Around Thanksgiving we talked on the blog about all the benefits that having art in your life can give, and what it brings into your world to be thankful for. There’s certainly more to say on the subject, but with Christmas coming up it seems appropriate to look at another aspect of how art can influence our existence and consider how it can improve other people’s lives – and how artists can help do so too.

In many ways it is no struggle to try to imagine how art and artists can be an influence for good and use the beauty and talent that belongs to them to make people’s lives better. With some professions it can be harder to see obviously where the good might lie, but art [...]