François Matarasso

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  • From personal stories to common humanity: Performance Ensemble

    People’s stories have become central to participatory art in a way they simply weren’t 30 years ago. None of my work involved such personal material before a project with mental health service users in 1990. The widespread use of the term ‘life story’ is itself a sign of the growing importance of personal narratives in…

  • Alternative ideas of authorship

    Libraries are about books; everybody knows that. True enough – but what are books about? Over the past year, Multistory has been working with libraries in Sandwell to present film screenings and photography exhibitions. The films, by Martin Parr and commissioned by Multistory, open windows on worlds most people don’t know. In Mark Goes to Mongolia,…

  • Sharing control in participatory art

    Participatory art is normally spoken about in terms of how people are changed by being involved. There are problems (at least for me) with some of the assumptions behind that, but I’ll come back to them another time. Just now, I’m wondering why we don’t talk more about how the artists and organisations who want…

  • Making nothing happen: art and civil society in troubled times

    This talk, for the Tandem Exchange programme, highlights the distinctive value of art and culture at a time of multiple crises. It’s posted on another site because its focus is wider than participatory and community art, but its argument is relevant to that practice. It proposes that art matters, above all, because it gives us space to…

  • Men & Girls Dance – Successful risk-taking in participatory art

    ‘That’s a bad idea.’ It was months ago and I don’t remember now who told me about a proposed dance project involving men and girls, but I do remember my reaction: it just seemed like a really bad idea. On Saturday, I got the last ticket for the matinée of Men & Girls Dance at Dance…

  • The difference between teaching and learning: Participatory art and the skills agenda

    The value of participatory art in informal education has long been recognised. People who take part in such projects can gain all sorts of technical, practical, intellectual, creative and life skills. Many organisations working in the field know that from experience and have wanted to show it convincingly to politicians and the educational profession. For the past two years, a…