ABANDONED WAREHOUSE
 
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.

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 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

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.

A New Hope
January 8, 2021   Tags: , , , ,

Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse returns from a four month siesta with renewed vigour, a review of the past twelve months, and a clearer set of long term objectives, which include creating a community and releasing a podcast every week during 2021.

Now we are fifty
August 28, 2020   Tags: , , , ,

With this episode Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse reaches its fiftieth episode, and its final episode in its current form. Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly look back at what started them on this journey, and their plans for the future.

These involve splitting the twice-monthly podcast into three, and (before the end of this year) four separate but linked weekly podcasts, while expanding the website into a community forum.

Noises from the Commons
August 14, 2020   Tags: , , , ,

In Episode 40 we looked at a variety of pop, rock and folk music licensed through a Creative Commons licence, or made freely available.

In this episode we look at four other, quite different, musics made available in this way.

Karine Gilanyan plays the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata number 15 in D Major. Jahzzar plays the self-composed Fibonacci from his album kontra-punkte. Bob Ostertag performs Arms and Legs. Julie Licata presents her work resound.

Art : Process : Change
July 31, 2020   Tags: , , , ,

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.

A Little Piece of Land
June 19, 2020   Tags: , , , ,

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?

Access Space online
May 22, 2020   Tags: , , , ,

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.

A day on the commons
May 8, 2020   Tags: , , ,

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.

Death House Rescue
April 24, 2020   Tags: , , ,

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!

Radio Miaaw – the sounds of the commons
April 9, 2020   Tags: , , ,

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!

Time as a Public Good
January 31, 2020   Tags: , , , ,

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.

Distribution & Evolutionary Markets
January 17, 2020   Tags: , , , ,

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.

Slush in late November
January 3, 2020   Tags: , , , , ,

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.

Graceful Power: aikido & conflict resolution
December 20, 2019   Tags: , , , ,

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.

Problematising in Zagreb
December 6, 2019   Tags: , , , ,

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.

Field Community Art
November 22, 2019   Tags: , , , ,

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.

Contagious Tapes: an artifact
November 8, 2019   Tags: , , , ,

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.

Structures of Feeling
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.

Climate strikes & consumer choices
September 27, 2019   Tags: , , , ,

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?

David Rovics: strategies for production
September 13, 2019   Tags: , , , , ,

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.

Cultural Democracy in Mauna Kea
August 30, 2019   Tags: , , , , ,

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.

Helsinki Open Data
August 16, 2019   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.

Live from the Raymond Williams Society Annual Conference
August 2, 2019   Tags: , , , ,

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.

Temporary democracy in a cultural space
July 19, 2019   Tags: , , , , ,

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.

Democracy in the Drawing Shed
June 21, 2019   Tags: , , ,

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 […]

Community Cultural Development in Australia
June 7, 2019   Tags: , , , , ,

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.

Culture, democracy & the right to make art
May 24, 2019   Tags: , , , ,

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.

The cultural democracy of amateur porn
May 10, 2019   Tags: , , , ,

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.

Defy & cultural democracy in India
April 26, 2019   Tags: , , , ,

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.

From participatory arts to cultural democracy
March 29, 2019   Tags: , , ,

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.

From community to participatory arts
March 15, 2019   Tags: , , ,

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

The Resurgence of Cultural Democracy
March 1, 2019   Tags: , , ,

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.

Autobiography and culture politics
February 1, 2019   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.

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.

Cultural Democracy in the USA
January 4, 2019   Tags: , , , ,

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.

Community Art & Cultural Democracy
December 21, 2018   Tags: , , , ,

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.

Project DEFY
December 7, 2018   Tags: , , , ,

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.