November 24, 2023
Tags: general semantics, systems thinking, transition design
This month Owen Kelly talks with Zeynep Falay von Flittner about transitions design and systems thinking.
November 17, 2023
Tags: early childhood, Ed Berman, europe, Inner City Theatre, networking, rural
François Matarasso and Arlene Goldbard talk with Ralph Lister from Take Art, in rural Somerset, England.
November 10, 2023
Tags: Gateshead, knowing, listening, participatory
Albert Potrony introduces his participatory arts practice, describing a recent project with young fathers in Gateshead.
November 3, 2023
Tags: copyright, corporations, easyGroup, intellectual property, public domain, trademarks
Owen Kelly argues that corporations try to extend and merge the definitions of copyright and trademarks. This hurts creators, stifles creativity, and harms the public domain.
Sophie Hope talks with Sam Trotman from the Scottish Sculpture Workshop and asks her about SSW’s philosophy and practice.
Many people take democracy for granted, but what is it really: certainly more than majority rule and voting every once in a while?
October 13, 2023
Tags: ABCD, asset based, community, conviviality, Illich, review
Owen Kelly reads extracts from The Careless Society to contextualise the arguments that John McKnight proposes.
October 6, 2023
Tags: co-creation, comic books, copyright, history
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly discuss whether Bill Willingham can put Fables into the public domain, and what it might mean for co-creation.
September 29, 2023
Tags: cultural democracy, Cultural Policy Collective, Kings College, Malcolm Dickson, Sally Morgan
This year Miaaw celebrates its fifth anniversary and so every time we find a fifth Friday in a month we will relive an episode from our history.
September 22, 2023
Tags: climate change, distribution, lottery, optimism
Owen Kelly talks with Steve Trow and Chris Baldwin about the idea of cultural capital, and the issues it raises in the West Midlands and in Blugaria.
September 15, 2023
Tags: arts, democracy, New York, participatory budgeting, trust-based funding
Caron Atlas discusses her work with Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts New York (NOCD-NY) and Arts & Democracy, and much, much more.
September 8, 2023
Tags: convention, Council of Europe, FCN, network
Ed Carroll discusses the Faro Convention, the role of a “framework convention”, and the work of the Faro Convention Network.
September 1, 2023
Tags: enshittification, feudalism, platform capitalism, Tesla, Uber
Owen Kelly looks at some of the implications of Cory Doctorow’s neologism “enshittification” and the discussions around it.
August 25, 2023
Tags: atmosphere, documentation, family, storytelling
Will Weigler, community-engaged theatre maker, writer and storyteller, discusses his role as official rapporteur for the ICAF Festival.
August 18, 2023
Tags: artist-teachers, PETA, Philippines, resilience
Maribel Legarda & Beng Cabangon of the Philippines Educational Theater Association, founded in 1967, talk about PETA’s creative strategies.
August 11, 2023
Tags: conviviality, Illich, review
Owen Kelly reads excerpts from Tools for Conviviality to make sense of the arguments that Illich proposes.
August 4, 2023
Tags: energy, Myvillages, Scotland, Scottish Sculpture Workshop, social change, summer camp
Sophie Hope recorded this live report on the final day of the Rural School of Economics summer camp in July 2023 in Lumsden, Aberdeenshire.
July 28, 2023
Tags: archeology, co-creation, ICAF, India
Owen Kelly talks with Kim Wide, the founder of Take A Part, based in Plymouth in the UK.
July 21, 2023
Tags: bravery, learning, reflection
François Matarasso and Arlene Goldbard talk about topics that are burning a hole in their brains: us vs. them; what cultural democracy means and why some people can’t get it; being a little braver…
July 14, 2023
Tags: feminism, listening, radio, transmission, VLF
Owen Kelly talks to Hannah Kemp-Welch about interfaces between feminism & ham radio, and the mysteries of ‘natural radio’.
July 7, 2023
Tags: Liverpool, participatory theatre, social change, The World Tomorrow
Collective Encounters discuss their work and the provocations they created for The World Transformed in Liverpool in September 2022.
June 30, 2023
Tags: ACGB, Arts Council, community art, history, manifesto, Sheffield
This year Miaaw celebrates its fifth anniversary and so every time we find a fifth Friday in a month we will relive an episode from our history. This month we slide back in time to December 21, 2018.
June 23, 2023
Sophie Hope talks to Koh Hui Ling and Han Xuemei.
June 16, 2023
Tags: participation, research, theatre, Wales
Arlene Goldbard & François Mattarasso talk with TEAM about A Proper Ordinary Miracle, and other recent projects from National Theatre Wales.
June 9, 2023
Tags: archiving, open source, peer-support, wikimedia
Andrew Gryf Paterson talks to Owen Kelly about Pixelache’s involvement with Wikimedia & auto-archiving as a core part of cultural activity.
June 2, 2023
Tags: book, memes, personhood, Routledge
Sophie Hope talks to Owen Kelly about why he wrote Cultural Democracy Now, and what he hopes will result from its publication.
Owen Kelly & Charlie Fox discuss working with a non-human entity, the Marseilles River Project, and the work of les Collectif des Gammares.
May 19, 2023
Tags: Appalachia, community art, history, theatre
Arlene Goldbard and François Mattarasso talk with Ben Fink and Kate Fowler about Art in A Democracy, from Roadside Theater in Appalachia.
May 12, 2023
Tags: Africa, corruption, internet, politics, telecoms
Owen Kelly talks to Russell Southwood about his recent book Africa 2.0.
May 5, 2023
Tags: cards, collaboration, conversation, evaluation, gamification
Owen Kelly talks to Sophie Hope and Henry Mulhall about their plans for Cards on the Table.
April 28, 2023
Tags: Augusto Boal, festival, ICAF, Kenya, Rotterdam, theatre of the oppressed
In a 4th report from the ICAF Festival, Owen Kelly talks to Bonface Beti, about his workshop Music is at the heart of African creativity.
April 21, 2023
Tags: collaboration, community art, documentation, festival, ICAF, ownership, points of view, Rotterdam
Sophie Hope & Owen Kelly talk to Kerrie Schaeffer about her presentations at ICAF on documenting community performance processes.
Owen Kelly talks with Ed Carroll and Vita Gelūnienė about The Cabbage Field community opera and the work of Zemuju Sanciu Bendruomene.
April 7, 2023
Tags: community art, festival, ICAF, Rotterdam
Sophie and Owen meet at the end of ICAF to look back over what they experienced.
March 31, 2023
Tags: 64 Million Artists, ACE, history, participation, response, therapy
This year Miaaw celebrates its fifth anniversary and so every time a month has five Fridays we will take the opportunity to look back at some memorable episodes from our short history.
March 24, 2023
Tags: Antwerp, learning, reflections, wp-zimmer
Owen Kelly talks with three of the artists who participated in Topos 3: Siniša Ilić, Ahilan Ratnamohan, and Stanislav Shuripa.
March 22, 2023
Tags: artists, conversation, Topos 3, wp-zimmer
A conversation between Dusica Drazic and Anna Titova.
March 21, 2023
Tags: artists, conversation, Topos 3, wp-zimmer
A conversation between Siniša Ilić and Ahilan Ratnamohan
March 20, 2023
Tags: artists, conversation, Topos 3, wp-zimmer
A Conversation between Zorka Wollny and Siniša Ilić.
March 19, 2023
Tags: artists, conversation, Topos 3, wp-zimmer
A conversation between Zorka Wollny and Anna Titova.
March 18, 2023
Tags: artists, conversation, Topos 3, wp-zimmer
A conversation between Ahilan Ratnamohan and Stanislav Shuripa.
March 17, 2023
Tags: challenges, co-creative, community art, generative
Arlene Goldbard and François Mattarasso discuss what community-based art can do.
March 10, 2023
Tags: health, humiliation, well-being
Sophie Hope contemplates the bedpan – “this embarrassing, awkward object” – from different angles.
March 3, 2023
Tags: activism, Black Panthers, history, rap, story
Owen Kelly looks at the web of arguments put forward by Jason “Propaganda” Petty in his book Terraform: Building a Better World.
February 24, 2023
Tags: art workers, children, migrants, refugees, Saxony
Sophie Hope and Marc Herbst discuss cultural movements and their crossover with political movements
Arlene Goldbard and François Mattarasso talk with Beverly Naidus about her life and work.
February 10, 2023
Tags: performance, philosophy, politics
Owen Kelly inquiries into the nature of apology in an age of instant opinion and social media.
David Moscow talks to Owen Kelly about how he moved from Bernie Sanders’ 2016 media campaign to the television series & book From Scratch.
Owen Kelly and Irina Mutt look at the 20th anniversary celebrations through the words of Antti Ahonen, one of the founding members.
January 20, 2023
Tags: community art, festival, journey, Rotterdam
François Matarasso & Arlene Goldbard talk to Jasmina Ibrahimovic about Rotterdams Wijktheater & the International Community Arts Festival.
January 13, 2023
Tags: activism, Geneva Convention, performance, statehood
Owen Kelly & Tomas Träskman discuss micronations as experiments in living, as performance art, and as political activism.
January 6, 2023
Tags: culture, industrialisation, Old Words, policy
François Matarasso presents an audio essay examining the depoliticisation of community art in Britain between 1970 and 2011.
December 22, 1949. An episode of the police procedural series Dragnet. A boy goes missing, along with the rifle he was due to get for Xmas.
This episode occurs one or two days before the annual Christmas celebrations and so we opted for a festive podcast starring Sherlock Holmes.
François Matarasso & Arlene Goldbard discuss Arlene’s forthcoming book, In The Camp of Angels of Freedom: What Does It Mean to Be Educated?
Owen Kelly & Ken Worpole look at cults and sects: at how we can define these, why they spread, and what this means for cultural democracy.
December 2, 2022
Tags: culture, industrialisation, Old Words, policy
François Matarasso explains why, as an area of conscious policy, culture has never been more important to democratic states than it is today.
November 25, 2022
Tags: education, extensión, participation, Uruguay
Ana Laura López de la Torre talks us through the ‘extensión’ function of the Universidad de la República with details of a current project.
François Matarasso & Arlene Goldbard talk to Carol Bebelle, cofounder of Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans.
November 11, 2022
Tags: constitution, Dalit, impossibilism, India, revolution
Owen Kelly looks at the lessons we can learn from Bhimrao Ambedkar, Dalit anti-caste campaigner & writer of most of the Indian constitution.
November 4, 2022
Tags: culture, Old Words, place, poetry, Robert Rendall
François Matarasso on Orcadian culture: “the unique creation of interaction between people and place, coming and going, over centuries”.
October 28, 2022
Tags: autonomy, education, participation, Uruguay
Ana Laura López de la Torre discusses the history and democratic structures of the Universidad de la República, Uruguay, with Sophie Hope.
October 21, 2022
Tags: Bulgaria, change, institutions, power
Yuriy Vulkovsky talks about his decades of experience working with communities and institutions in Bulgaria and nearby states.
October 14, 2022
Tags: anarchy, communes, Covid-19, cultural democracy, housing, philanthropy
Ken Worpole and Owen Kelly inquire into the nature of social experiments in living, ranging from self-invented communes to garden cities that arise from philanthropy and public policy.
October 7, 2022
Tags: music, Old Words, power, social change
François Matarasso discusses music and social change. He argues that the “social outcomes – a word I prefer to impact – of music making are real, complex and profound. They can be transformative, even life changing. They are not, however, only positive.”
We go back to June 3, 1956 to listen to an episode of the western series Gunsmoke. A pacifist arrives in town pursued by two men who want to kill him.
September 23, 2022
Tags: archives, documentation, history, local
Beverley Harvey & Brendan Jackson, co-founders of the Jubilee Archive project, discuss the archive, its purposes, and its future.
September 16, 2022
Tags: change, institutions, power, status quo
François Matarasso and Arlene Goldbard discuss power in the context of cultural institutions.
September 9, 2022
Tags: conspiracy theory, Covid-19, disease, history, science
Owen Kelly inquires into the heated arguments between proponents of the germ theory and the terrain theory of disease transmission.
September 2, 2022
Tags: folk culture, heritage, Old Words, tradition
François Matarasso discusses the differences between folk culture and heritage and how we might safeguard our intangible heritage.
August 26, 2022
Tags: diversity, interaction, safety, transformation
Arlene Tucker explains her practice and her decision to turn her house into a project where people can stay, play and work.
August 19, 2022
Tags: digital, history, storytelling
Joe Lambert talks with Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso about Storycenter.
August 12, 2022
Tags: Facebook, metaverse, philosophy, politics, virtuality
In this episode Owen Kelly expands on a lecture he first presented at the Max Planck Society in Hamburg to inquire into the nature of the metaverse and ask what Meta actually has in mind for us.
François Matarasso argues that “The values and practices of contemporary European culture are still defined by ideas that emerged during the Enlightenment, and the period of industrialisation and imperialism with which it is associated.”
We go back to June 21, 1950 to listen to episode 15 of 2000 Plus & learn about the future that people in the 1950s looked forward to.
July 22, 2022
Tags: collectivity, drawing, London
Delving into the Miaaw archives we catch Sophie Hope talking with Sally Labern, an artist and activist living and working in north London.
July 15, 2022
Tags: co-creation, Portugal, prison, youth
Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk with David Ramy and Bruno Homem of SAMP in Portugal about co-creating original opera with incarcerated youth.
July 8, 2022
Owen Kelly looks at some aspects of the relationships between cultural democracy and politics and the importance of the idea of a “democracy of species” that moves culture away from the Western idea of “Man vs Nature” and towards a cultural democracy that grows from the earth.
July 1, 2022
Tags: change, children, engagement, Old Words
François Matarasso contrasts the childhoods of today’s children with his own. He looks at what children gain from the arts and the ways in which politicians have contrived to limit this access and the amount of stimulation it can provide. He ends with a plea for increased involvement, but on children’s own terms.
June 24, 2022
Tags: Antwerp, building, cultural democracy, governance
Owen Kelly talks to Helga Baert and Dušica Dražić, 2 members of the wpZimmer collective in Antwerp, about wpZimmer & the project Topoi 2022.
June 17, 2022
Tags: best practice, corporate models, evaluation
Arlene Goldbard and Francois Matarasso ask what has gone wrong with “best practices?” What role does risk aversion play in funding? What about the underlying class biases that shape funding?
June 10, 2022
Tags: bullshit jobs, economics, prosumer, UBI, wages
Owen Kelly asks how culture and economics relate to each other, and what we might actually do to foster economic equity and cultural democracy.
June 3, 2022
Tags: Old Words, probability, rationalism, uncertainty
François Matarasso reads The Art of Uncertainty, an from 2010 that considers how the arts might respond to an era characterised by a sense of uncertainty.
May 27, 2022
Tags: colonisation, community, culture, exploration, space
In January 2022 Agnieszka Pokrywka spent two weeks in the Utah desert in a simulator designed to provide an analog of a Martian settlement as part of a multi-disciplinary crew.
May 20, 2022
Tags: murals, place, sacred objects
Arlene Goldbard and Francois Matarasso talk with Dave Loewenstein about the strength of the US mural movement, the centrality of place, the challenge of supporting the work, and much more.
Owen Kelly asks how culture and community relate to each other, and what we might actually do to foster community and cultural democracy.
Francois Matarasso reads Prisoners of Love, an extract from a book called Where We Dream, published in 2012 by Multistorey.
On October 31, 1938 Orson Welles broadcast an version of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds”: one of the great media hoaxes of the 20th century.
April 22, 2022
Tags: collaboration, history, motives
Sophie Hope, Lizzie Lloyd and Katy Beinart recorded a live conversation at a public event to launch Acts of Transfer.
April 14, 2022
Tags: cultural democracy, feminism, folk, gatekeeper
Arlene Goldbard and Francois Matarasso talk with Lucy Wright, a visual artist, artistic researcher, writer, and contemporary folk artist.
April 8, 2022
Tags: cultural democracy, economics, history, politics
Owen Kelly asks what might we mean when we talk about cultural democracy? Why might people need the term, and what can they do with it?
Francois Matarasso reads Making Nothing Happen, a talk he first gave in September 2016. He has revised it in the light of current events.
Arlene Goldbard, Owen Kelly Francois Matarasso talk policy for cultural democracy, taking off from the Porto Santo Charter
March 11, 2022
Tags: failure, optimism, public art
Sophie Hope expands upon her contribution to a forthcoming book called The Failures of Public Art and Participation.
March 4, 2022
Tags: essay, music, Old Words, reflections
Francois Matarasso analyses his initial reactions to hearing Eric Burdon singing House of the Rising Sun with the Animals as a child.
February 25, 2022
Tags: activism, black, resistance, trans
Sophie Hope and Jack Keenan interview Shama Khanna about their project Flatness.eu
February 18, 2022
Tags: age, experience, theatre
David Slater and Alan Lyddiard talk with Arlene Goldbard & François Matarasso about Art With The Experience of Age.
February 11, 2022
Tags: culture, evolution, prehistory, social
Owen Kelly asks what relevance the social mind hypothesis has for those interested in developing a coherent theory of cultural democracy.
February 4, 2022
Tags: artists, ethnography, social
Sophie Hope talks with Gretchen Coombs about her new book, The Lure of the Social.
Owen Kelly talks with Abhijit Sinha about how Project Defy has coped with the devastation that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused across India.