Art has many functions; make our house look nice with a beautiful painting in the living room and throughtout our home, an elaborate vase sitting on the new cabinet, to show off to guests at the next dinner party. Use a face painting kit to entertain screaming loud children at an overcrowded birthday party. Sit and paint watercolours on a warm summers day to soft classical music, how nice. I endorse all of the above.
My view on art and its most effective purpose is changing, the most valuable uses of art is to create Social Change; “Social Change refers to any significant alteration over time in behaviour patterns and cultural values and norms. By “significant” alteration, sociologists mean changes yielding profound social consequences.”
For most of my creative career, I’ve quite selfishly, produced art to please myself or a client, none of which have affected the issues we face today in our society. As I get older and as I discuss more issues in this Fine Art Degree course, I am wanting to contribute more to the issues of Social Change. There are so many issues to tackle in my mind like; homelessness, bullying, ‘behind closed doors’ abuse, once I get started, of course, the list is endless. 
I have a few ideas I plan to engage in over the next few years and I plan to wholeheartedly get involved, although, admittedly, it leaves a slight feeling of nervousness in my stomach as it means totally coming out of my comfort zone, of which, I’m not a real fan, but then again who is? It means working with the community, colleagues, and peers to come up with solutions that can assist OUR world, to make it a much more, healthy, supported, strong and open place to live, free from fear of an attack from any corner.
We cannot exhaust the list of issues to tackle, we cannot run out of effective projects to take part in. As creatives and people in general, it’s all of our responsibility to do our part and clean up our mess that we’ve contributed to one way or the other.
Karol the Artist 