Creative writing projects, 2019 – 2021
After the Regular Marvels experience, in which I was able to work intensively for long periods, I wanted to see if I could adapt to the model that is now commonplace, even standard, in participatory art in the UK – the two-hour workshop. I was also interested to see what I could do in supporting other people’s creative writing. I bid for a commission offered by Writing East Midlands, as part of a programme for older people they called The Elder Tree. Each project involved ten two-hour workshops, and was intended to produce some kind of tangible output. I took on the first commission, with a changing group of people with complex health problems. Later, when another artist dropped out, I was asked to do a second project which happened online during the pandemic and involved people living in or near Boston, a historic market town in Lincolnshire.
I Remember Leicester (2019)
I Remember: Leicester – Inspired by Joe Brainard‘s I Remember, this book of collective memories was co-created through workshops with people supported by local health services and held at Attenborough Arts Centre.
Wish You Were Here (2021)
Wish You Were Here, a book of stories and poems produced with older people during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns: all the work was done online, and we did not meet face to face until the book launch in September 2021.
Regular Marvels, 2010 – 2015
Regular Marvels was a self-initiated project that aimed to find new ways of writing about people’s experience of participation in the arts, drawing on artistic and literary methodologies.
Living Heritage, 1998 – 2005
Living Heritage supported community development through local cultural resources in four countries of South East Europe: Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Romania. Led by the King Baudouin Foundation and the Open Society Foundation, the programme supported 140 grass roots projects including festivals, museums, music, dance, crafts, natural spaces among others, mostly drawing on traditional culture.
Community art, 1981 – 1994
Not yet available
François Matarasso 