François Matarasso

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  • The love in co-creation

    Yesterday, I had a little exchange with a friend about how to support community artists. She wasn’t talking about money or management, important as those things are, but about nourishing the inner sources of people’s creativity, energy and humanity. We’re a similar age and she has spent her life co-creating art, especially with disabled people.…

  • Doubts and questions

    Since my first encounter with community art I’ve known what I wanted to do with my life and why. How has been more problematic. The world has changed so much since then, and me with it. Ideas and ways of working that made sense under Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair are now outdated like shoulder…

  • Searching for a direction: Regular Marvels, Part 1, ‘Winter Fires’

    What became Regular Marvels emerged in the dying years of New Labour (2008-10). It was a period of crisis—the collapse of neoliberal finance brought recession, austerity and the rise of reactionary politics we’re still dealing with. History is experienced by individuals and for me these global events echoed in my own crisis. Its obvious manifestation,…

  • A lottery for artists’ funding

    On the long train journey to Barcelona, I read Avram Alpert’s new book, The Good Enough Life. I’m not finished yet—I’m a slow reader, especially when I’m thinking and making notes—but I know it’s one of those books that permanently changes my ideas. I think we can only understand or learn things when we’re ready…

  • An unusual feeling of pride

    I was five hours late getting to the Liceu opera house on Tuesday, hot and tired after a stressful journey. The speeches were over and performance was under way when I was ushered through the wings to a seat on the stage. The auditorium before me was dark. My breath and my pulse slowed to…

  • A selfless art is good enough

    It is hard from within our present condition to even imagine a world […] which kindness and empathy are considered talents as worthy of cultivation as computer coding or making money, and one in which the point of cultivating any talent is to enrich your life and that of others, rather than gain fame, wealth,…