The 2026-27 Federal Budget invested $1.1 billion in arts and culture. Culture received zero. The distinction between culture and the arts has been established in the scholarly record since 1871 — Tylor, Williams, Geertz, Bourdieu. Japan built separate institutions for each in 1950. Australia is still calling them the same thing. CWA is naming what the budget missed — and building the infrastructure to govern it.
Tag: Fine Motor Skills
The Science of Making
Emerging neuroscience suggests women may have instinctively regulated stress and emotional overload through hand-based activity long before science understood why. New research linking hand dexterity, brain evolution, HRV, vagal tone, inflammation, caregiving stress, and Takotsubo syndrome is reframing craft, tactile making, and rhythmic hand movement as legitimate neurophysiological regulation mechanisms rather than simple hobbies.
The Hands We Stopped Using
A new working paper from the Creative Women’s Association argues that the human brain evolved through skilled hand use — and that modern screen-dominant life may be creating a dangerous neurological mismatch. Drawing on neuroscience, literacy research, dementia studies, and lifespan cognitive evidence, The Hand-Brain Continuum explores how clapping, rhythm, craft, and manual activity may directly shape intelligence, executive function, and long-term brain health.