François Matarasso

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  • A virtual residency by Arlene Goldbard

    Arlene Goldbard is an artist and activist who has dedicated her life to social justice and cultural democracy in the USA. She has written important books on community art and taught widely on the subject. A co-founder of the (entirely unofficial) US Department of Art and Culture, she acted as its Chief Policy Wonk for…

  • The privatisation of risk

    When I began working in community arts, at the beginning of the 1980s, I was taught to consider the risks of using chemicals, fireworks and sharp tools, and to do so safely. As my experience grew, I understood the more subtle and less easily-managed human risks to which people might expose themselves by taking part,…

  • How can community art continue?

    In the first days after everything stopped, I had a series of emails and calls about work I was expecting to do over the spring and summer. Workshops, talks and projects – they all evaporated like water on hot stone. I wasn’t surprised or unduly concerned. Everyone agreed that we’d replan ‘when things get back…

  • Arts and homelessness during Covid-19

    ‘Stay home’ is good advice, but it depends on having a home to stay in. Across the world, millions of people do not, and their situation, already bad, has only become worse as life has gone indoors. The casual work on which many depended has gone, while shelters and outreach services are closed. In some…

  • Kevin Ryan: community artist, photographer, friend

    Kevin Ryan, a pioneer of community art in England, died in hospital on Wednesday, 22 April 2020. He had been diagnosed some months earlier with asbestos-related lung cancer, but never stopped working and caring for others. We met in 1982, through East Midlands Association for Community Arts, which connected people involved with the dozen or…

  • The ethics of community art, Part 1

    See all posts on A Restless Art about ‘ETHICS’ A necessary concern with ethics is one of the ways that community art has always been separate from fine art. The latter was substantially the creation of philosophy, and its ethical concerns, where they exist at all, are philosophical: ‘art for art’s sake‘, an idea that…