The complexities of cultural democracy

When I saw Owen Kelly in March, he generously gave me a copy of his new book, Cultural Democracy Now, and … More

Why Nicholas Hytner is wrong about how to save the arts in England

Curtain call of ‘La Gate Perduda’, a community opera I helped with at the Liceu Opera House, Barcelona, October 2022 … More

Failing to write about uncertainty

A Restless Art was written from a place of relative confidence, although that confidence ebbed during the four years it took … More

A Selfless Age? From ‘Winter Fires’ to ‘1001 Stories’

Gwen Sewell and Rosie Wheatland, iPad painting by Mik Godley from Winter Fires (2012) I think about unravelling it, but … More

Principles of co-creation?

Three years after it began, the Traction project is finally complete. A review meeting with the European Commission two weeks … More

Co-creating Opera: Presenting the learning from the Traction project

Regular visitors to this site (and its retiring companions) will know that I have spent much of the past three … More

Old Words #11 – ‘All in this together’

Still from ‘Ghost Town’ The Specials, 1981 THE DEPOLITICISATION OF COMMUNITY ART IN BRITAIN, 1970-2011 In 2011, I was asked … More

Traction – an EU research project

An article by Emanuela Barbiroglio published in Horizon, The EU Research and Innovation Magazine,10 August 2022 A prison opera and digital … More

This is special

In the dusty hall of a disused prison workshop, 30 people shuffle into a big circle. Silence falls. They draw … More

‘Cabaret de la Gata’ – Traction takes off

As the pandemic recedes—or perhaps becomes normalised—it is becoming hard to recall the strangeness of those lockdown months, and the … More