The Episodes So Far...
October 12, 2018
001: Cultural Democracy in Practice
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly look at the recent report by 64 Million Artists, and the responses it has drawn; and wonder what they thought they were up to.
October 26, 2018
002: Reflections on The World Transformed & Social Tools
The World Transformed took place in Liverpool in September 2018, just three days before Social Tools took place in Helsinki. Sophie Hope managed to attend both of them.
November 9, 2018
003: Beyond the manifesto: a new deal for the arts
Kieran Curran has written an important essay in the online journal New Socialist, that suggests how the Labour Party manifesto of 2017 might be extended and improved in its commitment to culture. Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly look at different aspects of his article and discuss the possibilities inherent in his proposals.
November 23, 2018
004: A Prehistory of Cultural Democracy
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly look back at some of the thinking that led to the development of the idea of cultural democracy, and the ways in which the community arts movement nurtured these ideas.
December 7, 2018
Megha Sharma Bhagat and Abhijit Sinha from Project DEFY in Bangalore visited Helsinki to take part in the HundrED innovation summit. Owen Kelly met them in the cafe in Kiasma, Helsinki’s modern art museum, to talk to them about culture, democracy, and radical action in India.
December 21, 2018
006: Community Art & Cultural Democracy
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly discuss the reasons that cultural democracy began to find favour among some people working in the British community arts movement in the 1980s. They used it to describe the goal and purpose of their work, when Roy Shaw at the Arts Council of Great Britain began to try to paint them as quaint missionaries.
January 4, 2019
007: Cultural Democracy in the USA
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly talk with Arlene Goldbard, a writer, social activist and consultant from the USA, whose focus is the intersection of culture, politics, and spirituality. She is a long-time advocate for cultural democracy and a creator of cultural critique and new cultural policy proposals.
January 18, 2019
008: Cultural Democracy across the Ocean
This episode continues a conversation between Arlene Goldbard, in New Mexico; Sophie Hope, in London; and Owen Kelly, in Helsinki. The conversation begins by discussing the US Department of Arts and Culture, where Arlene Goldbard acts as Chief Policy Wonk.
February 1, 2019
009: Autobiography and culture politics
Sophie Hope and Jonathan Gross discuss the relationship between autobiography and cultural action, and the needs to explore memory and history as a means of making sense of one’s own cultural politics. During the conversation they each discuss how they came to view cultural democracy as a meaningful idea and a useful tool, and what inspired them to do so.
February 15, 2019
010: Culture & the Cultural Cities Enquiry
Last week the report of the Cultural Cities Enquiry appeared, published by a consortium of Core Cities, Key Cities, consultants and arts funding agencies in the UK. Sophie Hope, Owen Kelly & Stephen Pritchard sat down to discuss what the report says and doesn’t say; and the ways in which it does and doesn’t say these things.
March 1, 2019
011: The Resurgence of Cultural Democracy
This episode follows on from Episode 4 which looked at a kind of pre-history of cultural democracy, and Episode 6 which discussed the relationship between the community art movement in the 1980s and cultural democracy. In this episode Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly continue their discussion by focusing on the resurgence of interest in ideas of cultural democracy in the 1990s and 2000s, and the relationships between these and previous ideas.
March 15, 2019
012: From community to participatory arts
François Matarasso first worked as a community artist in 1981. Since then he has worked in community arts, participatory arts, and as a writer and researcher. He has just published a new book called A Restless Art, which looks at the growth of participatory arts and argues that it has succeeded in moving cultural discussions forward. In this episode he talks with Owen Kelly and Sophie Hope about the history of participatory art, and the kinds of things that have inspired him
March 29, 2019
013: From participatory arts to cultural democracy
François Matarasso has just published a new book called A Restless Art, which looks at the growth of participatory arts and how it relates to community art and the idea of cultural democracy. This episode continues his conversation with Owen Kelly and Sophie Hope. They look at how participatory art sometimes has cultural democracy as its aim, and ask what cultural democracy might mean in this context.
April 12, 2019
In this episode Owen Kelly and Sophie Hope discuss G.D.H. Cole’s book Guild Socialism Restated, published in 1920, and ask what relevance guild socialism might have to debates about cultural democracy today.
April 26, 2019
015: Defy & cultural democracy in India
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly talk to Abhijit Sinha about the nooks that Project Defy initiate. They discuss how nooks work, and what they mean for developing activism around maker spaces in Indian society. Finally Abhijit explains why ideas about cultural democracy do not feature much in political discussion in India yet, and how he thinks they might become useful.
May 10, 2019
016: The cultural democracy of amateur porn
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly talk with Susanna Paasonen on her research into amateur and user-generated porn. They talk about the long and poorly documented history of user-generated erotic media and how this has both reflected and stimulated changes in technology. Does amateur porn stand outside the market place as an example of a self-selecting community engaged in a participatory culture of a more or less democratic nature? Or is it simply a shallow reflection of the dominant culture? The answer, you will be pleased to learn, proves not as simple as that.
May 24, 2019
017: Culture, democracy & the right to make art
Alison Jeffers talks with Sophie Hope about how she got drawn into the community arts movement, and her personal journey from then to now. They discuss how the ways in which community arts has changed direction and developed as the wider culture has changed; about the effects that the community arts movement has and hasn’t had; and what might happen next.
June 7, 2019
018: Community Cultural Development in Australia
In this episode, Cathy Hunt, founder and co-director of Positive Solutions, discusses the nature of community cultural development in Australia, and its relationship to ideas of cultural democracy. The conversation covers the Women of the World festival, Scott Rankin’s recent platform paper on the subject of cultural rights, First Nation cultural activism, Arts Front, and the different forms that cultural tourism can take.
June 21, 2019
019: Democracy in the Drawing Shed
In this episode Sophie Hope talks with Sally Labern, an artist and activist living and working in north London. They have a long and detailed discussion about the specificities of cultural organising. They both live in the London Borough of Walthamstow, and they have both worked locally – separately and together – and they reflect […]
July 5, 2019
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly use the twentieth episode of Meanwhile In An Abandoned Warehouse to look back at what has and hasn’t happened in the discussions so far. They discuss a number of ideas that have stuck in their minds, or served to start further explorations; and debate where they might go next.
July 19, 2019
021: Temporary democracy in a cultural space
In 2016 John Fail and Agnieszka Pokrywka began the first in a series of cultural experiments in Helsinki. They called it Temporary and they envisaged it as a space that would be managed and owned by the people using it. Agnieszka talks with Owen Kelly about the ideas that fuelled the experiments and explains what they learned and how she would approach the ideas if she ever decided to do something similar in the future.
August 2, 2019
022: Live from the Raymond Williams Society Annual Conference
On April 26 and 27 the Raymond Williams Society held its annual conference which addressed the topic: Cultural Production and the Redundancy of Work: precarity, automation and critique. The Movement for Cultural Democracy organised a panel at the conference and Sophie Hope, Nick Mahony and Stephen Pritchard spoke at it. In this episode Sophie Hope describes some of the context to Owen Kelly, and we listen to live recordings of Nick and Stephen’s presentations.
August 16, 2019
Timo Cantell works as the director of the Urban Research and Statistics Unit of the City of Helsinki, a unit of 35 people within the city council charged with gathering data, and publishing it in ways that the citizens of Helsinki can use. In this episode Timo Cantell talks with Owen Kelly about the ways in which the city approaches the collection, distribution and publication of public data, and the tools it uses to make it open.
August 30, 2019
024: Cultural Democracy in Mauna Kea
Over the summer Owen Kelly has become increasingly interested in the protests at the attempts to build a Thirty Metre Telescope on the north face of Mauna Kea, on the Big Island in Hawaii, and increasingly angry at the way the project has been forced onto people, when a viable alternative exists. In this episode he argues that the protests relate directly to ideas of cultural democracy, and to other subjects that we have touched upon in previous podcasts.
September 13, 2019
025: David Rovics: strategies for production
This episode follows a slightly different format, in which Owen Kelly thinks aloud about the work of David Rovics: quoting from his writings and playing some of his music. He pays particular attention to Rovics’ community-supported arts club, his crowdfunding activities (including the funding of his new album which he will record in Ireland this autumn), and his fledgling A Penny A Play campaign. He argues that we should see all of these as Rovics’ contribution to an ongoing drive towards cultural democracy.
September 27, 2019
026: Climate strikes & consumer choices
In this episode Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly discuss the climate strikes and raise questions about how we might respond: as activists, as consumers, as producers. They discuss the question of how consumer choice and climate change might crash into each other. Should we change our behaviours or are we being guilt tripped? If the latter, are we actually being led down paths that will prevent us noticing the political and systemic nature of the problem?
October 11, 2019
027: Return To Cultural Democracy – the movie
George Fleming is a film maker and lecturer who has worked as a participatory artist. He made a short film on the history of cultural democracy for a conference. Sophie Hope attended the conference and persuaded George to join us to discuss what he learned while making the film.
October 25, 2019
During the previous episode Sophie Hope raised the concept of structures of feeling that Raymond Williams developed in the context of a discussion about the possible meanings of cultural democracy. In this episode we examine the concept in more detail.
November 8, 2019
029: Contagious Tapes: an artifact
On October 28, Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly met in Newcastle, in the north east of England, to attend a symposium called Community Arts: Practice and Processes of Production. Everyone who attended had received a request to bring an artifact with them - something that stemmed from, or reminded them of, their practice as a community artist. Owen brought a copy of a manual for the Contagious Tapes collective: a project that Mediumwave established to enable musicians to record and distribute their own music outside the music business. In this episode he explains Sophie’s absence, discusses the symposium, and looks at the aims, objectives, and practical outcomes of the Contagious Tape experiment.
November 22, 2019
Stephen Pritchard has practised as a community artist, a researcher, writer, art historian, academic, activist and film maker for many years. A few months ago we learned that he had begun the process of establishing Field Community Art, which he intended to operate as an international collective. Stephen talks about the challenges of working both locally and internationally. He promises that all will become clear by the end of the year.
December 6, 2019
In November 2019, Sophie Hope attended The Age of Cultural Participation seminar at Kultura Nova in Zagreb. Sarah Feinstein and Lucy Wright also attended. After the event ended they sat in a hotel room and discussed what they had learned, including what they had learned about how to organise conferences in keeping with principles of cultural democracy.
December 20, 2019
032: Graceful Power: aikido & conflict resolution
Sofia Bustamante works as a trainer in conflict resolution. She has a black belt in Aikido and bases her many of her workshop exercises and techniques on insights she has gained from this. She grounds her practice in an approach based on living systems, peacework, martial arts, neuroscience and work in therapeutic fields. Her current work involves developing a systematic Conflict Resolution Pattern Language. In this episode we talk about the relationships between this, traditional fears of naming, and General Semantics.
January 3, 2020
In late November Owen Kelly spent two days at Slush, the annual technology event in Helsinki, aimed primarily at startups and young entrepreneurs. He noticed that the atmosphere had changed noticeably this year, and that the culture which has developed around startups appears to have discovered social responsibility.
January 17, 2020
034: Distribution & Evolutionary Markets
On October 28, 2019, Owen Kelly and Sophie Hope attended a seminar in Newcastle in which every participant had to bring a memento from their community art practice. Sophie brought a copy of What a Way to Run a Railroad, a book published by Comedia in 1985. This sparked a lengthy discussion which resulted in us talking to Russell Southwood, one of the authors of the book. In this episode we look at how the book came to get written, and what effects it had.
January 31, 2020
In this episode Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly continue talking to Russell Southwood about ideas arising from the 1985 book What a Way to Run a Railroad that he co-authored with Charles Landry, Dave Morley and Patrick Wright. Chapter 7 of the book looks towards the future, and the discussion looks at the cultural, economic and political issues that linger on from the nineteen eighties; sometimes in almost unchanged forms.
February 14, 2020
36: Coding tacit knowledge in southern India
Owen Kelly and Irma Sippola have begun two cultural projects in Kerala, south India, in partnership with an NGO called SISP. In this episode Sophie Hope talks to Owen about the purpose of the projects and the practicality of passing on coding skills to teenagers with no prior experience of using computers.
February 28, 2020
037: Sophie Hope is on strike!
In this episode Sophie Hope explains why the staff at UCL have gone on strike, what they hope to achieve, and the complications of withdrawing your labour when your labour concerns the production of knowledge rather than tangible goods.
March 13, 2020
038: Revolutionary teachers and post-capitalism
Sophie Hope recorded this episode in a café in a break from her ongoing picket. She talked with Mike Neary, Emeritus Professor of sociology at the School of Social Sciences at the University of Lincoln, about the current academic strikes across England, the idea behind teach-outs, and the role of education in establishing a post-capitalist society.
March 27, 2020
039: Guerrilla Translation, DisCos & the marketplace
Stacco Troncoso co-founded Guerrilla Translation with his partner, Ann Marie Utratel, as a living project to ground P2P and Commons theories in real practices. He talks with Owen Kelly about the work of the group, and the ways in which they see the structure of their group as a vital part of its practice.
April 9, 2020
040: Radio Miaaw – the sounds of the commons
In this episode Owen Kelly looks at the range of musics currently available under a creative commons licence. He looks at some artist-released music as well as songs available through the Free Music Archive, Jamendo and Tribe of Noise. We pass through a varied landscape that includes modern pop, country, Indian jazz, folk and North African music. There is more to this than meets the ear. You will hear David Rovics, Samie Power, Kat Penkin, Solsar, Jon Worthy & the Bends, Radha Thomas, Shoemansky, Starmob, ...mmm and Lessazo. Mmm, indeed!
April 24, 2020
In the previous episode Owen Kelly looked at songs available through the Free Music Archive, Jamendo and Tribe of Noise. We traversed the geography of the musical commons. In this episode we dive into the historical cultural commons. We listen to the very first episode of The Shadow, starring a young Orson Welles, and sponsored by Blue Coal. Our cultural history is under attack. The Shadow Knows!
May 8, 2020
In the previous two episodes Owen Kelly looked at cultural commons from a geographical and then an historical perspective. He played music and introduced a vintage radio programme. In this episode he joins Sophie Hope for a detailed examination of the commons, and its possible relationship to ideas of cultural democracy. They base their discussion on a reading of Guy Standing’s book Plunder of the Commons. They also borrow ideas from David Bollier’s book Think Like a Commoner.
May 22, 2020
Owen Kelly talks with Jake Harries, the director of art and innovation at Access Space, in Sheffield, England. They discuss the ways in which the current lockdown has affected Access Space, as well as a range of issues including the commons, laser printing, open source, and possible futures.
June 5, 2020
044: David Harding, Glenrothes, Public Art
In this episode Sophie Hope and Andrew Demetrius talk about the history of the town artist movement in Scotland, the political and economic context in which the new towns were built and the different approaches the planners and artists took to the role of artists and art in these urban developments.
June 19, 2020
A Little Piece of Land operates as a cultural project and creative exploration on a small triangle of land near Sheffield, about half an acre in size and surrounded on all sides by miles of industrial scale agriculture. In this episode Monika Dutta and Jake Harries discuss with Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly. They explain “what it is actually like” to engage in this work, not just in theory but in day to day practice. How does rewilding work? How do they know what they can eat? How do they know how to cook it? How do they relate to their neighbours, and how do their neighbours relate to them?
July 3, 2020
046: Ireland: a history of collaborating, participating & making culture
David Teevan has worked for 25 years as a cultural producer in the professional arts sector in Ireland. He has recently completed a doctorate that examines the complex history of collaborative and participatory arts in Ireland.
July 17, 2020
047: Participatory art in Ireland: people, places, events
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly continue their discussion with David Teevan, who has worked for 25 years as a cultural producer in the professional arts sector in Ireland. In this episode David discusses some of the people and places that shaped the development of participatory arts in Ireland.
July 31, 2020
In this episode Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly talk with Loraine Leeson about her work, and begin by discussing her latest book: Art : Process : Change, which Routledge published in September 2019. Loraine discusses her work from the 1970s onwards, and talks in particular about the twelve year Active Energy project with The Geezers.