François Matarasso

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  • Whose (community) opera is it anyway?

    Intellectual property rights have rarely been an issue during my life in community art. The projects I’ve worked consciously rejected market values and therefore rarely produced anything that could be commercialised. Still, the world has changed a lot in that time, and the creative industries – a concept only defined in the 1990s – are…

  • How the internet saved a community opera

    It began with open workshops in community halls across County Durham, from ancient places sheltered in mountain valleys to younger ones, grown up around pits that closed a generation ago. Not all those who came had much idea what taking part in a community opera might mean, but they knew they enjoyed singing or music…

  • Holding onto community

    Suddenly it’s October, and Fun Palaces weekend is here. Since its invention in 2014, the Fun Palaces idea has burst into thousands of gorgeous, diverse, open-hearted blooms. Each one is unique, shaped by its combination of people and place. Each one is a gift, of a community to a community, strengthening its bonds of acceptance…

  • Participation, cultural rights and the 2020 Rome Charter

    Yesterday was the opening day of an international conference, focusing on the 2020 Rome Charter that was published in the summer. Along with many others, I’d planned to be in Rome for these days, but had to participate remotely, from home. The session I chaired yesterday gathered people from Pakistan, Switzerland, the Philippines, Ghana, Egypt, the United…

  • What we have lost, and what we hold to still

    I am looking up at the third floor window of number 36 – smaller than the windows below. We know there is a window seat inside. It’s where the midwife sat, almost 18 years ago, as our daughter Hannah gave birth to Rosa May, her second child, at 6am on a clear spring morning.

  • Jakson and Fabio — Regular Marvels

    Almost exactly five years ago. I filed into the Leiria youth prison, along with about 250 other outsiders—officials, funders and, mostly, the mothers, partners and children of the inmates. We had come to see the result of an extraordinary gamble by Paulo Lameiro and his team at SAMP, the local music school, a gamble that […]…