Saved by the Whale's Tail, Saved by Art

Call for stories that champion, interrogate and celebrate
how art has saved lives!

Artist Ahmet Öğüt together with Art on the Underground and New Contemporaries are seeking stories about how art has saved lives.

Do you have a story about how art has saved a life?

Submit your story here

Submit your story by 2 June 2025. The most compelling story will be displayed on the London Underground and the submitter will receive an artwork trophy created by Ahmet Öğüt. The call for stories forms part of a major new public artwork that will launch at Stratford station from September 2025. Visit the New Contemporaries website for more information.

Ahmet Öğüt is a sociocultural initiator, artist and lecturer, working across a variety of media, including photography, video, and installation.

Öğüt often uses humour and interventions to offer commentary on serious or pressing social and political issues. His new commission, ‘Saved by the Whale’s Tail, Saved by Art’, explores the role art plays in everyday life.

‘Saved by the Whale’s Tail, Saved by Art’ includes a major art installation at Stratford Underground station which will be unveiled in September 2025, alongside a call out to the public for stories that champion, interrogate and celebrate how art has saved lives. Posters on display across the London Underground network from 2 April – 2 June 2025, are asking the public to submit their stories of how art has saved them.

Öğüt’s commission, which explores the power of art, is inspired by an incident that occurred near Rotterdam in 2020 when a train overran the tracks and was saved by a sculpture of a whale’s tail. With a compelling visual metaphor for the power of art to save lives, the project seeks to uncover many more stories at a time when the arts are radically underfunded and undervalued.

“An artist is not someone who is by default marginalized from society as a radical thinker, a gifted outsider, or a mysterious loner. An artist is also a friend, a comrade, a mother, a sibling—someone who is part of the community and an integral part of the social fabric. Artists are often seen as those who pose questions without providing answers, or as individuals who can address issues only symbolically, without the ability to fix the world. However, the role of art and artists goes far beyond that. There are artworks and artists who have had a real, transformative impact on society.” Ahmet Öğüt.

This project is generously supported by the Henry Moore Foundation and Reed Employment.

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