Every three years, the International Community Arts Festival comes together for five days in Rotterdam (NL). Making it happen is a magnificent achievement by a very small team who have to raise the money, shape the programme and organise accommodation, food and transport for hundreds of participants.
This month, it will happen again for, I think, the tenth time since 2001. It will be a joy to be there, to facilitate sessions on cultural policy and ethics with my friend Arlene Goldbard, to see old friends, and to witness the work that people are making now, in Uruguay, Surinam, the Netherlands, Tanzania, Canada, the Philippines, New Zealand, Singapore, Israel & Palestine, India, Germany, and many other places.
On another scale, ArtWorks Alliance (UK) is gathering in Manchester on 20 March for a day of ‘reflection, dialogue, and collective thinking‘. They have called it Tough Times, inspired by some words attributed to Pablo Casals:
‘The situation is hopeless: we must take the next step.’
In 1986, before his country had escaped the Soviet control he resisted, the writer Václav Havel said:
‘Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.’
‘The certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out’ — that has been my constant belief about community art and co-creation, even in my darkest moments, when I have doubted my own capacity to fulfil its promise. The situation – war, Neo-Fascism, poverty, climate crises – might seem hopeless but we take the next step because, whatever follows, it makes sense.
And for those of us committed to community art, gathering in solidarity is as good a next step as any.
PS In 1990, Czechoslovakia gained its freedom and Havel was elected its first president. We act, in the conviction that something makes sense, not knowing what will follow.
François Matarasso 
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