This episode is a live recording of an event in which Sophie Hope talks with artists Amy Feneck and Ruth Beale. Together they reflect on 12 years of collaborative practice, spanning art, politics and the ongoing need to talk about economics. The conversation that forms the heart of this episode was recorded at an event organised by the Alternative School of Economics on 9 March 2023 at Gasworks,in London, England.

In Culture of Possibility #40, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview James Thompson, Professor of Applied and Social Theatre at the University of Manchester. James Thompson was the founder In Place of War, a project researching and developing arts programs in war zones and has extensive experience working with and writing about theatre under such conditions. The project describes itself as “a global organisation that uses artistic creativity in places impacted by conflict and...

Practitioner and researcher Sylvan Baker examines listening within applied theatre practices. Sylvan has worked across applied theatre, socially engaged arts and education for the past 30 years, and is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He describes a process of using ‘headphone verbatim’ to share testimonies with care-experienced young people, and shows how playback and performance change the resonance of the spoken word.

Last month we completed a three part mini-series and asked for responses. To our surprise the ones we got did not propose digital tools but enquired about a comment in the show notes here at miaaw.net. We noted that “Rather oddly he does not mention Todoist at all despite the fact that it sits at the heart of his attempts to stay organised. He obviously didn't stay organised long enough to remember to talk about it.” Tell us more about Todoist, you asked, and ask Owen to explain about his...

Karen Pilkington and Sophie Hope met doing their duties as board members of a community arts organisation. They want to get to know each other better and so in this podcast Sophie hears all about Karen’s inspiring work as a community activist in Plymouth, the origins of the Village Hub, how they’ve been organising their work through collaborative decision-making, transparent finances, disaster-proofing and how making relationships, equitable collaborations and decent conversations underpin...

In Culture of Possibility #39, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about the difficult conditions community-based artists and groups must work under as austerity measures, encroaching authoritarianism, and challenging world problems increase. They talk about artists’ strengths in building community for such times, and the importance of uncertainty in nurturing a culture of possibility. They encourage listeners to approach the future from the perspective of readiness: what will be...

Marley Starskey Butler works as a multidisciplinary artist and social worker. They have revealed that art has functioned as a therapeutic tool for them, helping them to process their own complex childhood, as well as their years in social work - and in 2023 they launched their first solo photographic exhibition, “Thirty-Six”. They work across visual, audio, and written media and explore the intersections between art, social work as employment, and their familial lived experience of social...

This completes a mini-series that looks at whether or not we should feel concerned about the digital tools we use and the effects that they have on us. In this episode Owen Kelly looks at some practical examples of changes we can make and tools we can use. He discusses why he uses Vivaldi as his browser of choice; why his websites all run on ClassicPress; what software he uses to write; which apps he use to access the fediverse; where he lives on the fediverse; and why the fediverse has...

Every year some months have five Fridays, and every time this happens we find something to do there: something out of our normal schedule. We try to adopt an annual theme. In 2021 we played music licensed under creative commons licences; in 2022 we found four old radio shows; and in 2023 we looked back to four early episodes of Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse. This year whenever we stumble into the fifth Friday of a month we will look around us and find a podcast that interests us: one...

In this episode Sophie Hope talks to four people connected to the MA degree course in Art and Social Practice at the University of the Highlands and Islands. According to the UHI website, “We are the only university based in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and we're a little different - we offer you the choice of studying at one of our colleges or research centres, over 70 local learning centres, or online from wherever you are.” Sophie talks with Roxane Permar, founder and programme...

In Culture of Possibility #38, Arlene Goldbard talks with Sebastian Ruth, Founder & Artistic Director and Resident Musician at Community MusicWorks in Providence, Rhode Island. CMW describes itself as a “community-based organization that uses music education and performance as a vehicle to build lasting and meaningful relationships between children, families, and professional musicians.” Its resident musicians form a string ensemble that commissions and performs work in concert while...

In the fifth episode of Ways of Listening, artist Jody Wood talks about listening as a practice of care - where to care is not to cure. Jody advocates for participatory ‘opt in’ structures for social practice art rather than co-creation, noting the complexity of human desires and potential for conflicting agendas. She goes on to question the expectations placed on artists to solve social issues. Using examples from projects taking place with social workers and in homelessness shelters, Jody...

This continues a mini-series that looks at whether or not we should feel concerned about the digital tools we use and the effects that they have on us. In this episode Owen Kelly explains three dimensions that we need to consider when thinking about the tools we use and why we use them.

In early February Sophie Hope went to Rome to present Manual Labours’ work at a conference. In this episode She and Fabiola Fiocco tell us about the workshop they did at MACRO - the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome. The workshop was organised by Fabiola Fiocco in collaboration with the Arts Module of the Master in Gender Studies (Roma Tre University) and facilitated by Fabiola and Sophie. They explain the background to the workshop and their research into bodies at work and the...

David Francis comes from Dumfries in the south west of Scotland, but cut his musical teeth in the north east, playing for bands like Desperate Danz Band. He moved to Edinburgh in the 1990s and became a central figure in traditional music: performing with Mairi Campbell in the successful duo The Cast while occupying key positions in the Scottish Arts Council traditional music section and the Edinburgh Folk Festival. In Culture of Possibility #37, Arlene Goldbard talks with David Francis, who...

Lady Kitt is a disabled artist and drag king, describing their work as “Mess Making as Social Glue”. Kitt works on long term, collaborative projects driven by insatiable curiosity about how art can be useful. Projects are usually punctuated by the creation of large-scale, vibrant installations / sites for exchange made from recycled paper, reused plastics and raw clay, which Kitt calls shrines. They use crafting, performance, joy and research to create objects, interactions and events, with...

This episode begins a mini-series that looks at whether or not we should feel concerned about the digital tools we use and the effects that they have on us. The tools we use and the uses we make of them have changed since the web began in the early nineties. Twenty years ago people created blogs and surfed the web looking for like-minded people. Today most people create personal pages on social media platforms and search inside Facebook to find new “friends”. Does this difference...

On September 23, 2022, we put out episode 20 of Common Practice, in which we talked with Beverley Harvey and Brendan Jackson about the creation of the online Jubilee Archives. Later, in episode 27, we talked with Steve Trow, one of the founders of Jubilee, about the importance of cultural capital. In this episode we conclude these discussions with a conversation with Brendan Jackson, triggered by the official finale of the Jubilee Archives programme. We ask what the project has achieved, and...

In Culture of Possibility #36 – the podcast’s third anniversary — Arlene Goldbard and Miaaw.net guru Owen Kelly will talk about cultural work and spirituality. Some community artists reject non-material understandings, but Owen and Arlene each find their work infused with spiritual ideas and practices — albeit very different ones. Is spirituality necessarily non-material? What can spiritual practice bring to our work? How can ideas and stories from sacred texts infuse and inform work for...

Sam Metz describes their rationale as responding to “the premise of ‘neuroqueering’ (a term first coined by Nick Walker) which seeks to undermine or subvert dominant structures that remain hostile to non-normative neurodivergent bodyminds. I am interested in exploring the idea of ‘hostile’ spaces through my work with a particular focus on what relational connections mean within ecology.” They go on to say that “in my socially engaged practice I am interested in exploring/ co-producing and...

Did we succeed or fail in 2023? What could this question possibly mean? Do we have any way of measuring our progress, or lack of progress? Do we need one? By way of addressing this, Owen Kelly suggests three approaches that we might usefully continue to develop in the coming year, and (spoiler alert) none of them involving wearing Fitbits. As always he attempts to provide some interesting concrete examples and contemporary references rather than hovering high above the clouds of theory.

We have arrived at the final podcast of 2023, which also happens to fall on the fifth Friday of the fourth month of 2023 with five Fridays in it. We therefore take a final look into the Miaaw past and listen once more to another memorable episode from our short history. This time we listen in to Owen and Sophie dig out their copies of Marxism & Literature and discuss the cultural theory that Raymond Williams develops there in considerable detail. They reflect on Williams’ insistence on...

Based in Bucharest, Raluca Voinea works as a curator and art critic, based in Bucharest and, since 2012 as co-director of tranzit.ro Association. In 2013 she acted as the curator of the Romanian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale and in 2015 she co-authored, with Alexandra Pirici, The Manifesto for the Gynecene: Sketch of a New Geological Era. The Manifesto subsequently became translated into several languages and included in different publications and exhibitions. In this episode she...

Judith Marcuse has become one of Canada’s senior artist/producers, with an international career that spans over 50 years as dancer, choreographer, director, producer, teacher, writer and lecturer. In 2007 she founded the International Centre of Art for Social Change, initially as a partnership with Simon Fraser University, where she was appointed an adjunct professor. Marcuse acted as the lead investigator of a six-year (2013- 19), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded...