It’s Not a Zero-Sum Game: Arts & Sports Both Celebrate Human Achievement.
Ennis Carter, Director, Social Impact Studios
It’s popular these days to pit sports against arts – as if they are in competition for first place in some hall of human expression and achievement. But this divide wasn’t alway so defined. As the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics open this week, it’s a great time to look at how intertwined arts and sports have been – and continue to be – in celebrating heights of what humans can imagine and do through that lens.
A HISTORY OF HUMANISM
Did you know, at one time, the Olympics gave out medals in the arts? Modern Olympics founder and educator Pierre de Coubertin called it “muscle and mind” and from 1912 to 1948 the games honored the best creators in painting, sculpture, literature, music, and architecture. In 1952, the competition was shifted to a cultural programming offering instead – because the artists participating were professionals and not amateurs, which is the focus of the games. Each Olympics season, the Cultural Olympiad brings art and sport together to enrich the celebration of human imagination and possibilities.
ARENA OR STAGE?
All of human social expression is some form of art. We have ideas, we have aspirations, and we are often compelled to do something that gets them from inside our heads out into the “real world.” As Shakespeare – and RUSH – remind us, we are all indeed “players” on this worldly stage. Sports and arts are not that different from each other in that regard. They both take practice, cooperation, refinement, presentation, and can inspire great awe when they transcend the humdrum of everyday life.
At a practical level, anyone who has ever seen the Opening Ceremonies of this most major global sporting event, has seen the culmination of the best that the arts has to offer in great spectacle. The vision, production, choreography, music, and visual display are all demonstrations of the arts in action. It’s a frame for the excitement of the sports competition made more energized by its wonder.
IT’S LIKE LEAP YEAR FOR GRAPHIC DESIGNERS!
Every 4 years, design nerds wait with baited breath to see what the visual artists envision for the Olympics. From logos to posters to a family of images that support all that the Olympics franchise puts together, it’s just fun to see the cultural twists from each hosting country show up on “paper.” Professionals in media & communication arts are behind all of that and it’s a ton of really impressive work.
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Like so much of our polarized American culture, sports and arts have been set up as opposites. What if we stopped thinking of them as so different from each other – and instead celebrated them as interconnected – and sometimes interdependent – reflections of what we are capable of as humans? Enjoy the games!