François Matarasso

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  • ‘Trans nature is diverse’ – a theatre project in Uruguay

    Jussi Lehtonen, whose community work at the National Theatre of Finland features in A Restless Art, got in touch to tell me about a visit he made recently to Uruguay. He met PROAC, an NGO that works for human development through art, culture and education, and observed the creation of theatre performance about trans stories.…

  • Looking back at Bath Arts Workshop

    In the course of working on A Restless Art, I’ve met many people from what I think of as the ‘pioneer’ generation – those who, in the 1960s and 1970s, invented community art through a heady mix of inspiration, rebellion, accident and happy contrariness. Some of them I knew before; others I met for the…

  • What participatory art does not need

    After 50 years of creative invention and achievement, participatory art does not need discovering. It does not need the condescension of those comfortably settled at the table, or their leftovers. It does not need to be told its own history, or damned with faint praise. It does not need colonisation, exploitation or development. It does…

  • What participatory art needs: Professional development

    With adequate resources and trust participatory art would be in a position to address its weaknesses in professional development. Young artists can now study various models of applied theatre, participatory art and socially engaged practice, full time or as modules in other degrees, but opportunities to build on that knowledge after graduation are limited. That…

  • What participatory art needs: Trust

    Despite the demand for their work, participatory artists remain second-class citizens in the arts funding system. When a choreographer or curator approaches a funding body, they can assume a shared belief in the intrinsic value of dance or contemporary art. A participatory artist in the same position can make no such assumption. The professional expertise…

  • What participatory art needs: Resources

    Participatory art receives more public funding today than it did, but that is still a very small proportion of public budgets for culture. What’s more, the expansion of funding has produced an increase in volume of work rather than changing the conditions of its creation. Many participatory art organisations and artists are not much better…