François Matarasso

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  • It’s Fun Palaces weekend

    When I was a young and earnest community artist, I bridled at the word fun. The art we made wasn’t supposed to be fun, even when it did involve face painting. It was radical, world changing and very, very serious. I was so much older then, but I’ve since learned that you can have fun…

  • Who are you writing for?

    Reading yet another account of a community outreach project undertaken by an arts organisation, I could feel my heart sinking before I’d reached the end of the first paragraph. It was a good idea, and it seemed to have been well-executed by gifted people. In that respect, it was much like a lot of projects…

  • ‘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…