François Matarasso

Ten years ago, give or take, I started this site as a working space to support what eventually became a book of the same name, published in 2019. I’ve added almost 450 posts and 110 pages over the decade, and made available many publications, my own and others. But for several years, the force of events has made me reconsider many of my ideas and experiences. I have come to feel increasingly distant from a project that seems to be receding in the rear-view mirror, and the time has come to bring it to a close.

The site still gets a lot of visitors, though most of my publications are now available elsewhere on the web. But I have taken down sites before, and caused problems for people who had linked to or cited some of the material. So, although I will no longer update it or add further posts, this site will stay up for the foreseeable future. Nothing lasts forever, of course, so if there’s anything useful here, probably best to download or copy it now.

For some time, I’ve been sharing my current thinking on another site because it has changed so much, though my subject remains, as it has been for 50 years, community art and co-creation. The new work is more personal, not from solipsism but because events have made me see how ideas I had unthinkingly seen as general in fact arose from the specificities of my own experience. That, and an increasingly hostile and dangerous world have made me question my beliefs – not about the value of co-creation but about how and why to do it. There are too many things I have taken for granted and deeper seams to excavate. And I have a sense of the urgency of this task; time is short and I want to use it well. If you want to know more about that project, please follow the link below.

https://aselflessart.com

Otherwise, thank you for reading, especially to everyone who has subscribed, commented or otherwise reached out to me. Thank you to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation who trusted me at the beginning of this process and published the book. And thank you to all the people who have contributed to A Restless Art by sharing their experiences and ideas. It has truly been a privilege to meet you and write about your work. I have never liked the idea of pride, but I am content with this work, for all its limitations, and glad to stand by it, with the rest of my work.

( I had fun making the image above with AI.)