MESOC Serapeum | Where culture meets AI

Id		99
Author		Matarasso, F.,
Title		A restless art. How participation won, and why it matters.
Reference		Matarasso, F. (2019). A restless art. How participation won, and why it matters. Lisbon and London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Link to article		https://arestlessart.com/the-book/download-a-digital-copy/
Abstract		A Restless Art is about community and participatory art. It’s about what those practices are, how people think about them, why they’re done and what happens as a result. It’s called ‘a restless art’ because this work is unstable, changing and contested. It involves a range of ideas and practices. It crackles with artistic, political, ethical and philosophical tensions that give it life, energy and creativity. They make it matter in people’s lives.

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It is reasonable to expect that someone who develops such abilities in a supportive situation, and demonstrates command of them in public, will gain confidence and self-esteem. .
today, it is also the rationale behind Creative People and Places, Arts Council englands major arts access programme. .
Because it values relationship and community. .
But a community artist must respect other peoples decisions, and the values and judgements on which they are based, even when they do not share them. .
It is the defining goal of community art because, despite its weaknesses, it aspires to empower all citizens to protect their human rights by participating in cultural life. .
the continuity of their appreciation is important and deserves recognition but there may be many reasons for it, including the social reinforcement of a cultures established values. .
Pupils artistic skills, writing and personal development, for example, are enhanced by its many superb activities. .
Pupils who are talented in sports or the arts thrive on a curriculum which offers many worthwhile opportunities in these areas. .
But they recognised the need for community development and environmental projects, including public art. .
Knowing the spectrum of participatory art, I know too that at its best it can be empowering and transformative. .
the new artistic ideas empowered artists imaginatively, and changed their relationship with audiences. .
so can the artistic and cultural activity that is central to social discourse. .
one answer is in the recognition that participatory art can be an empowering process. .
Many artists believe that people gain confidence through participating in creative activity. .
experiences such as these represent some of the more valuable participatory art work now being made. .
each generation takes ideas and inspiration from its predecessors but each must also create art in ways and for reasons that are meaningful in its own time. .
the ideas and methods of participatory art enable people to share the process of creation in ways they find meaningful. .
such examples show how cultural institutions have adopted participatory art to extend access to their programmes, collections and facilities. .
If we return to art as adults, it is often for just this capacity to jolt us out of everyday assumptions, to reconnect us with a sense of wonder and uncertainty that can open new creative paths when we are stuck in routine or unable to find answers to the situations facing us. .
Art exists, and the goal is to help people take part in it. .
Museum and gallery education can be a distinctive creative practice. .
the professional artists want to achieve good creative work, while people who attend may come to learn, to express themselves, or to enjoy social contact. .
And, since change is inherent in participatory art activities, their ideas may also shift during the course of the project, because of their own experience or because of how the project itself alters conditions for everyone involved. .
Because community artists wanted to involve people in creating art, they thought about the processes involved. .
It also generates new artistic ideas and forms, especially in the more open practice of community art, so that the final work may be quite unlike what was expected at the start. .
Putting on a community art event can be a path to other forms of collective action. .
In doing so, they made way for a new generation of young artists, with their own formative experiences and ideas about practice. .
It was not only individuals who were transformed by access to art. .
the acceptance of participatory art in health, education and other social contexts, helped show its wider potential. .
Participatory art empowers and emancipates. .
Participation defines how the work is made and it might provide enjoyment, open the artistic process to new people, foster community, or bring marginalised people to the stage. .
Increasing the cultural offer through participation Participation is not the only way of increasing access to culture, as evident in the continuing popularity of lectures, tours and other formal activities, but it is effective because, from a very young age, we learn about art by doing. .
Many of these treasures are now in public museums and galleries, where they are presented simply as cultureoften through access programmesrather than the taste of one social class and a moment in history. .
the participation of many civic theatres suggests a growing institutional interest in community art and inclusive practice. .
they arise because community art really matters in peoples lives. .
the artistic act intends to create and communicate meaning. .
Art is the creation of meaning through stories, images, sounds, performances and other methods that enable people to communicate to others their experience of and feelings about being alive. .
only if people are able, fully, freely and equally, to act as artists can they communicate what is meaningful to them in life. .
In doing so, they sense arts potential as a way of organising their experience and communicating to others what matters to them. .
Because art creates meanings and affects people, artists are responsible for what they create, though not for how others interpret or respond to it. .
human dignity, equality and social justice, like the capacity in everyone to express themselves artistically and create meaning in the world, will always be motivating goals for some artists. .
these experiences show how participatory art can help us live through difficult times by enabling us to express pain, anger and hope, make friends and find allies, imagine alternatives, share feelings and be accepted. .
At its best, participatory art creates a space in which all can speak and be heard, where our pain and our hopes can be shared, where we can build common ground and ways of working together, where our creativity and empathy might find better ways of living. .
Art making became a way to foster more open, friendly contacts within the school. .
But the enlightenments ideas also matter because they made us see art as a class of things. .
It allows them to gain knowledge, skill and experience, which, with luck and talent, might make them a successful artist. .
that is the claim and the promise of the fine arts, so access to them is to be encouraged because of their improving potential. .
Professional artists bring skill, talent, knowledge and experience to making art. .
A professional artist can be relied on to create something that is, at the very least, competent and sometimes exceptional. .
It is true that personal change is easier to enable and observe, as participants (nonprofessional artists) gain skills, confidence and knowledge. .
the foundation of empowerment in community art is a similar acquisition of skills in art materials and techniques that opens the possibility of using the power of art itself. .
It also helped them acquire new skills and knowledge, build confidence and social contacts, think, imagine, be creative and express their ideas, and be recognised for their achievement. .
People working in participatory art welcomed its ideas and findings, and it had a positive effect on support for their work. .
While their work is expected to achieve an acceptable artistic standard, it is assessed primarily on its ability to reach new audiences, to build confidence and skills, or to involve people in decision-making. .
In communities left more and more to their own devices, participatory artand especially community artmight be a valuable tool for building a better future. .
Respected as artists capable of for imaginative inquiry and creation, they experienced a kind of cultural democracy. .
It is one of participatory arts strengths that it can accommodate apparently dissimilar aims. .
shared creative work enables people to learn from and about one another because they bring different histories, identities, imaginations and desires to the act. .
The project cycle and empowerment one way of navigating these inequalities of power is to see that artistic activity is only one stage in a participatory art project. .
In all the diversity of their ideas and practice, community artists shared a common purpose of creating innovative, exciting art. .
they did not cause but enabled the development of participatory art in the hands of a new generation of artists. .
As a result, many others have benefited through participating in artistic work. .
The creation of art is intrinsic to community art and differentiates it from other forms of social action, including education or community development. .
It is enough to give people choices about their own education, culture and development. .
It can also be a joy to do, and art thrives when it gives pleasure. .
But participatory artists also see the process as intrinsically valuable. .
one reason why its pioneers saw community as being primarily geographical was their commitment to building lasting relationships with people through art work that developed over time. .
Art and culture both express human values and meanings but arts difference lies in its self-consciousness. .
the artistic act is a means of agency in the world, a way to speak and to be heard. .
the play touched many peoples sense of cultural identity, but it was also important in showing how theatre makers could participate much more fully in their local community. .
It also intends that empowerment should go beyond individuals and support people to create or strengthen community. .
More simply, it is people learning to create art together, to make sense of their situation, and to find ways to improve things. .
the artistic act is a deliberate response to a felt need. .
Artists often feel they should be positive and know the solutions. .
the creative partnership of professional and non-professional artists produces work that demands to be read and responded to in its own terms. .
non-professional artists have stories, feelings and ideas they need to share. .
these artists were reinventing community art in, with and for a fragile world, and I wanted to learn about their experience. .
the best that a participatory artist can do is to create the conditions in which change can happen. .
thirdly, art and culture can help revitalize our sense of community and place at this time of rapid economic and social change. .
together they now form a vast landscape of opportunities to discover art. .
Professionals the reasons why some peopleartists, policy-makers, donors or social partnersinvite others to participate in the arts shape the practice and its value. .
Paying people to participate in an art project changes the balance of power, and not only in positive ways. .
the new funds did make a huge difference to a cash-starved participatory art sector. .
For them, access to culture meant acquiring the tunes, dances, crafts and tales in whose everyday living creativity a communitys identity was held. .
new funds came to participatory art, from cultural and social sources, but that was due to the overall increase in budgets. .
It also finances Apropra Cultura, an initiative that supports visits to cultural venues by people attending social services and community centres. .
the projects varied in nature, art form, practice and social situation: diversity is a characteristic of participatory art. .
Geeses values include artistic excellence. .
It attracts artistic radicals, activists and supporters of everyday participation who believe in arts importance and therefore in peoples right to create it on their own terms. .
there are health professionals who are passionate about art and artists committed to social change. .
Many among them, especially the skilled workers who saw culture and education as paths to social mobility, were inspired by the prospect of emancipation through art, culture and education. .
the country now has a strong independent participatory art sector with individual artists, community art companies and cultural institutions. .
one of their most powerful inventions was fine art, which greatly increased arts importance as a value system and with it the status of the artist. .
Like art, culture is the creation of meaning, the expression of values. .
some people, through their own abilities or the benefit of social goods such as education, will be much more successful artists than others. .
It is intrinsic to this form of art and its value. .
Artists practicing community art, whether professionally or not, want to create something good, but only they, together, can decide what good means. .
It is about whether the state recognises the art they enjoy, and whether they enjoy the art that the state recognises. .
Like all artists, they believed fervently in arts value: that was why they wanted everyone to be able to create it. .
some artists came to see the product as little more than the trace of a shared creative experience, which was the real value of their work. .
the knowledge of a professional artist or critic is relevant because they have more experience of where the benchmarks of good performance might be. .
But it seems reasonable to expect that art will be enriched if more people participate in its creation, if only because that will increase the probability of exceptional talent being recognised. .
that must change if participatory art is to fulfil its potential in society alongside conventional artistic production. .
Participation in the cultural life of the community is a human right. .
there was a culture of exploration, and children were encouraged to use books, images and other resources as pathways for thinking about and expressing feelings. .
But that definition is intentionally loose so as to accommodate a very wide range of artistic work. .
Community art is an emancipatory movement because it aims to democratise that rightthat is what it means by cultural democracy. .
Art creates change, but it should be in the hands of the person who experiences it, not at the command of another, whether artist or funder. .
there is a vast ecosystem of artists, social organisations, community art groups, development workers, educators and activists making participatory and community art locally. .
the theory and practice of participation in contemporary art varies enormously, but the artist is in controlconceiving, planning, organizing and instigating a work in which others are then invited to take part. .
new ideas in art can produce shifts in cultural values. .
Peoples enthusiastic and varied participation in art should not be doubted. .
But such conceptual tools have value insofar as they help us think about what we are doing and why; its effects and consequences; its value to ourselves and to others; ways in which it might be different or better; and other, equally restless questions raised by participatory art practice. .
People Dancing, sound sense and engage have been vital, respectively, in community dance, community music and gallery education. .
It is a strength of participatory art to offer many different roles and kinds of involvement, so that people choose for themselves if, when and how they want to take part. .
A Restless Art is about community and participatory art. .
they are committed to the people they work with, and want them to benefit from taking part, but they look for social change in lived experience. .
It is also what makes the practice so rewarding, because it requires everyone involved to open themselves to other ideas, experiences and values. .
It will probably make them a professional artist, in the sense that their work is recognised by others and becomes part of a social identity. .
the experience was positive and the method has been adopted by some artists, but it still depends on their own time and investment. .
As we have seen, our response to art is personal and subjective. .
to make art with others, people need technical competences and crafts, organisation, teamwork, imagination, creativity and life experience. .

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