The gift of close reading
Last month, at the launch of A Restless Art, the novelist and campaigner Stella Duffy spoke powerfully about how much
Letting go
Today, I approved the printer’s proofs—the moment of letting go. Even on Sunday, as I went through it one last
A brief observation on aerosols
Sometimes you miss the obvious thing, even when you’ve been looking at it for years. Yesterday, as I walked along
Everyone can cook
The idea that everyone can be an artist has always underpinned my work. It seems straightforward to me, but some
Cultural democracy is a fox
A podcast about cultural democracy A long bus journey through rainy Pembrokeshire gave me time to listen to the latest
An elegy for ‘The Public’
I only saw The Public from a distance, from the other side of the Midlands, but I liked what I
Respecting other people’s reasons for (not) participating
Making a book is enjoyable but demanding too, especially as the deadline for sending digital files to the printer approaches.
More questions than answers: stories, art and ownership
On Tuesday, I spoke about participatory art at a conference in Valletta. The questions people raised afterwards were mostly the
Cultural democracy and the European Parliament
Today, I got to speak at the European Parliament, at a conference organised by the Progressive Alliance of Socialists &
Is there a community arts movement once more?
ICAF (the International Community Arts Festival in Rotterdam) has just published a photo book of the 2017 edition, and an
One for the historians
In my view community arts must still be regarded as an experiment—an experiment in ‘cultural democracy’ of great importance not
