François Matarasso

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  • The social impact of participation in the arts (revisited)

    The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the UK House of Commons has just announced an inquiry into the social impact of participation in culture and sport. Its terms of reference state that ‘Participation in culture and sport has a proven link to a wide range of benefits. The Committee is expected to focus on…

  • Some hard questions about participatory theatre

    ‘None of this is to say that a drama workshop should not be a space where people feel comfortable opening up, and talking about themselves and their experience. It’s only to say that we must be aware of the risks present in such a situation; and we must not mistake the emotional intensity that comes…

  • D’oh!

    Confirmation bias – the tendency we all have to over-estimate data that confirms our existing beliefs – is an obvious trap for researchers, so they have intellectual and professional guardrails to stop them falling too often. But artists are not so safe from confirmation bias, because self-belief is valued in Western art. There are original…

  • Lanterns on the Cabbage Field

    Ed Carroll and Vita Gelūnienė live in Kaunas (Lithuania) where they have been exploring ways of creating community art for several years. When Ed sent me some photos of their latest event I asked if I might share them on this blog, partly because they give a glimpse of what’s happening in a part of…

  • London Community Video Archive

    More insights from the past: the London Community Video Archive is a fantastic showcase of the work being made in the 1970s when video technology was just coming into reach. It includes films, documents and interviews, that I’ve only just begun to explore. The site is powerful evidence of the potential of cultural democracy and, with…

  • Campaign for Cultural Democracy (1984)

    Looking up a reference, I came across the draft charter of the Campaign for Cultural Democracy. It was written in 1984, by members of the Shelton Trust (the Association for Community Artists), but not formally adopted. It’s always struck me as one of the simplest and clearest explanations of cultural democracy: This text is taken from Sally…