François Matarasso

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  • ‘It became necessary to learn because we made it so’

    My first contact with community arts, in 1981, was as a member of the public. With the fearlessness of youth, I’d produced a piece of theatre about human rights to raise funds for Amnesty International. When social media was still a matter for science fiction, we needed posters to advertise the show. Somebody told me about…

  • True to the art – Cardboard Citizens

      ‘We simply want to say we’re all human beings, and we really mean it, when we think: This could be me. This isn’t somebody different from me. This could be me.’ Adrian Jackson Cardboard Citizens is an outstanding theatre company, producing and touring new plays about homelessness. Cardboard Citizens is an outstanding social service…

  • ‘We’re trying to change the nature of art’

    Writing about community arts The first phase of community arts in Britain (roughly 1965-1990) has not had much attention from historians, art critics or other academics. In the one really substantial book on the subject, Kate Crehan suggests that may be because the art world refused to give attention to a practice that challenged its authority.…

  • Sharing the stage

    For the past three years, I’ve been visiting participatory art projects in Spain, Portugal and other parts of Europe to learn about what is now happening there. I’m wary of simple explanations, especially in contexts I don’t know well, but it is hard not to link this new energy with the pressures European societies have…

  • ‘A gift for fiction’

    Theatre changes people. Mostly, it does so in small ways by rearranging our mental furniture, hanging around for a bit and leaving odd things behind when it’s gone, with the result that we perceive things differently. Sometimes, its effect is much more dramatic, making us reassess our fears, desires, understanding, or our sense of others,…

  • Crossing boundaries – Jazz, young people and Banlieues Bleues

    ‘It’s important for children to meet an artist in the atmosphere of a workshop. They too have a right to beauty, to culture and to become used to focusing on a creative project.’ Nelly Roland Iriberry, Maire de Villepinte (2011) Seine-Saint-Denis, on the northeast edge of Paris, is the very image of France’s ‘banlieues‘, though…