miaaw.net
once a week audio essays, conversations and discussions about cultural democracy, community-based art, and the commons.
Episodes
Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about redemption: : the understanding that we can learn from experience and choose to realign some aspect of our lives to our deepest values.
How much do people believe positive change is possible? How much are people’s ideas of possibility constrained by a certainty that our pasts over-determine our future?
DECEMBER 9 | SERIES 2025
STREAM A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY | EPISODE 59
PARTICI...
When Arlene Goldbard is not being a cultural activist or a consultant, she paints. When she is not painting she writes. She writes essays and novels. Her latest novel <em>The Intercessor</em> has just come out.
Owen Kelly talks to Arlene about how this specific burst of writing began, how the novel grew from the initial writing, and what she hopes the published book might achieve. DECEMBER 5 | SERIES 2025
STREAM Meanw...
Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview Laura Raicovich about Fall of Freedom, which begins on the day this podcast drops. NOVEMBER 21 | SERIES 2025
STREAM A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY | EPISODE 58
PARTICIPANTSArlene Goldbard | François Matarasso | Laura Raicovich
COMMENTARYOn episode 58 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk with writer and curator Laura Raicovich, one of the initiato...
This month Owen Kelly looks at some of the deeper meanings of Katie Lam’s recent remarks on cultural coherence.
NOVEMBER 7 | SERIES 2025
STREAM Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | EPISODE 80
PARTICIPANTOwen Kelly
COMMENTARYIn this episode Owen Kelly looks into the idea of cultural coherence, something that bubbled to the surface after Katie Lam, a member of parliament for the Conservative Party used it in an interview wi...
In this episode we explore Faircamp again, trying to find something to celebrate halloween. Then we take a peep at what we can find at Tribe of Noise. OCTOBER 31 | SERIES 2025
STREAM Friday Number Five | EPISODE 19
HOSTOwen Kelly
COMMENTARYToday (or tonight, depending on where you are) we have the final Friday Number Five of 2025. At the end of January we started another irregular series of Radio Miaaw: podcasts of music i...
Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview Betsy Damon whose work with water has had a healing impact across the globe. She talks about her work from early projects in China to her current undertakings. OCTOBER 17 | SERIES 2025
STREAM A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY | EPISODE 57
PARTICIPANTS
Betsy Damon | Arlene Goldbard | François Matarasso
COMMENTARYBetsy Damon is an internationally-recognized artist whose public work and ...
Susan Jones works as an independent arts researcher and writer who holds specialist knowledge and insight about the social and political environment for artists and contemporary visual arts.
She has just completed her independent qualitative and longitudinal study Artists' lives: ecologies for resilience, formed around case studies of 14 visual artists from three English regions. She has been working on it for the last two years.
...
On episode 56 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso offer their third podcast in a series about censorship and related issues, following on episode 54 with writer Jeff Chang and episode 55 with muralists Amber Hansen and Reyna Hernandez.
Arlene and François talk about their own direct experiences with these issues, including times community artists had to chose which aspects of a project to share or n...
According to Wikipedia, Jon Savage “is an English writer, broadcaster and music journalist, best known for his book about the Sex Pistols and punk music, England's Dreaming”.
He has also written a lengthy and very detailed book called Teenage: the creation of youth 1875 - 1945, and in this episode Owen Kelly looks at that, and points to some of the many interesting and useful connections and examples that Savage has dug up.
The blu...
Oh look its the fifth Friday of August. That must mean its time for another episode of Friday Number 5!
At the end of January we started another irregular series of Radio Miaaw: podcasts of music issued under Creative Commons licences; a theme we last explored four years ago.
This month we have another unexpected surprise. We have found Faircamp, which aims to achieve something similar to Bandcamp, without any corporate shennanigan...
On episode 55 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso host muralists Amber Hansen and Reyna Hernandez, who were the first interviewees on the podcast!
Following on Episode 54, in which Jeff Chang detailed the censorship of his book by the US Department of Defense, Amber and Reyna talked about the more local or subtle forms of pressure to censor or self-censor, such as agencies that commission communit...
Miriam Toews is a Canadian author, and Fight Night is her seventh novel. It tells the story of a grandmother, a pregnant mother, and her young daughter who find themselves living together as an intergenerational family while having to cope with life-changing situations.
It reads as a comedy and a commentary. It feels hilarious and deeply moving.
Owen Kelly suggests reasons why you should find a copy and add it to your holiday readi...
On episode 54 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview author Jeff Chang, known for his books on cultural subjects including hip-hop, race and racism, and Asian Americans.
In May, Jeff posted to his Substack an account of how the Defense Department had removed his book, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A Hip Hop History, written for young adults, from schools on US military bases around the world. The ...
In this episode Sophie Hope talks to artist, researcher and teacher Anthony Schrag about a symposium he organised on 9 May 2025 at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh.
The symposium, entitled Getting it right/Getting it wrong: Socially Engaged Art and Ethics was supported by Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
Sophie attended the symposium and in this discussion she and Anthony reflect on some of the discussions ...
On Episode 53 of A Culture of Possibility, “Money Changes Everything,” Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about funding for community-based art and cultural democracy in light of the two previous episodes featuring funders from the UK and US.
What’s happening? What does it all mean?
Where can we go from here?
According to Wikipedia “Iain McGilchrist's 2009 work, The Master and His Emissary has sold over 200,000 copies worldwide. It sought to consolidate research in brain lateralisation and to insist on the individual and cultural importance of the bi-hemisphere structure of the brain”. McGilchrist suggests that “we have become entranced by the version of the world brought into being by the left hemisphere and forgotten the insights prod...
This month we have the second Friday Number Five of 2025. At the end of January we started another irregular series of Radio Miaaw: podcasts of music issued under Creative Commons licences; a theme we last explored four years ago.
This month we have a special and unexpected surprise. Moby and Little Walnut Productions have re-launched mobygratis with, their words “phenomenally expanded functionality and resources, making it the mos...
We interviewed John Phillips about The Museum of Unrest on December 6, 2024, at the time it launched its second collection, Good Design. You can listen to that discussion again if you click here.
Next month, in the middle of June 2025, the Museum of Unrest will launch its third collection, called Community Arts. This collection has been co-curated by John and Belinda Kidd, who has had a long and varied career in community arts, a...
In Episode 52, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview Lori Pourier, a citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who served as the President of the First Peoples Fund (FPF) between 1993-2024.
Currently, Lori acts as the Founder and Senior Fellow of First Peoples Fund, which “supports the cultural, artistic and ancestral practices of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian artists, families and communities, helping the...
This, the final episode of Ways of Listening, was recorded live by Hannah Kemp-Welch at the symposium ‘Listening Together: Practices for Community-Centred Listening’ at London College of Communication in February 2025.
Drawing on their experiences and emerging practices, electroacoustic composer Julia Schauerman, queer artist and educator Samantha Dick, and Senior Lecturer at University of Arts London Lainy Malkani reflect on the ...
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