François Matarasso

Next steps for ‘A Restless Art’

The publication of A Restless Art, long-delayed, is now almost a year in the past. Time has flown, and the book has taken flight. For better or worse, it is finding its way without me (I’ve just seen it listed as a ‘bestseller’ on Central Books, which is very exciting). Occasionally, I hear some feedback…

In praise of podcasts

What the world of podcasts shows, above all, is that anyone can make good radio, if they put their mind to it.

Feeling at home

The democratic urgency of dialogue in a diverse world Notes for a speech at the Nordic Dialogues conference, in Oslo (Norway) on 2 December 2019. The talk was filmed so if you were there or see the video online, you’ll notice differences between these notes and what I said, but the outline of the argument…

Thinking about the purpose of conversation

On Thursday evening and Friday morning I spent several hours talking about participatory art with two diverse groups in Berlin. The first were mostly friends from MitOst, a valuable civil society and culture organisation I’ve worked with before; the second were arts managers (the term covers a huge range of roles and practice) from all…

Rummaging in the archives

This site began in the summer of 2015, as I started work on the book it was intended to support. Today, I saw that I’d written 199 blog posts since then (to say nothing of the pages of case studies and projects). Inevitably, some of my favourite posts have got buried in that sediment of…

Instrumentalisation: a convenient mask

For as long as I can remember, the accusation of instrumentalising art has been flung at community artists, as a way of discrediting their work and its challenge to dominant practice. It’s always seemed wrong to me – not just in the sense of being an incorrect analysis of what we do, but philosophically and…