In the second episode of Friday Number Five for 2026 we embark on another journey through the golden age of radio, this time with William Conrad starring as Marshall Matt Dillon in a 1956 episode of Gunsmoke.
Friday Number 5 
EPISODE 21 | MAY 29, 2026
 
HOST
Owen Kelly
 
COMMENTARY
On months that have a fifth Friday we break from our normal schedule and produce something tangentially related to ideas of cultural democracy. This year, as we did in 2022, we delve into the history of radio to bring back some historical examples of comedies, documentaries, and serials that let us hear unfiltered aspects of the world as it seemed to our grandparents. 
Today go back to June 3, 1956 to listen to an episode of the western series Gunsmoke. An actor, Irving Henry, arrives in Dodge City. You may recognise this as a none-too-subtle play on the name Henry Irving, a famous British actor of the nineteenth century who, in partnership with Ellen Terry, made the Lyceum "the most important theatre in London". In his last years he continued to tour the provinces playing characters from Shakespeare, and died suddenly after a performance in Bradford in October 1905.
This all has relevance for the episode you will hear in a minute, which is simply called Shakespeare.
Gunsmoke takes place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, in the post-Civil War era and centers on United States Marshall Matt Dillon as he attempts to enforce law and order in the city. 
The series was broadcast on CBS radio and later became a long-running and very successful tv show. Dillon was intended as a "Philip Marlowe of the Old West", and Gunsmoke as a western series for adults. The writers emphasised the brutal nature of the so-called Old West. Charles Meston, the head writer felt disgusted by the archetypal Western hero and set out "to destroy [that type of] character he loathed". In Meston's view, "Dillon was almost as scarred as the homicidal psychopaths who drifted into Dodge from all directions."
The series began on April 26, 1952 and ended after 9 series on June 18, 1961. This then was adult entertainment from the time when families sat around the radio to listen together. To listen to it today is to time travel to a past with different assumptions, different values, and different expectations about people, culture, ethics and society.
 
REFERENCES
Gunsmoke: Shakespeare https://www.oldradioworld.com/media/Gunsmoke%201952-08-23%20Shakespeare.mp3
Old World Radio, a source of historic broadcasts https://www.oldradioworld.com
A list of Gunsmoke episodes on Old World Radio https://www.oldradioworld.com/shows/Gunsmoke.php
Gunsmoke on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunsmoke
About Matt Dillon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunsmoke#Matt_Dillon
 
 

Jo and Sophie talk to programme leaders, tutors, students and the administrator of the two-year postgraduate Leadership programme, which ran from 2007–2019 at Guildhall School of Music and Drama for musicians wanting to develop their practice in socially engaged settings.
This constitutes episode 5 of a special series for miaaw.net about social practice programmes and projects at Guildhall School of Music and Drama from the 1970s–2020s.
 Echoes and the Unsaid 
EPISODE 05 | MAY 22 | 2026 
HOSTS
Jo Gibson | Sophie Hope
COMMENTARY
In this episode, we hear from tutors Jan Hendrickse, Nell Catchpole and Sigrun Sævarsdóttir-Griffiths; administrator Lucy Hunt; and students Preetha Narayanan and Jo Gibson about the beginnings, changes and challenges of the programme.
Topics include: the diverse, international cohort; how staff and students navigated the process of making music in different settings; how meanings of socially engaged practice evolved over time; and the tensions between the programme and the conservatoire context in which it was situated.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the podcast and to the Leadership programme over the years.
 
REFERENCES
Links to websites of the podcast guests:
Jan Hendrickse https://www.janhendrickse.com/
Nell Catchpole https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/staff/nell-catchpole
Sigrun Sævarsdóttir-Griffiths https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/staff/sigrun-saevarsdottir-griffiths
Preetha Narayanan https://www.preethanarayanan.com/
Jo Gibson https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/profile/1884
Past website documenting the Leadership programme
Guildhall Connect https://royalanniversarytrust.org.uk/winners/guildhall-connect-a-large-scale-programme-using-musical-creativity-to-engage-and-inspire-young-people/
Series of reports about Guildhall Connect by Chigusa Futako
Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Guildhall
De-centre for Socially Engaged Practice and Research

On Episode 64 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso discuss the ethical issues that arise when working with communities. 
The presentation was recorded live at a session at the International Community Arts Festival in Rotterdam earlier this Spring.
 
A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY
EPISODE 64 | MAY 15 | 2026 
PARTICIPANTS
Arlene Goldbard | François Matarasso
 
COMMENTARY
In the second episode based on live recordings from ICAF in Rotterdam, we hear Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso and their presentation on Community Arts and Ethics.
The episode has three parts. We begin with a short introduction in which Arlene and François set the context for the workshop. We then hear the first part of the workshop - their initial presentation - exactly as it happened. We have deliberately left in the slight imperfections and occasional background noise to preserve as far as possible the atmosphere in the hall. 
At the event this was followed by an interactive feedback session. However it was not possible to obtain permissions from all those present to use their voices. Instead Arlene and François have created a summary of the questions that people raised and the answers they provided. This freshly recorded summary forms the final part of the episode.
 
REFERENCES
Ethics & Participatory Arts, a 2021 pamphlet by Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso https://content.gulbenkian.pt/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/05120439/2021_AC_Ethics-and-Participatory-Art.pdf
ICAF Rotterdam https://icafrotterdam.com/
François: A Restless Art https://arestlessart.com/
François: A Selfless Art https://aselflessart.com/
Arlene on Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlene_Goldbard
Arlene’s website  https://arlenegoldbard.com/about-2/
 
 

In this month’s episode of Parallel Streams we listen to an episode of THOUGHT SNACK, with Max Haiven and Sarah Stein Lubrano.
THOUGHT SNACK is an occasional podcast from Sense & Solidarity where Sarah and Max explore the big ideas that make and break our world.
PARALLEL STREAMS
EPISODE 05 | MAY 8 | 2026
 
PARTICIPANTS
Max Haiven | Owen Kelly | Sarah Stein Lubrano
 
COMMENTARY
Max Haiven is an researcher and educator who uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. He works as an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University in Canada.  His latest book is Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022).
Sarah Stein Lubrano is a writer and researcher who specializes in the social psychology of politics. For many years she was the Head of Content at The School of Life in London, Currently she is Head of Research for the The Future Narratives Lab, whose work focuses on narratives about social and political change. She is the author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (2025).
Together Max and Sarah founded and now organise Sense & Solidarity which offers a platform where people who want to radically change the world can learn together and build individual and collective capacity.
This THOUGHT SNACK podcast was released under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence.
The music in the podcast is by Dan Gouly.
REFERENCES
Three Motivations for Fascists on Soundcloudhttps://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/threefascistmotivations
 
THOUGHT SNACK on Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/thoughtsnack
 
Sense and Solidarity https://senseandsolidarity.org/
 
Sarah Stein Lubrano https://www.sarahsteinlubrano.com
 
Max Haiven https://maxhaiven.com/
 

During a discussion about the possible meanings of cultural democracy Sophie Hope raised the concept of structures of feeling that Raymond Williams had developed. 
In this episode we examine this concept in more detail.
 
Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse
 
EPISODE 86 | MAY 1 | 2026 
 
PARTICIPANTS
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly
 
COMMENTARY
Owen Kelly and Sophie Hope dig out their copies of Marxism & Literature and discuss the cultural theory that Raymond Williams develops there. They reflect on Williams’ insistence on keeping in mind that we live our lives as processes, and that cultural theory needs to avoid turning these into finished products that we can dissect at our leisure.
We examine some of the things that this might mean in practice, and what all this might mean for anyone interested in exploring ideas like cultural democracy.
This continues an argument that we have been developing over the last few episodes and the argument will conclude in the next episode, when all the threads (cultural democracy as process, the subtle perils of AI, and the structure of feelings) will come together into a total something that will appear (slightly) greater than the sum of its parts.
Note
The file uploaded on May 1 had some serious audio glitches. Apologies. We uploaded a repaired file on Saturday May 2. Please enjoy this one!
 
References
Oxford Reference online https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100538488
Sean Matthews on Structure & Feeling https://www.academia.edu/1196858/Change_and_theory_in_Raymond_Williamss_Structure_of_Feeling_2001_

In the fourth episode of Echoes and the Unsaid Jo and Sophie talk to a group of people involved in the BA Performance and Creative Enterprise (PACE) Programme that ran from 2015-2021 at Guildhall School of Music and Drama. 
They discuss the background to the course, reflections on how it challenged the structures of the conservatoire and the generative community of practice that evolved between students and staff during the life of the programme.
 Echoes and the Unsaid
 
EPISODE 04 | APRIL 24 | 2026 
PARTICIPANTS
Jo Gibson | Sophie Hope
COMMENTARY
 
Jo Gibson and Sophie Hope talk to a group of people involved in the BA Performance and Creative Enterprise (PACE) Programme that ran from 2015-2021 at Guildhall School of Music and Drama. 
We hear from student Georgia Dodsworth, the programme co-ordinator, Naomi Nathan, module leader for collaborative practice, Natasha Zielazinski, and lecturer Justin O'Shaughnessy. 
They discuss the background to the course, reflections on how it challenged the structures of the conservatoire and the generative community of practice that evolved between students and staff during the life of the programme. Thank you to the contributors of this podcast and all the staff and students who worked on the PACE programme. 
REMINDER
This is episode 4 in a special series for miaaw.net about social practice programmes and projects at Guildhall School of Music and Drama from the 1970s to the 2020s. 
The series is hosted by Jo Gibson (Research Fellow, Institute for Social Justice, York St John University) and Sophie Hope (co-lead of the De-centre for socially engaged practice and research at Guildhall School of Music and Drama). 
REFERENCES
PACE alumni https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/study-with-guildhall/drama/performance-creative-enterprise-alumni
Natasha Zielazinski https://natashazielazinski.com/
 
Georgia Dodsworth https://natashazielazinski.com/
Open school East https://openschooleast.org/
Shoreditch Festival https://www.ponystudio.co.uk/pictures/projects/shoreditch-festival/
Cultural Olympiad https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09548963.2013.798999
Barbican Creative Learning https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/about-guildhall/news/barbican-guildhall-creative-learning-marks-decade-of-transforming-lives
Bedwyr Williams exhibition in the Curve Gallery (2016-17) https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2016/event/bedwyr-williams-the-gulch
Islington Mill https://www.islingtonmill.com/
Ways of Seeing by John Berger https://www.ways-of-seeing.com/
Memorial to Kenny Mukendi https://www.wired4music.co.uk/2019/10/in-memory-of-kenny-mukendi-a-k-a-vulcan-mc/
Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson by Mark Fisher (2009) https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Resistible-Demise-of-Michael-Jackson-by-Mark-Fisher/9781846943485?srsltid=AfmBOoom0-_--ptJKx839YJkarW0EBO9wEnQihlwCV8tHp1COIEDYdpi
Books by bell hooks https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/collections/author-books-by-bell-hooks?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20190430526&gbraid=0AAAAADZzAIA7QFIPekGdxZuNRNF3ENifr&gclid=CjwKCAjwspPOBhB9EiwATFbi5GtShIa91SaSwVKAGIA_ws9h3ekoXhEXu7Rz7nVV6SWrfTrcIQO41BoCZccQAvD_BwE
 

Episode 63 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso discuss cultural policy as it really is, and not as policy makers would like you to think of it. 
The presentation was recorded live at a session at the International Community Arts Festival in Rotterdam a few weeks ago.
 
A CULTURE OF POSSIBILITY
 
EPISODE 63 | APRIL 17 | 2026
 PARTICIPANTS
Arlene Goldbard | François Matarasso
COMMENTARY
Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso have hosted the A Culture of Possibility podcast for over five years but they have never met face to face - until they finally met late last month at the ICAF Festival in Rotterdam. They had been invited to give two joint workshops: one on cultural policy and community arts, and one on ethics and community arts.
In this episode, we listen to the first part of the first workshop - the initial presentation - exactly as it happened. At the actual event this was followed by an interactive feedback session. Here you are invited to conduct your own experiment at home.
Please note that you may hear a few microphone problems at the beginning of the presentation, and some extraneous noise from time to time; but not very much, and certainly not enough to distract from what Arlene and François have to say.
REFERENCES
ICAF Rotterdam https://icafrotterdam.com/
François: A Restless Art https://arestlessart.com/
François: A Selfless Art https://aselflessart.com/
Arlene on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlene_Goldbard
Arlene’s website https://arlenegoldbard.com/about-2/

In the fourth episode of Parallel Streams we listen to episode 52 of Ferment Radio, with Kirsty Hendry and Aga Pokrywka.
Ferment Radio is “a podcast series that takes you deep into the fascinating world of microbes. Through fermentation and transformation, we develop new recipes for living on a broken planet”. 
PARALLEL STREAMS
EPISODE 04 | APRIL 10 | 2026
 
PARTICIPANTS
Kirsty Hendry | Owen Kelly | Aga Pokrywka
COMMENTARY
Ferment Radio has produced more than 50 episodes “that takes you deep into the fascinating world of microbes. Through fermentation and transformation, we develop new recipes for living on a broken planet”. 
They do this because, argue, “Pollution, drought, floods, deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change... We are experiencing the consequences of human’s alterations of the Earth’s ecosystems. There is no pristine world. We are living on a broken planet”.
They are Aga Pokrywka and her guests, and their starting points are more diverse than you can imagine, although they all link back to the process of fermentation.
REFERENCES
Ferment Radio https://fermentradio.com
Super Eclectic https://supereclectic.team
Super Eclectic shop https://holvi.com/shop/supereclectic/
Temporary Democracy: https://www.miaaw.net/e/temporary-democracy-in-a-cultural-space/
Sandor Katz: feminist and queer theories of fermentation https://www.miaaw.net/e/common-practice-ferment-radio/
Play that Fungi Music! https://www.miaaw.net/e/play-that-fungi-music/
Life on Mars https://www.miaaw.net/e/common-practice-life-on-mars/
Show me your kitchen https://www.miaaw.net/e/podcasting-ferment-radio/