François Matarasso

Creative alchemy: how life becomes art

It’s a cold, functional room, part of the prison’s public face, used variously as chapel, recreation room and, today, a meeting room. About thirty of us have gathered here this morning: people from the Sant Andreu district, the Liceu opera house and Amplify. Ostensibly, we’re here to talk about the community opera being co-created with…

The genesis of ideas

Looking through old files for material that ended up in the post about how my work was influenced by Welfare State I realised one big change in my process: the genesis of ideas. In my early years – my twenties, I suppose – most of the projects I worked on began with an idea of…

Worlds

Each of us is a world, an entire planet of knowledge, ideas and experience, accumulated painstakingly from the moment of our first breath until, with the last, the sun dies and another world is gone, irrecoverable, leaving a trace in the memory of shared moments with those who continue, a little further. I know this…

‘I too am a witness.’

This is an unusual post. It has nothing to say about participatory art or co-creation. It is about the eviction of a community of Roma people who have lived quietly for at least a decade in a former industrial site in Sofia, Bulgaria. To some it might appear to be ‘a quarrel in a far…

Reasons to write for children

At the end of another day of grim events and darker portents, I want to share these words from Isaac Bashevis Singer‘s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. It’s a reminder that creation can begin with joy, delight, curiosity and wonder – and finish there too, no matter how many storms you must endure on the path.…

This is not a provocation

I’ve been reading, and reading about, Hannah Arendt. She’s one of the thinkers I admire whilst having reservations about some of their ideas or positions. That’s never seemed problematic: I don’t look for or trust gurus. I can learn a lot from working out why I disagree with something I’ve just read. But Arendt has…