François Matarasso

Clinging on in a tsunami: the arts and mental health

Since the beginning of 2020, the Baring Foundation has focused its arts support on the needs of people with metal

Can there be anything left to say about the Shoah? Surely every story has been heard, every angle covered, every

It took a while, and a lot of concerted pressure, but the British government has decided not to be remembered

The dreadful killing of George Floyd has further consciousness of Black Lives Matter as an idea, a movement and an

Several weeks ago, I wrote a post called ‘Right now, kindness might be more important than creativity’. I regretted the

History is what happened. Historians interpret – yesterday’s hero, recast as today’s pariah – but they can only work with what is

Since the start of the pandemic, I have been preoccupied by its traumatic effects. Some of the losses are obvious,

Call me naïve, but when I learned this week that the ushers working in a concert hall are on zero-hours

Honestly, how are you feeling? The adjectives that cycle through my contacts with people in the arts are increasingly consistent: tired,

My father, Robert, was born in Salonica (Thessaloniki, in Northern Greece) in 1927. His father, Isaac, was a doctor, while