Food from Scratch
February 3, 2023   Tags: , ,

David Moscow talks to Owen Kelly about how he moved from Bernie Sanders’ 2016 media campaign to the television series & book From Scratch.

The Night Before Christmas
December 23, 2022   Tags: , ,

This episode occurs one or two days before the annual Christmas celebrations and so we opted for a festive podcast starring Sherlock Holmes.

Radical Hope
November 18, 2022   Tags: , , ,

François Matarasso & Arlene Goldbard talk to Carol Bebelle, cofounder of Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans.

Old Words: Music and Social Change
October 7, 2022   Tags: , ,

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.”

Gunsmoke: the pacifist
September 30, 2022   Tags: , , ,

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.

The Brooklyn Brain
July 29, 2022   Tags: , ,

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.

Cultural democracy & politics
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.

Old Words: Playful Adventures
July 1, 2022   Tags: , ,

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.

Trick or Treat
April 29, 2022   Tags: , ,

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.

Art, NFTs & Democracy
January 14, 2022  

Ellis Brooks wrote an article on Medium claiming that “NFTs Are Critical for the Future of Art”. Owen Kelly inquires into the premises of her argument and the remedy she proposes.

Strange Rebels
November 5, 2021   Tags: , , ,

Owen Kelly and David Morley discuss Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century written by Christian Caryl and published in 2014.

Helsinki Open Data Revisited
October 22, 2021   Tags: , , ,

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.

Autobiography as cultural politics
September 3, 2021   Tags: , , ,

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. They also ask whether we should see cultural democracy as a kind of practice or a demand for systemic change.

Bill Ming: We are coming in the front door tonight, people!
August 20, 2021   Tags: , , , ,

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk with Bermudian artist Bill Ming in his studio in Nottinghamshire, England. Bill’s work in sculpture, assemblage, painting, and collage draws on the whole of personal and collective history, from the racism he faced growing up in segregated schools to his reponse to the death of George Floyd, from childhood toys to the blues to the Middle Passage.

Community Art & Cultural Democracy revisited
August 6, 2021  

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.

A Little Piece of Land Revisited
July 23, 2021  

A year or so ago we talked to Monika Dutta and Jake Harries about A Little Piece of Land. Today their project seems even more relevant than it did then, and so this week we revisit that discussion to look again at the ups and downs of rewilding.

A Pre-history of Cultural Democracy
July 2, 2021  

As summer 2021 approaches we take stock of some of the core concerns fuelling the MIAAW podcasts: the ideas behind cultural democracy

What might we mean by soft skills?
June 11, 2021   Tags: , , , ,

For the last year Owen Kelly has worked on developing a rapid learning process to enable students to improve their soft skills.

The has raised a number of interesting and difficult questions. In this episode Owen Kelly pursues a genuine inquiry into what we might mean by soft skills, and why we might find ourselves concerned with them.

Icelandic cultural practices
May 28, 2021   Tags: , , ,

Owen Kelly talks with Hafdís Björg Hjálmarsdóttir and Vera K Vestmann Kristjánsdóttir from the School of Business and Science at the University of Akureyri, a city of 20,000 people in the north of Iceland, about the reasons for the Icelandic investment in culture, and the participatory nature of cultural activities there.

Electric McLuhan
May 14, 2021   Tags: , , ,

This episode continues a trilogy of audio essays concerned with the work of Marshall McLuhan and its continuing relevance in the digital age. In this episode Owen Kelly looks at what McLuhan means by “the electric age”.

The Phial of Open Source Vaccines
April 2, 2021   Tags: , , ,

The availability (or unavailability) of covid-19 vaccines has become an international issue. In this episode Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly discuss some of the issues surrounding the idea of open source vaccines, and the systemic issues they reveal when we start to think about them.

Numbi Arts
March 26, 2021   Tags: , , ,

For over three decades, Numbi Arts has been at the forefront of archiving British Somali heritage and has become a significant part of the East London cultural scene. Last year, the organization lost its residency and is currently crowd-funding in order to secure a permanent home for their work.

Restoke
March 19, 2021   Tags: , , , ,

In the third episode of “A Culture of Possibility,” Francois Matarasso and Arlene Goldbard meet Clare Reynolds, one of the founders of Restoke, a group who make performances and events that tackle social issues affecting their communities.

Global Staffroom
February 26, 2021   Tags: , , ,

Sophie Hope and Jenny Richards started Manual Labours in 2013 as a research project exploring our physical and emotional relationships to work. The Global Staffroom grew out of this, and Owen Kelly talks to them about it.