I love flash mobs, because they are surprising and theatrical and romantic and the very embodiment of the French phrase joie de vivre. Since their inception in 2003 (the first was in Manhattan, organised by the editor of Harper’s Magazine as a social experiment), flash mobs have crept into the public consciousness to the degree that if you are out on the street in a big city and rapidly increasing numbers of people start to do something strange around you, you quickly realise that you’re watching a flash mob.

So a YouTube search for ‘flash mob’ and you find thousands of videos of spontaneous, joyous, non-conformist events. Some of my favourites are those that have been organised by a hopeful suitor who drops to one knee at the end and asks his love to marry him. Here’s a beautiful one: a man who arranged three hundred people to give his girlfriend a flower each, and then appeared in a tuxedo to propose – ah, romance!

But a new trend in flash mobs is pushing through that’s really exciting: creating a new way to express the arts and bring them to the public’s attention. For example, in autumn last year Lafeyette College in the States played host to a literary flash mob for Banned Books Week in which participants read aloud from 30 books that have been banned in America’s history. Not a beautiful sound by any means, but powerful.

Then recently, to mark the reopening of Amsterdam’s wonderful Rijksmuseum, actors re-created the museum’s most famous work, Rembrandt’s masterpiece ‘The Night Watch’.

Of course, you also have wonderful musical flash mobs bringing new life to classical music, such as the following unexpected performance of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus in a shopping centre food court:

What do you think? Would you love to stumble upon such a flash mob – or perhaps even take part? Do you think art belongs in a museum, or out on the streets, intermingled with everyday life? I would love to hear your thoughts.