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Continue reading →: A brief apology during maintenanceThis site does not yet do what I would wish it to do — provide simple access to the work I’ve published over the years and a place where I can usefully share the ideas I’m now working on. I could take out my frustration on WordPress for continually changing…
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Continue reading →: RegenerationAfter eight months unable to work—the longest caesura of my life—I feel the process of transformation beginning to fulfil its purpose. Thought and energy become fluid again, like mercury. Synapses start to fire. Possibilities reveal themselves.
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Continue reading →: A hopeful returnMy dear friend Arlene Goldbard and I have been recording a monthly podcast for over three years now, though I have had to take two longish breaks, most recently over this winter. Fortunately, my role is secondary: Arlene manages things perfectly, writing up each episodes from New Mexico, while Owen…
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Continue reading →: And she was quite right‘Bang, you’re dead!’ we said. ‘I got you!’ we said. When we played, it was always war. A bunch of us together, one-on-one, or in solitary fantasies – always war, always death. ‘Don’t play like that,’ our parents said, ‘you could grow up that way.’ Some threat – there was…
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Continue reading →: Speaking of the master’s houseI’m ambivalent about public speaking, though I’ve been doing it for so long. It’s best when the speaker knows they’re involved in a performance art, in which what is said is generally less important than how. I’ve heard talks by Arthur Miller and Edward de Bono of which I remember…
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Continue reading →: Easter eggsIn the early days of personal computing, software engineers amused themselves by hiding messages or unsuspected features into their programmes. What began as jokes between peers became a way to reward loyal users with additional value. These virtual prizes came to be known as easter eggs, after the tradition of hiding…
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Continue reading →: The meaning of participation (isn’t what I thought it was)This essay was written a couple of years ago, at the invitation of Onassis Stegi in Athens, for a collection called The Handbook of Cultural Work(Bloomsbury 2024). It sets out my thinking as I worked on the 2020 Rome Charter and Traction, and sought to link the Capabilities Approach with cultural policy. Reading it today, it’s…
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Art and older people, Art and young people, Arts and mental health, Cultural democracy, Cultural diversity, Democratisation of culture, England, Ethics, Professional artists, Reflexive practice, social change, Theatre, Third generation, Where do you stand?
‘If not pure, then at least useful.’
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Continue reading →: ‘If not pure, then at least useful.’With each visit, each workshop, each conversation we had earned some trust and proved our hearts, if not pure, then at least useful. The Club at the Edge of Town, p. 72 Looking again at Alan Lane’s book about art and people during the pandemic, I realised that what I…
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Continue reading →: ‘This is the chief relevance of our practice for the world beyond art’‘Those of us who gravitate toward improvisational music do so because we enjoy relating to other human beings as equals. That is the core of the experience for me. That is the chief relevance of our practice for the world beyond art. Our work, at its most genuine, can bring…
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François Matarasso 