Urban Edge 2025: Observing and Serving Culture Through Art

At the Millar College of the Bible Winnipeg Campus, students have the opportunity to enrol in the Urban Edge program, a course that seeks to prepare them to apply their Biblical knowledge to real life—to impact the culture around them and love their neighbours as themselves. For the past few years I’ve come in to teach about art’s role in the cultural landscape: how we can learn about culture through art, and how we can speak to culture through art.

Learning about Culture & Worldview

Art and culture circle around each other so closely that it is difficult to discern which comes first. Do people make art that is informed by the culture around them, or is culture shaped by art? Perhaps it is a bit of both. Art has the power to shift people’s perspectives, shine a light on social issues, illuminate what people consider to be beautiful or ugly, and reveal the burdens that are on people’s hearts. Art expresses. Art impresses.

To explore this relationship between art and culture, we took the students to the Winnipeg Art Gallery and challenged them to discover key aspects to the worldview of Winnipeg by peering through the lens of fine art.

A bit about the WAG

The WAG has a permanent gallery of Indigenous art and artifacts, featuring many beautiful sculptures depicting animals, spirits, people, and objects from Northern communities. This permanent gallery alone reveals a strong value of Canadian and Winnipeg culture: to honour the people groups who originated here. The WAG also has a permanent gallery of Canadian and European art, which I always enjoy. In addition to these permanent galleries, temporary exhibits are featured, often highlighting Indigenous artists and other local Manitoban artists, many of whom address issues of colonialism and loss of culture.

The general takeaway that I took from our trip to the WAG last week was a sense of mourning and regret for past wrongs, coupled with a sort of helpless declaration of chaos in our current time. I admit that these messages evoke an instinct to close my eyes and turn away. As I looked at an installation piece that was supposed to make us sad that all the bison are dead now, I found myself sighing with exasperation and declaring, “I only have it in me to care about two or three things at a time, and I just can’t muster up any empathy for the bison right now.” This moment of annoyance revealed something else to me about our culture: I think one of our collective burdens right now is the overwhelming awareness of hundreds of causes, issues, and sins. And then, compounding this burden, we are weighed down by guilt (e.g. “white guilt.”). We feel we ought to care more, do more, feel worse about it all! But really, it is too much for one person to care about all of these things at once. Only God has the capacity for that! 

(Happily, there were plenty of exhibits and pieces that were not about guilt-tripping. These were oases of simple, beautiful celebration of people and nature, which gave me a sense of relief as I walked through the halls of the WAG.)

Getting to the heart

Though I did get overwhelmed by some of the messaging at the WAG, that was literally the point of going there: to observe what kinds of works/messages are on display, and to ascertain what is on the heart of our culture. Like I mentioned, as an individual I won’t be able to fully process every message or carry every burden. But by the grace of God, if I can see the deep heart cry of my culture, he will show me which burden is mine, and what message I can contribute. 

Culture is made up of different layers: the outer, visible stuff (e.g., art), and the inward, deeper stuff: what people believe to be true, what they value, and at the core, how they see reality.

Here is a brief description of what I think I learned about Winnipeg culture at the WAG:

1. Actions/behaviour: a large percentage of art exhibits that highlight Indigenous culture, as well as exhibits that mourn past injustices and current chaos and confusion.

2. Values: clearly, the WAG (and Winnipeg) values Indigenous tradition - especially as they imagine it existed pre-colonization: unadulterated by the corruption of Western culture. 

3. Beliefs: there seems to be a conviction that by highlighting and emphasizing Indigenous art, their land, their spirituality, (etc.) they will be able to make up for the wrongs done to our Canadian Indigenous and bring reconciliation.

4. Worldview: What this tells me is that people in Winnipeg perceive a grievous imbalance in our country. They see injustice, they see suffering, they see historical wounds and wrongs. Some people get too much, while others get robbed. This imbalance is the Great Problem, but if it could be solved and Balance achieved, humanity could flourish.

Serving Culture

As I ponder this cultural worldview, I find myself agreeing and empathizing with the people who exhibited art at the WAG, at least to a certain point. Yes! This world has big problems. There is injustice. There is unfairness. There is imbalance of resources. It is overwhelming, and part of me instinctively wants to cry out “too much!” and disengage (like I did when I saw the installation about the bison.) It’s hard to know how to speak into the chaos. It’s hard to know what to do when you’re faced with a crisis. 

But here’s the thing: As a Christian, I do have something to say to the chaos and to the injustice. Not only that, but I have a God who cares more about injustice, more about the marginalized, more about restoration and healing, than I do or anyone else does! If this is the case, how can I not try to chip into this conversation about the problems that our country and our culture face? 

Challenges to serving culture

Here’s why I think we often don’t chip in: I think we often feel that we are excluded from cultural dialogue - that our Bible-based, God-honouring position makes us irrelevant or unwanted. So we look at other people’s art and say, “ugh, I don’t like it. It’s too much.” or we make art only for ourselves, knowing that we’ll get a nod of approval from people who agree with us. But I want to challenge us to make the effort to really hear what people are saying around us (e.g. “See the injustice! See the problems! If we could all just cooperate and if everyone had equal representation, we could solve this!”) and respond with the compassionate, true, just, merciful voice of God. (e.g. “I agree that our world is filled with injustice. I agree that if we could cooperate, that would help! But the only way we can do that is if we are united under one banner, and I believe the best banner we could be united under is Christ. We are all made in God’s image. Let’s start there!) 

It’s easy to see the outward actions and behaviours of a culture and make judgments about them on that level, but that leads only to overwhelm, disagreement and offence. I could have left the WAG feeling only angry that my causes or my culture were not represented, and that they missed the point about art, or whatever. But by reaching for the deeper heart behind the art, I felt like I actually could relate, and that I actually do care, and that I could contribute a new perspective to the dialogue - that I should contribute! 

A closing assignment: 

So that’s the challenge: hear, then speak. Here’s my assignment for you, dear blog reader! Open your eyes to a culture near you - perhaps your own family, or your city, or an immigrant group within your town, or the teens of your school division. 

Take time to learn about them. Become a student, become curious. See what kinds of art they are making, what hobbies they have, how they organize their social groups. What do they care about? What burdens are they carrying? What does success look like to them? What’s their religion? Who is their god? How do they perceive the world around them? What philosophies have they adopted? (etc., etc.)

As you learn, you will find that you inherently disagree with them on certain points. Don’t stop with “I disagree.” Get deeper. Find the heart behind it all. Ask God to speak to you about it. And then, after listening and learning, consider what you can contribute to the conversation. For me, I feel challenged to try to contribute stories/artwork into our culture that opens people’s eyes to God, and how he sees the world. Maybe for you it’s different. Perhaps you’re meant to simply get to know your neighbours. Maybe you are meant to start a business? Maybe you’re meant to go into politics, or start a family, or become a missionary, or… or… 

Let’s lift our voices and speak while we are still able. Let’s proclaim the good news to the captives, like Jesus did. Don’t silence yourself because you feel other people are louder. Listen, then speak bravely and with grace. There are millions of people around us crying out for something, someone to hope in. If we don’t say anything, will they find Him? 

---

Further reading:

A Call for Balladeers: Pursuing Art and Beaty for the Discipling of Nations, by Darrow Miller. YWAM Publishing, Seattle, WA (2022)

Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for our Common Life, by Makoto Fujimura. IVP Books, Downers Grove, IL (2017)

Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith, by Russ Ramsey. Zondervan Reflective (2022)