She was the first full-time architecture critic for an American newspaper.
…..and why did we stop building systems that treat it as real work.
We use the word creative constantly, but ask ten people what it actually means and you’ll get ten different answers. Is it art? Is it performance? Is it self-expression? Is it something you look at, applaud politely, and then step away from? Somewhere along the way, “creative” became a feeling rather than a function — and that shift quietly rewired how we value work, skill, and labour, particularly women’s.
Historically, the definitions were far clearer. Arts referred to skilled practices requiring training and mastery — the Latin ars meaning craft or technique. Trades were practical applications of those skills, producing tangible outputs that met real needs: clothing, tools, objects, buildings, illustrations, texts. Creative arts were not a separate category floating above the economy; they were embedded within it. Creativity was not an identity. It was a practice.
The dominant narrative today tells a very different story. Art is something performed or displayed. It exists on stages, in galleries, or behind glass. It is rarefied, untouchable, and often financially precarious by design. The more inaccessible it becomes, the more “valuable” it is perceived to be. Skill has been replaced by spectacle. Practice has been replaced by personality. Output has been replaced by visibility.
This is where something subtle — and arguably arrogant — crept in. Art became something to be admired from a distance, not handled, used, worn, or lived with. The idea that art might function — that it could clothe you, warm you, organise your home, transmit knowledge, or stabilise a community — began to feel unsophisticated. Utility was downgraded. Usefulness was reframed as amateurism.
From a Creative Women’s Association lens, this shift wasn’t accidental. When arts were trades, women were central. Textile production, weaving, dyeing, embroidery, garment construction, illustration, bookbinding, botanical drawing, ceramics — these were skilled, revenue-generating practices largely driven by women. They required apprenticeships, pattern systems, technical knowledge, and time. Women ran workshops, trained others, priced labour, and sustained local economies through creative production.
When art moved from practice to performance, women’s authority quietly eroded. You don’t need certification to admire something. You don’t need procurement pathways to applaud a performance. You don’t need workforce infrastructure if art is framed as expression rather than labour. The moment creative work stopped being defined by what it produced, it stopped needing systems that protect producers.
Trades, by contrast, were never allowed this abstraction. Carpentry is still about structures that stand up. Plumbing still has to work. Electrical work still carries risk if done incorrectly. These fields retained standards, inspections, certifications, and clear pathways from skill to income. Creativity within those trades is celebrated — innovation, problem-solving, design flair — but it never replaces the requirement for output.
Somewhere along the way, arts were unbundled from this logic. Creative work was reframed as inherently subjective, inherently personal, and therefore inherently unstable. Once that idea took hold, it became easy to justify why creative practitioners should tolerate low pay, unpaid labour, or constant self-promotion. Passion was positioned as compensation. Visibility replaced viability.
The reframe is confronting in its simplicity. Art did not lose its legitimacy because it became less valuable. It lost legitimacy because it became dislocated from practice. When you remove the idea of art as a trade — as something learned, repeated, refined, and relied upon — you remove the rationale for infrastructure. And when infrastructure disappears, precarity fills the gap.
Creativity, properly understood, is not mysterious. It is applied intelligence. It is the capacity to translate knowledge, skill, and materials into outcomes that shape human life. It is not confined to stages or walls. It lives in textiles, objects, environments, systems, and care. The question is not whether creative work has value. The question is why we stopped building systems that treat it as real work.
Maybe the better question — the uncomfortable one — is this: who benefits when art is elevated beyond touch, beyond trade, beyond everyday life? And who loses when practice is replaced by performance?
If we pause long enough, the moment becomes obvious. Art didn’t become less useful. We simply forgot that it ever was.
Read the Full Article:
Art As an Experience – John Dewey
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When art becomes only something to be stared at, it stops being art and becomes decoration. - John Dewey
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