It can exist hard to read nowadays. There are so many demands on our time (at least and then long as nosotros're considered socially useful) and there'south then much information, from so many sources. A Restless Fine art is about 80,000 words long. I'm not a quick reader, and it would have me several hours to become through it—more if I wanted to follow upward or retrieve about its ideas as I read. That'southward why my recent books (the Regular Marvelsseries) kept to about 20,000 words, with the idea that you could read them in a couple of hours. That was never going to be possible with the more ambitious and circuitous discipline of A Restless Fine art. Indeed, about l,000 words were cutting from the final version (some of them volition appear on this site for anyone who wants to dig deeper). Even so, reading the book is a lot to ask.

So, in the age of TL:DR , here's a quick summary of the book. If you want to read more than, you tin can download a free PDF here or society a print re-create here .

The book is divided into 4 parts, two short ones separated by and two long ones. Information technology also includes 48 colour pages, that give short descriptions of participatory art projects from over 15 countries.

Cabbage Field Opera (Kaunas 2018)

 Role I, PARTICIPATORY ART At present

1. The normalisation of participatory art

The beginning chapter opens by showing how participation has become normalised art practise and policy in the course of the past twenty years. (In saying that, I'm non of course talking virtually people's everyday enjoyment of fine art, which has always been normal, but the official, funded, public (and as well commercial) professional culture. A someone who began working in community fine art when it was marginal and, in the eyes of many, disreputable, I ask why that has happened. This affiliate as well outlines the inherently unstable nature of participatory art, making a connection with the concept of 'border-situations' developed by the philosopher Karl Jaspers.  The affiliate ends by suggesting some of the causes and consequences of the ascent of participatory art.

'This Is Non For Yous'( Graeae 2018)

Function II, WHAT IS PARTICIPATORY ART?

2. Concepts

Chapter Two sets out some foundational ideas about art itself, examining the proficient and bad consequences that followed the invention of Fine Fine art during the European Enlightenment. Arguing against the conventional thought of art as an object, or a class of things, seeing information technology instead equally an act in the earth. The nature of that act is to create (i.eastward. bring into existence) something that holds meaning or makes sense of the maker's experience. In this concept art (and culture, of which it is a self-witting office) is a power, not a good. Its moral, ethical and political value is inseparable from the meanings it carries and the uses to which information technology is put. The chapter concludes by arguing that this is why anybody is guaranteed the right 'to participate in the cultural life of the community and enjoy the arts' in the Universal Annunciation of Human Rights.

3. Definitions

Chapter Three looks at some of the terms used to describe participatory practice in the arts, proposing that only ii are necessary to empathize the field every bit a whole. It goes on to suggest definitions of  'Participatory art' (an all-encompassing term for the work) and 'Community art' (a practice rooted in man rights discourse and with an overtly emancipatory purpose). I argue in this context that only the deed of creating art tin can define a person as an artist, although there is an important divergence between people who do it professional and those who don't. Finally, I explicate of why I don't see most contemporary fine art or amateur art to be participatory art, fifty-fifty when information technology involves participation equally a strategy.

4. The intentions of participatory fine art

Chapter Four suggests that there are three broad reasons why people brand participatory art, each of which is rooted in distinct theories, policies and ideas about art. They are: Increasing access to art (cultural democratisation); Creating social change; and Advancing cultural democracy. Later because the strengths and limits of each, the chapter concludes by suggesting that they are not necessarily incompatible just that they define a very large territory inside which organisations, people and projects position themselves and as well move.

v. The art of participatory fine art

Chapter V considers the aesthetics of participatory art, arguing that its grade and significant are radically inverse by the cooperation of professional person and non-professional person artists. It considers the importance of process, seeing it not equally antithetical to product just as leading to the cosmos of art that cannot be meaningfully assessed past existing standards rooted in concepts of fine art and professional production within a capitalist economy. The chapter ends by proposing an approach to thinking virtually artistic quality that tin can consider both product and process.

vi. The ideals of participatory art

Affiliate Six looks at some of the ethical issues that ascend from the inequalities of power inherent in participatory art. It considers both the nature of change – how art affects us – and the ethical implications that follow, within a homo rights context that prioritises the autonomy of individuals to determine for themselves what is in their own involvement. It also considers the vulnerability of professional person artists and the codes of conduct that can protect them.

Welfare Land 2006 'Longline, the Funfair Opera' © François Matarasso

Function III,  WHERE DOES PARTICIPATORY Fine art Come FROM?

vii. Making history

This brusk chapter explains both why the history of participatory fine art is important and the subjectivities that inevitably shape my own understanding, and hence the largely English language perspective on this story that I am able to set out.

8. Deep roots (earlier 1968)

Chapter Eight returns to the invention of fine art   during the 2nd one-half of the xviiithcentury, its association with ability and human rights, and its inevitable relegation of all other artistic creation to a secondary status. It briefly considers 2 contrasting reactions to this situation that emerged during the 19thcentury. The beginning was the provision of cultural facilities for new urban populations with the intention of 'civilising' them: this is one origin of the policies at present pursued as cultural democratisation. Past dissimilarity, working people worked towards their emancipation through fine art and cultural evolution, setting up their ain associations that can be seen as initiating ideas of cultural democracy. The chapter then looks at the evolution of commercial culture, broadcasting and state cultural policy in the ideological struggles of the mid xxthursdaycentury, and how they contributed to the emergence of anew cultural and political ideas in the 1960s.

9. Customs fine art and the cultural revolution (1968 to 1988)

Chapter Ix gives two contrasting accounts of the rising and decline of the British customs arts movement between the 1960s and 1980s. The start concentrates on the theoretical ideas and struggles and how they eventually failed against the rightward shift in Western politics during this time. The 2d, past contrast, focuses on the creative and social practices through which those ideas were pursued and shows how successful they would get in influencing the cultural sector more widely.

10. Participatory fine art and cribbing (1988 to 2008)

Chapter Ten shows how a weakened  community art motility began from the late 1980s to make alliances beyond the art world, securing new resource and brownie  that, supported by a growing body of research, helped secure its identify inside public policy, albeit nether the more neutral proper name 'participatory fine art'. It describes besides the costs that came with this new position, including misplaced expectations most the social alter information technology should produce and its accountability.  Information technology suggests that the assimilation of participatory do in the established cultural sector, while important, has too brought risks of institutionalisation

11. Without help, without permission (Since 2008)

Chapter Eleven brings the story of participatory art up to date and shifts the focus to a broader European perspective. It argues that in the more than prosperous northern countries, the pattern of evolution has been similar to Britain's, with a growing institutionalisation of the piece of work. But in Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, and Mediterranean countries, a practice that had begun to grow in the early 200s has been shaken, energised and politicised by the 2008 financial crunch and its backwash. A new generation of young people are doing serious work, ofttimes in precarious situations, that is forging new ways of working in a vulnerable world.

Urban Dig Projection (Athens 2016)

Office IV, PARTICIPATORY ART NEXT

12. Promise in dubiousness

The final affiliate tries to bring together some of the threads of the book, arguing that the change it documents is historic and welcome. It marks a gradual healing of the split up between Fine Fine art — which remains a vital, critically witting resources — and all other forms of fine art. Committed, progressive artists, including the community art movement, played a critical part in enabling this change, only it has mainly happened because of deeper socio-economic and cultural changes. There follows  a brief overview of what participatory art needs (i.e. resource, trust and professional development) and what it does non demand – largely condescension. The book concludes by admit the dangerous, unstable and vulnerable land of the globe in the early 21stcentury.  It affirms my belief that participatory art, and especially community art, is a powerful, emancipatory and autonomous resource with which we tin can respond to change and imagine better futures.

Thanks for reading this far

If you want to read the book itself, you lot tin can download a free PDF hither or gild a print copy here .