The arts are too often treated as an ornament to development — pleasant, but peripheral. This perspective makes the opposite case: that music, story, and image are among the most powerful instruments we have for building the trust and belonging on which every other form of progress depends.
Where institutions and arguments divide, the arts reach across the boundaries of language and culture to express what is common in human experience. To place them at the centre of our work is to take seriously the task of unity itself.