• Culture is Development

    This text was originally written at the request of Vicki-Ann Ware and published as the Foreword to the Routledge Handbook of Arts and Global Development, edited by Vicki-Ann Ware, Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta, Tim Prentki, Wasim al Kurdi, and Patrick Kabanda, Routledge, 2025 Click here to download this text in PDF format: Culture is Development (2024) What role…

  • Teaching or learning?

    First published on Parliament of Dreams, 24 November 2014 In the third volume of his Essays, Michel de Montaigne writes a line that has since become famous: ‘Je n’enseigne point, je raconte’ It is almost impossible to put this into English. Donald Frame’s standard version – ‘I do not teach, I tell’ – makes telling sound didactic, which is contrary to what Montaigne…

  • The power of words

    A guest post by Arlene Goldbard This post introduces the 42nd episode of our monthly podcast, A Culture of Possibility, available on Friday 19 July 2024. You can find it and all episodes at Stitcher, iTunes, and wherever you get your podcasts, along with miaaw.net‘s other podcasts by Owen Kelly, Sophie Hope, and many guests, focusing on cultural democracy…

  • The value of small archives

    Today, I’m republishing the first in a series of posts that originally appeared on websites that no longer exist. As I said a few days ago, my reasons for closing those sites remain sound, but some things vanished that merit another look. Sunday morning seems a suitable time for that, so I will make this…

  • A fork in the road

    At the end of last year, I closed two websites I’d maintained for many years and began to archive my work here. The reasons for doing so seemed good at the time, even necessary, but some things disappeared, while this site lost its clear focus on participatory art. To be honest, that was probably always…

  • The story changes

    The British parliamentary elections held on 4 July were characterised by cynicism and anger, reflecting a loss of confidence in democracy itself as a system for improving people’s lives. Since the bank failures of 2007, people have experienced a series of crises that have made them poorer and more insecure, while the public services that…