Only Connect: Arts Touring and Rural Communities

Francois Matarasso with additional research by Phyllida Shaw, Helen Denniston, Anselma Gallinat and Emma Martin

A Comedia report for the National Rural Touring Forum 2004 ISBN 1 873667 825 £10 [£13.59 inc p&p]

Or £24.52 inc p&p for both titles.

The evocative experience of high quality ‘professional and homemade’ performance taking place in rural community venues in England and Wales is highlighted in Francois Matarasso’s Only Connect: Arts Touring and Rural Communities, a perceptive exploration of an arts infrastructure rarely described or valued. This work, commissioned by the National Rural Touring Forum, is based on case studies and contextual research and aims to record the important contribution of rural touring schemes to artistic and community vibrancy. It is written in a context of rural change and explores notions of community development and local democracy. It discusses the economics of rural touring, the make-up of audiences and the work of volunteer promoters.

One might expect Matarasso and the NRTF to produce a report advocating for the wider social contribution of rural touring and indeed they do. But Matarasso also stresses the importance of the artistic integrity of the work and describes a form where the inseparability of the two defines the particular qualitative experience. He finishes with a welcome plea to policy makers to avoid engineering outcomes from above, as this in itself is ‘inconsistent with an understanding of those outcomes, and the processes by which they come about’.

Whilst the NRTF’s previous publications focus on ‘how to do it’, this report probably represents, along with its parallel publication in Scotland, the first significant exploration of community based arts practices in rural areas in Britain since Bailey and Scott’s Rural Arts in 1989 and certainly the only one to explore the phenomenon of rural touring in detail.

Hamilton C & Scullion A (2004) The same…but different: rural arts touring in Scotland – the case of theatre Stroud: Comedia

Review byJennie Hayes, AHRB Research Fellow, Dartington College of Arts

SAM's Books compiles the Bookshop section of Arts Professional magazine, and used to compile Bookshop in its predecessor, Arts Business. This review has appeared in Arts Professional or Arts Business. It gives a longer and more personal description of the book than appears in the booklists.