François Matarasso

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  • Speaking of the master’s house

    I’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 not a word or an…

  • Easter eggs

    In 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 chocolate treats for small children…

  • 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 a fair summary of where…

  • ‘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 wrote about it disappeared when…

  • ‘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 us into a living model…

  • Compañeros y compañeras

    We spend two days meeting at the theatre, and share dinner in the evenings. It’s my first work since last summer and it is a joy. This project we’re planning might come to nothing but the time together is its own reward. Whatever the outcome, imagining it is a commitment to an idea of art…