François Matarasso

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arestlessart.com/

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  • This shape-shifting border territory

    When I am facilitating a co-creation project, how can I ensure that the experience is as rewarding for those present as I hope?  That question opens many further questions, which is why this practice is restless and so rewarding to me. Let’s begin with questions about what I know, believe or assume, (by which I mean what I believe I know…

  • Starting again

    In spring 2023, I began working on a new book, which I called A Selfless Art. For reasons both political and personal I felt that there was more to say that I had managed in A Restless Art – and different things to say too. But my difficulties were still far from over and my…

  • The certainty that something makes sense

    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…

  • The insufficiency of passion

    It’s very common to hear people say that they are passionate about the arts, or that passion drives their work, but the word has always worried me. I understood why as I read Against Empathy by the social psychologist Paul Bloom. Writing about the limitations of empathy he argues for the primacy of reason over…

  • On a darkling plain

    Last autumn, I started a website called A Selfless Art to document the book I’ve been working on since 2023. I saw it as a space to test ideas but it is a distraction and a dead end. I’ve closed that site and brought the project back here but I can’t work on the book…

  • I am terrified of AI

    “We’re just growing these AIs. They’re huge. We have no idea how they work. And that is a very difficult situation in which to try to do something as precise as make them care about us.” Nate Soares, 11 November 2025 For several years now, I’ve been involved in research projects involving digital technology. It’s…