François Matarasso

Blog

arestlessart.com/

Profile

arestlessart.com/author/regula

Homepage

regularmarvels.wordpress.com

  • In unstable times, we need a restless art.

    Why describe participation as a ‘restless’ art? My original reason was simply that the practice of professional artists involving others in their work has meant such different things over the years. It has grown exponentially since the emergence of community art in the 1960s and been interpreted differently in changing times, conditions, theories and cultures. A whole world separates a contemporary…

  • Community cultural development in 1990s Australia

    The late Deidre Williams was an important figure in Australian community arts, as a director of CAN South Australia and subsequently as a pioneering researcher. In 1995, she published one of the earliest and best pieces of research into the social outcomes of community art practice, Creating Social Capital. At the time, I was doing the research…

  • Mindfulness and participatory art practice

    On Saturday, I facilitated a workshop about participatory art and quality at the Institute of Polish Culture in Warsaw that reminded me of the power of participation. There were about 20 of us: students, postgrads, arts practitioners and others, mostly women and mostly young. Some had a lot of practical experience, others not much. But…

  • Speaking of community art

    Someone recently suggested to me that I should speak of ‘Art in the Community’ because community art seemed to be a genre, like Pop Art. It was an interesting observation and I’m always glad to be reminded how differently ideas can be interpreted. Still, there are clear reasons why I continue to describe my work…

  • Moments of Joy

    Almost imperceptibly participatory art is becoming an ordinary dimension of social programmes. It has happened quietly over two or three decades, and it is not a done deal yet, but it is becoming more and more common for actors outside the arts world to integrate arts activities in their work. Take the example of South…

  • What next? It depends who’s asking

    When a campaign takes off as Fun Palaces has, people start asking ‘What Next?’. It’s the wrong question – or at least, to ask it is to misunderstand what’s important about Fun Palaces and why. Cultural policy in post-war Europe (how long will we keep calling it that?) has been divided between two big ideas: cultural democratisation and…