François Matarasso

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  • Letting go

    Today, I approved the printer’s proofs—the moment of letting go. Even on Sunday, as I went through it one last time, I was finding egregious mistakes. It’s hard to believe they’ve all been caught, despite the efforts of several proofreaders. I’ve been publishing books since 1993 and it seems only to have got harder. Perhaps…

  • A brief observation on aerosols

    Sometimes you miss the obvious thing, even when you’ve been looking at it for years. Yesterday, as I walked along the Quai de Marne to the Philharmonie de Paris in the early morning rain, I realised the part that aerosols played in the decline of the mural as a form of community art practice. I’d…

  • Everyone can cook

    The idea that everyone can be an artist has always underpinned my work. It seems straightforward to me, but some people evidently find it difficult to accept. Part of the problem is the belief that developed in the early 19th century, during the movement we now call Romanticism, that an artist is a special kind…

  • Cultural democracy is a fox

    A podcast about cultural democracy A long bus journey through rainy Pembrokeshire gave me time to listen to the latest episodes of Owen Kelly and Sophie Hope’s podcast about cultural democracy. Anyone interested in the theory, history and possible future of community art will enjoy these conversations. Owen Kelly played an important role in the…

  • An elegy for ‘The Public’

    I only saw The Public from a distance, from the other side of the Midlands, but I liked what I saw. It seemed a brave experiment in scaling up community art, in making the idea of cultural democracy real in West Bromwich. I talked with the people behind it when it was just an idea,…

  • Respecting other people’s reasons for (not) participating

    Making a book is enjoyable but demanding too, especially as the deadline for sending digital files to the printer approaches. Proofreading is my current priority, so lacking time to write something new, I’ll share some extracts from the book in advance of publication. This is from a discussion of the intentions people bring to making…