A Love of Culture Sundays

At the beginning of this year, my sister and I initiated “culture Sunday”. The idea was that each weekend we’d spend this allocated day together exploring the museums and galleries in and around Dublin. It soon became #CultureSunday, of course, because nothing really happens unless it appears on Instagram, does it?

My sister moved home last December after 12 years living in Sydney, so the cultural landscape here feels new to her and ripe for discovery. When we lived in London together in our twenties, we would often wander around the vast exhibition spaces of the Tate Modern or the more intimate galleries of Kensington’s V&A. They were wonderful sanctuaries from the thronged streets and heaving shops of the UK capital. Even better they were free, which meant regardless of how strapped we were for cash (very, a lot of the time), we always had somewhere to go on that last painful weekend before payday.

Before the pandemic put paid to our Sunday outings, we made it to the three pillars of IMMA, the RHA and The National Gallery. It’s been one of the things I’ve missed most during lockdown - more than restaurants and bars, though not quite as much as the hairdressers - because there’s something incredibly morale-boosting about these spaces. To offer a fashion metaphor, in the same way that wearing bright clothes can make us feel happy, visiting creative spaces can make us feel inspired.

It isn’t just the incredible art, sculpture and objects on view that foster these feelings, it’s being around like-minded people too. Most of us find a sense of place in one arena or another. For some it’s at music festivals (I’ve never been to one in my life), for others it’s playing team sports (I can’t think of anything I’d like less) but for me the now well-worn phrase of finding your “tribe” makes sense when I visit a museum or an art gallery. It sounds pretentious to suggest I fall in easily with these lofty surroundings, but what I mean is that they’re full of people who are quite happy to be still, to observe rather than be observed, to think rather than speak - it’s an introvert’s happy place.

Seeing similar types of people enjoy the same activities offers the kind of validation that is as gratifying in midlife as it is for a millennial.

Being around individuals who share the same values and have similar aspirations fosters a sense of community, and this is a powerful experience, perhaps even more so in midlife when feelings of belonging become less frequent.

I know many women who have formed bonds at the school gates or over arrangements for a playdate, but I haven’t had children so I know little of the concerns and joys this tribe enjoys. I often listen to friends and colleagues, some single, others not, comparing notes on kiddie infections or baby behaviour to which I have little to offer. Similarly, I’ve been single for many years, so the social circle of couples, which usually opens up to a woman once she’s in a serious relationship, has also been absent from my journey. In my circumstances, you have to work a little bit harder to find somewhere you feel comfortable.

Being single and childless in midlife can make you feel different if you let it.

Perhaps what I love most about creative spaces is the wonderfully eclectic demographic they attract. While in times gone by they were the haunts of an upwardly mobile middle class, today museums are the refuge of everyone, from scruffy students to ageing older couples to same-sex families and singletons like me. They remind me of cosmopolitan cities like London and New York in which there are no “types” just individuals. Nobody stands out because nobody is trying to conform to any one standard. And when I’m there alone, without my sister, it never feels lonely.

I also like the sense of purpose culture Sunday gives me on a day that can often drift away in worries about work and stresses over the coming week’s schedule. It presses a very welcome pause on all of the nonsense going round in my head, offering stimulation and distraction but in a more mindful way than a shopping trip might or a family get-together (you never know how they’re going to go). Visiting a cultural space, you see, is a wholly sensory experience; they’re visual, auditory and tactile. They engage you immediately, from the moment you become aware of the sound of your footsteps on a marble or concrete floor, to how the vast double- and triple-height spaces affect the acoustics, to the heavy silence and untouchable tactility of the pieces on view.

Just like music and food, art brings people together and allows us to escape the realities of everyday life. That’s probably why I’ve missed culture Sunday so much over the past couple of months. There’s been no means of escaping the frightening COVID-19 news cycles and the depressing economic forecasts. It’s a poignant reminder that when the world looks sad and gloomy, cultural spaces are there to offer a restorative and soothing balm for all of the bad news (except during a pandemic of course).

Even better, according to a 2019 study in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), those of us in midlife who engage with the arts may actually live longer. Researchers in the UK tracked thousands of people aged 50 and over throughout a 14-year period. They found that those who visited a museum or attended a concert just once or twice a year were 14 per cent less likely to die during that period than those who didn’t. The chances of living longer went up the more often participants in the study engaged with the arts. Those who frequented these spaces once a month or even every few months had a 31 per cent reduced risk of dying in that 14-year period.

The results aren’t too surprising when you consider that a museum or an art gallery is the perfect place to destress. They’re modern-day churches, I suppose, offering the solitude, space to contemplate and respite we once sought in religious buildings. The irony of #cultureSunday isn’t lost on me. We make pilgrimages to museums and galleries to feel encouraged and reassured the way my parents’ did to Knock or Lourdes. Art is the new iconography.

Now that restrictions have been lifted, culture Sunday will soon be back in business...as soon as I’m brave enough to step outside the suburban bubble I’ve become surprisingly comfortable living in over the past three months. Introverts don’t like change you see; even good change unsettles us a little at the beginning, and right now the city centre feels as far away as a female Taoiseach. Of course, if you believe the BMJ study, visiting museums once a week means I’m on track to living till I’m a hundred. Maybe by then, there’ll finally be a female in the leader’s seat.

Marie Kelly, July 2020.