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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 30 SEPTEMBER 2018
THIS WEEK
THEATRE
An authority
on the subject
of participatory
and community
art, François
Matarasso will be
a keynote speaker
at 'Sharing the
Legacy', the third
annual conference
organised by the
Valletta 2018
Foundation,
which this year
seeks to ask the
question, 'What
makes a city
better?'
Hoping for kinder,
more open spaces
How would you define
'participatory art', and how
would you say it has shifted
in tandem with our urban
environments since the 1960s?
For me participatory art is a
distinctive practice, which in-
volves professional and non-
professional artists working
together in the creation of an
artwork. It is different from
arts education because it leads
to the creation of the work
of art, which is shared with a
public – even if that public is
quite small. In its modern form
it began with the community
art movement in the 1960s,
and in the last 20 to 30 years
it has evolved into something
broader and more diverse,
sometimes at the cost of its
earlier radicalism. It is valu-
able for a number of reasons,
Teodor Reljic
