The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—introduction

This kaleidoscope of short pieces derives from two Fellows Engagement Week sessions (2022, 2023) in which speakers from across the British Academy—Theatre Studies, Anthropology, Modern History, History of Science, English, Philosophy, Music—gave ten-minute talks on the civic value of the arts and humanities. The British Academy’s SHAPE acronym, answering the Royal Society’s STEM formulation, understandably stresses the economic importance of arts and humanities in today’s challenging technological world (E is for Economy). The remit of this forum, however, was to remake and reclaim arguments for the civic importance of arts and humanities, recognising that accounts of the arts are often based on 19th-century arguments that no longer have force today. Three themes emerge from this forum: the importance of collaboration, the non-instrumental significance of aesthetic experience, and the centrality of language to civic life. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)