François Matarasso

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  • The complexities of cultural democracy

    When I saw Owen Kelly in March, he generously gave me a copy of his new book, Cultural Democracy Now, and urged me to give him honest feedback. I started reading it on the journey from Helsinki, but hadn’t made much progress since, partly because of personal events, but also because it’s a challenging read. It…

  • Post-political arts policy

    The photo shows the Performance Ensemble in Leeds, in 2019 Whatever else it might—or more likely might not—achieve, the current argument about how to ‘save’ the arts shows how hollowed out the whole subject has become. There is little intellectual or political coherence in the ideas put forward by Sir Nicholas Hytner or Sir Nicholas…

  • Some selfless artists

    None of this work has been captured by power. It happens on the margins, largely unseen and ignored by state actors. Consequently, it can nourish a real alternative to the normative (and increasingly indistinguishable) ideologies of government and consumer capitalism. It enacts humanist values of connection, open-mindedness, tolerance and dialogue. It puts freedom before security.…

  • Why Nicholas Hytner is wrong about how to save the arts in England

    Curtain call of ‘La Gate Perduda’, a community opera I helped with at the Liceu Opera House, Barcelona, October 2022 One starting point for A Selfless Art is my recognition of how much participatory art and co-creation practice now imagines the world as being divided between us and them. Us, the people who know, who…

  • Remembering Steve Lobb, muralist and pioneer of community art

    Yesterday, I received a copy of Geraint Franklin’s Murals and the Community Arts in England 1968–86: A Thematic Study. It’s a fine piece of work that deserves to be expanded into a full-length book. Geraint had spoken to me a couple of years ago, and he’d impressed me with his knowledge and insight. Among others he…

  • Failing to write about uncertainty

    A Restless Art was written from a place of relative confidence, although that confidence ebbed during the four years it took me to write. I set out complacently thinking I had knowledge to share but, as I met more people working in community art, I saw how much I had to learn. In the end, that…