Co-creation (which I have called community art for most of my working life) is an infinitely rich and diverse practice that unites professional and non-professional artists in making art together. I have seen co-creation in visual art, theatre, dance, writing, music, video, indeed any kind of media you can imagine, and outside the arts, in people thinking creatively together. I have seen it throughout Europe, in Australia, in Japan, on the Bolivian Altiplano and the dry sands of Burkina Faso, in Quebec and Kyrgyzstan and Cuba, and I have read or been told about it in many other places too: it is a truly universal cultural practice, even if, like a chameleon, it always takes on local colours. And, to my initial surprise, it leads everywhere to very similar and valuable outcomes: new capabilities and increased confidence, community building and development, awareness and empowerment.
Co-creation emerged in its current form from the cultural revolution of the 1960s, though the demand for cultural recognition and empowerment was much older than that. From the start it was radical and contested because it challenged the power of elite institutions to be sole arbiters of cultural value. In recent years, seeing that they cannot prevent the spread of co-creation, those institutions have begun appropriating its methods, style and language in the hope of appearing more democratic and inclusive. It is a dangerous deceit that exchanges a pretence of legitimisation for control. It should be resisted. Co-creation belongs to everyone. It needs no one’s approval. Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees everyone’s right to enjoy the arts and participate in the cultural life of the community. It says nothing about an obligation to do so, still less to do it on the terms offered by social, political or cultural elites.
This website is the sister of A Restless Art, where for the past 10 years I have shared ideas about the history, theory and practice of co-creation. That work culminated in a book that was published in 2019 and can freely downloaded as a digital copy. But since then I have begun to rethink my ideas in the light of global events and personal change. It’s not that I no longer believe what I wrote before but that I see better how it is partial and incomplete, in some respects inadequate. There is more to say, and it needs saying in a different way. Substance and form will emerge in my work here; they might become another book, but for now, this site is an end in itself.
I want to acknowledge the context in which I write because it affects so many lives and because it contributed to making me rethink my ideas about co-creation. Since A Restless Art was published, the living conditions of many people have become objectively worse: indeed they have been doing so since the Great Recession of 2008 and arguably since the ascendancy of neoliberalism in the 1980s. But to focus just on the past five years, I think of the Covid-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and war in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar and many other places, social shifts like the rise of populism and fake news, the Far Right’s assault on democracy and the rule of law, and the arrival of AI and bad actors in cyberspace. And underlying all this is the climate crisis and its increasingly obvious and devastating effects.
It is not easy to maintain hope in such times. I’m especially conscious that many young people despair of the world that my generation is leaving them and yet the shape of the future depends on them. I have always thought that one of the best things human beings can offer one another is encouragement, literally, the instilling of courage. It is what I’ve tried to do in every project, conference speech, workshop or blog post: leave people feeling stronger than they did. We have to be brave in the world. The only antidote I know to the worst of humanity is its best, and I believe that there are always more of us, far more, who want the best of ourselves and for each other. This is true in every situation, at every scale, from a small community art project to a global campaign. I have recently been encouraged by the words of Katherine Rundell, a writer who knows that life is short and therefore precious, and who says ‘the time to give up is never’.
After a succession of heavy blows—bereavements, losses and illness—I lost my confidence. For a long time, I did not want to speak in public or write online because I could not find any courage to share. I did not think I had anything more to give. I’m still not confident I have but, as another wise friend told me recently, it is always better to act than to remain inactive. Things will improve only through the concerted efforts of those who believe in truth and justice, equality and fairness, tolerance and kindness. And, truly, we are legion and we need to act.
So I will do what I can, where I can, though it will take a while to regain my strength. And I will do it here because I am a writer. I believe, with Katherine Rundell, ‘in the wild and immeasurable value of pouring everything you think good or important into a text, that another may draw it out again.’ My ideas about how co-creation might adapt to face the world today remain half-formed but I will share them here and watch them grow. That is what this site is for. And because it is about ideas, not projects, I will keep it simple: no pictures, no downloads, no nested pages, just putting everything I think good or important into a text. I have set myself the goal of publishing something each week, and I’ll work hard to keep to that, even if I have only something small to offer. If you would like to follow the journey, please subscribe below and you’ll get an email with each new post.
Ah but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty
References
- Rundell, K., 2019, Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise, Bloomsbury, London, p. 55.
- Rundell, K., 2025, Books v Screens: Why Every School Needs a Library, Radical with Amol Rajan, BBC Podcast.
A Selfless Art 
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