oral performance, whether spoken or sung.

Given these theological, missional, social and economic reasons for seeing the arts and culture as central to personal wellbeing and to national life, in this election period it surely makes sense to check the commitment of politicians in all parties to maintaining and developing the cultural industries and the vital place that the arts and culture have in the life of our nation.

Review

Culture

Economics

Trust

21 November 2025

5 min read

Money’s hidden meanings in a contactless age

The Bank of England Museum reveals the symbolism, morality and power woven into the history of money

Susan Gray

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

The Bank of England vaults.

Bank of England.

Our era of contactless payments obscures the symbolism once lavished on money. But the rich history of meaning, morality and power, layered into everyday transactions, is uncovered at an exhibition at the Bank of England Museum

Building the Bank celebrates 100 years of the current Bank of England building, on the site of Sir John Soane’s original structure, completed in 1827. Surveying a century makes past practices seem quaint: until 1973 the institution was guarded by the Bank Piquet military guard. A 1961 photo shows 12 Guardsmen with bearskin hats and bayonets, together with a drummer or piper, a sergeant and an officer, marching into the Threadneedle Streer entrance. Even now, when the wealth of most people in developed countries is contained in data warehouses, 400,000 gold bars are held in vaults deep beneath the Bank.

Faiths have grappled with money’s impact for millennia. Christianity’s relationship with money is tinged with unease, as St Paul’s oft misquoted letter to Timothy illustrates: “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Personally, the immobilising feeling of envy, particularly if it is towards friends, does feel exactly like being pierced with blinding toxicity.

Contrastingly, in Hinduism pursuing wealth is one of four pillars of faith, called Artha. In Hinduism attempting to attain material wealth is part of attempting to attain salvation.

Herbert Baker, architect of the Bank of England, embodies moral ambiguity around faith and money. Buried in Westminster Abbey, and architect of Church House next door, Baker established his reputation working for Cecil Rhodes, prime minister of the Cape Colony 1890- 96. Vicar’s son Rhodes is now seen as paving the way for apartheid in southern Africa, and imposing an economically exploitive, racist, and imperialist system on the region. Baker also worked with better- known Edwin Lutyens on government buildings in New Delhi from 1912, declaring of the British Raj’s new seat of power “it must not be Indian, nor English, nor Roman, but it must be Imperial”.

After World War One, Soane’s bank was too small to house the increased staff numbers needed to service the ballooning national debt and financial complexity of the Roaring Twenties. Bordered by major roads at the heart of the City of London, the institution’s footprint could not expand, so Herbert created a design incorporating some of Soane’s classical aspects, but with floors at a greater depth and height than its processor.

From grand gestures to tiny details, classical mythology is a key element of the Bank’s design. Sculptor Charles Wheeler modelled doorknobs showing the face of Mercury. Mercury is the patron deity of finance and communication. Tiles for an officials’ lunchroom show a caduceus, with two bright blue snakes, tails entwined, framing Mercury’s face. Caducei are the symbol of commerce, representing reciprocity and mutually beneficial transactions.

Forty caryatids, the classical female form used in place of a pillar in Greek architecture, were salvaged from Soane’s building and reused. Some caryatids are in the area where old banknotes can be exchanged, besides the museum, now the only part of the Bank open to the public.

Outside, on the dome at the northwest corner of the bank, a gilt bronze statue of Ariel, named after the spirit of the air in The Tempest, represents “the dynamic spirit of the Bank which carries Credit and Trust over the wide world.”

The image of banks as depositories of trust and positive relationships took a pasting worldwide during the 2008 Credit Crisis and lean years that followed. But in 2015 former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, argues that banking services are a key part of functioning communities, and banks should be able to put people before profit. “At the heart of both these expectations is the value of the person as sacred, and all other things as secondary to human dignity. It is a value rooted in many faiths and especially in our Judaeo-Christian tradition. Of course profits have to be made, but they need to be measured not only in terms of their absolute return on capital employed, but also in terms of the human cost of achieving that return.

“Large institutions with adequate balance sheets working to maximise returns from those who can most afford it do not produce a sustainable society in the long term. Such an approach is narrow-minded and short-termist, because sustainable societies are essential to the large companies within them. It is also an immoral approach.”

Mosaics created by Boris Anrep idealise the Bank’ of England’s sunnier intentions towards the wider community. Anrep also designed mosaics for Westminster Cathedral, Tate Britain and the National Gallery. For the Bank, a tiny coin from the reign of Henry VIII known as the George Noble, the first time St George and the dragon appeared on English coinage, was magnified into a roundel showing the galloping saint, visor up, lancing the prostate dragon at the base. The George Noble was one of 50 designs, based on advances in coinage, gracing the Bank’s corridors.

At the main entrance, a mosaic showing a pillar, representing the Bank, is guarded by two lions, referencing the sculpture from Mycenae. The Bank’s global role, and place at the centre of the then British Empire is shown by the constellations of the Plough and Southern Cross, representing the southern and northern hemispheres.

An image of the Empire Clock Baker made for the Bank, - now disassembled - shows an ornate dial, marked in 24 sections, with the sun representing India and an anchor symbolising the port cities of Singapore and Hong Kong.

In 1946 the Bank of England was nationalised, formalising its role as a public institution, operating in a post war decolonialising world, totally different to the one its building had been designed for just 20 years before.

Systems and symbols around money mutate with the times. Money’s intangibility in our time of app and tap payment, makes its power less distinct than in the days of gold sovereigns. But we fool ourselves if we say money is unimportant, because all of history says otherwise.

Building the Bank, Bank of England Museum, until 2026

Find out more