François Matarasso

Blog

arestlessart.com/

Profile

arestlessart.com/author/regula

Homepage

regularmarvels.wordpress.com

  • ‘And every single one of them is a musician of real quality.’

    Teaching failure Did you learn to play a musical instrument as a child? Classical music is a pinnacle of human culture. Between the 18thcentury and the middle of the 20th, European musicians created masterpiece after masterpiece in this idiom, pushing on with new ideas and forms of expression, though always connected to the musical culture…

  • News about ‘A Restless Art’

    For the past three years, I’ve been researching a book about community art and participatory art, with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. When I started the project, I thought it would be straightforward, as this has been my life since 1981, when I got a job as an apprentice community arts worker (also thanks…

  • Between light and dark

    People are standing on the wooded slopes of Dotrščina park, their faces turned up towards the late September sunshine. Some gaze into the canopy of leaves; most have closed their eyes, feeling the air and the warmth on skin. As the sun moves, so do they, finding a new patch of light to stand in.…

  • A (very short) history of the British community arts movement

    The British community arts movement was a loose grouping of artists who began their professional lives during the 1960s and 1970s. Their artistic and political ideas varied, as did their backgrounds, training and interests. Some had been educated at art schools and identified as artists. Others, trained in youth work, community development or political activism,…

  • The Syrian Civil War in a theatre workshop – and how we got over it

    Jussi Lehtonen, Finnish National Theatre Introduction The Finnish National Theatre in Helsinki is involved in a range of work with community groups, including a programme to bring theatre into closed institutions such as care homes and prisons. Last year (2017), Jussi Lehtonen, who leads the  Touring Stage Programme, devised a new documentary theatre piece with…

  • Cultural heritage and participation

    There was a time when I thought that community art had to be rooted in contemporary forms of art. I didn’t see how traditional and craft-based culture could engage people in the urgent issues of contemporary life. I was mistaking my own experience for reality, allowing my enthusiasms to become prejudice—and the one thing prejudice…