ISSUE 25 | October 2024
Welcome to the October 2024 edition of Miaaw Monthly which appears in a brand-new improved format, courtesy of our new newsletter provider Beehiiv.com.
This starts our third year publishing Miaaw Monthly, and we hope that this new service will let us expand what we do, and begin to increase the size of the community we have begun to gather around the podcasts. We now have the ability to add more complex links and to allow comments.
While we get all this up and running please continue to send us anything that you want to include in Miaaw Monthly, or anything you want to suggest we discuss in the podcasts, by emailing us at monthly@miaaw.net and we will be happy to include your news and suggestions here and in the podcasts.
TODAY’S PODCAST
TODAY’S PODCAST
Today and all this week you can go to the Miaaw.net website and hear Sophie Hope talking with Sean Gregory and Jo Gibson about the new De-Centre at Guildford School in London. And don’t forget that there are lots of links and references in the show notes for the podcast which you will find here.
PODCASTS FOR OCTOBER 2024
Friday October 4: Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | Episode 76
We are very happy to announce that we have partnered with Take A Part and the Gulbenkian Foundation to produce a limited edition podcast series based around TAP’s Social Making symposium in Bristol on October 10 and 11.
To kick this off Sophie Hope and Hannah Kemp-Welch talk with Kim Wide, TAP’s artistic director and CEO, about what she and we can expect from the symposium.
Friday October 11: Ways of Listening | Episode 12
Hannah Kemp-Welch discusses creative strategies to facilitate listening with Paul Crook, head of education at South London Gallery, and a practising community artist.
Friday October 18: A Culture of Possibility | Episode 45
In episode 45 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso continue their reflections on the language that we use when we talk about culture, democracy, politics and dreams.
Friday October 25: TAP Social Making | Episode 02
Last month we announced that we have partnered with Take A Part and the Gulbenkian Foundation to produce a limited edition podcast series based around TAP’s Social Making symposium in Bristol on October 10 and 11.
This week Sophie Hope and Hannah Kemp-Welch host the first report from the symposium. In future months we will have in-depth interviews with some of the key participants.
A THOUSAND WORDS

September 17: a suddenly autumnal morning in Helsinki (photo: Owen Kelly)
THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD
This Newsletter
You have probably noticed that this edition of the newsletter looks somewhat different from previous editions and (as we said at the top) this is due to the facilities offered by Beehiiv, which has become our provider of choice.
This is a transitional issue in which we get used to a new workflow and explore some of the new possibilities that Beehiiv offers. Hopefully everything works as intended but if you spot some glitches then they are our fault and we apologise!
You may also have noticed that we have switched the date of publication slightly.
We have heard from several people that they would prefer to receive the newsletter on a Monday or Tuesday rather than a Friday, and so from November we will aim to publish Miaaw Monthly on the first Monday of every month.
Let’s see how that works out…
That newsletter
We intend starting a second newsletter, to be known as The Miaaw Reader. This will come out approximately every six weeks and will contain two or three topical essays on topics connected to culture, democracy and the commons.
As we have promised we will not spam you about this with unwanted additional mailings, and so The Miaaw Reader will be opt-in and not opt-out.
In other words, we will tell you how to subscribe to it next month, when we explain our plans in more detail, and then only those people who decide to opt-in to subscribing will receive a copy when it launches in December.
We, of course, hope that everyone will opt-in – and we also hope that some or all of you will offer to write essays for it.
World Postcard Day
You may or may not know this but October 1st is World Postcard Day. If you go to the website you will get a complete history of the postcard from 1777 to today, and also learn that “After a successful celebration in 2019 of the 150th anniversary of the postcard, Postcrossing, with the help of Finepaper, decided to launch the World Postcard Day on every October 1st — a day to celebrate the postcard and the connections it brings.”
If you subscribe to The Miaaw Monthly you will get a short, sharp newsletter in your email in-box at breakfast time on the last Friday of every month. You can then find out what’s in the podcasts for the following month, as well as some things available in the wider world.
We won’t sell you email address, or use it for anything else except mailing you a copy of The Miaaw Monthly every four or five weeks.
Subscribe by going to miaaw.beehiiv.com/subscribe – and please tell your friends about it too!