The world has enjoyed the beauty of arts in its diverse forms. People see artists and celebrities as essential figures in society. It’s possible to take advantage of this position of importance to change how people think about people of the LGBT community.
Artists can use their creative abilities to fight the misconceptions of the LGBT community. Most importantly, artworks promote progressive dialogue, empower identity, and self-expression of LGBT individuals and allow them to tell their stories.
Arts generally provide a rare opportunity for people to understand the LGBT group. Through music, paintings, collages, and others, art provides a better perspective and promotes understanding of gay people. In all or some of the ways listed below, works of art can help promote acceptance of the LGBT community.
Art Helps Understanding that the LGBT Community is Global
Most nations of the world are yet to recognize the existence of the LGBT community in their countries. Sometime, you’ll hear people say things like “there’s no gay person in our community” or “being gay is a western thing.”
Erroneous thoughts like these have played critical roles in different societies, where gay people are not accepted and seen as unusual in their society. It has mainly contributed to reasons why people whose gender orientation is different from their assigned sex at birth find it challenging to come out with their gender affiliation.
But through arts and paintings, such individuals can find a place to express their innermost feeling and seek acceptance in their society. Artworks can be used to make a subtle impression in the minds of individuals, to identify that the LGBT community spreads beyond the west, but has global coverage.
Art Gives a Face to Individuals
When you speak of the LGBT community, people rarely identify the group with any identifiable face. Since it’s tough for the people to tag a face they can recognize to the gay community, it’s often not easy to associate with the community.
It’ll be different if someone easily identifiable to the society comes up to identify as a member of the LGBT community. That’ll make it more likely for the society to understand that the LGBT community consists of individuals and people they know.
Artists of the LGBT community give the much-anticipated face to members of the community. It makes members identifiable and enables the society to acknowledge they are people we all relate with and associate with continually.
Celebrating LGBT Artists
When people are celebrated for their contributions to the world through arts, it makes their work accessible and more acceptable to people. Celebrating the success stories of artists of the LGBT group would help change people’s perspective of the gay community.
It’s easy for people to identify with success stories and with their celebrities. If they can see and identify with the success stories of artists of the LGBT community, they will begin to have a new perspective of the gay people.
More attention must be paid at identifying and celebrating every little success recorded by the artist of the LGBT community. These little identifiable successes go far to make the society see the possibility of being successful, irrespective of gender orientation.
Encouraging Art Festivals and Art Works
Art festivals are practical opportunities for changing people’s perspectives on the LGBT community. It brings individuals from diverse interests and backgrounds together to appreciate the various work of art in display.
During such festivals, the gay community must have a stand to display their craft. Artworks can be used to educate people on the importance of accepting individuals with different gender orientation than what they share.
An artist of the LGBT community can use wood, for instance, to create and display an informative artwork people would admire. To work with wood, the artist must get the right tools that’ll help make their work easier. Tools like handheld routers will give you ultimate control to shape any wood into your desired art.
Early Awareness Campaign
It’s easier to pass the right information to a younger generation, whose minds are still open to diverse opinions. Creating early awareness in the minds of our school and college kids will help make them accept people of different gender orientation.
Students can be encouraged to form clubs and art associations. They can use their platform to help to lead campaigns, and educate their fellow students on the importance of identifying with and supporting the LGBT community.
Such clubs and associations should cut across various institutions of learning. These institutions can work with their school heads to organize art exhibitions that’ll further pass the information down to follow students.
Conclusion
The LGBT community has long suffered marginalization. Most societies don’t accept people of different gender orientation as being normal. Non-western societies still believe being gay is a western thing. Most of these misconceptions come from a lack of proper information. With adequate information, people would change how they see gay people. Arts can help change the way people see the LGBT community. Different activities involving artists of the gay community is the right place to start.
