The arts are simply an alternative way of understanding and communicating. Engaging in the arts means creating, experimenting, exploring, making choices, developing ideas, responding, and enjoying new experiences.

An artist is someone who creates out of their imagination. Art can make you feel emotions, recall memories, or think about the world in a new way. Anyone can be an artist because everyone has the ability to create.

Art is all around you. There's art inside your home, books, music, school, religious buildings, libraries, museums, and in theatrical and musical performances. Art can also be found in the designs of buildings and furniture. Some people believe that nature is art. There is art inside us all.

Art is, in a lot of ways, like a book. It's writer may be long gone, yet he still manages to speak to you through his work, may it be a painting, sculpture, or one of the many other mediums that artists use to speak to future generations.

But there is one important difference between books and art; a person writing a book is usually trying to communicate important information, like how life was back then or how people thought about things when he/she was alive. Art is different; art tells you of not what the person was thinking, but what this artist was feeling. If you look at one of Picasso's many works of art you can feel his depression and his sadness.

The really great thing is that many of the different forms of art are interchangeable. Art may be musical, spoken, or visual. (As well as many other types) All of these things can and will influence all others. There are no clear boundries. Especially when you combine all three in just the right way, it is very possible to burrow into the unfeeling shroud of thinking, right into a person's breathing emotions.

Politicians in all countries work to make the world a better place. But artists, not politicians, hold the real power in change. Artists have the power to alter people's perceptions, and when that happens, people tend to yield to the most powerful of all changers; reason. They might drop all of their preconceptions and paradigms, their ignorance and their biases for a little while, simply because their mind was changed. Everyone has that ability deep down inside themselves, even if they don't use it on a regular basis.

What does all this mean? Simply this: art can change the world, art has changed the world, and it's pretty certain that art won't stop changing the world anytime soon.