EVERYTHING TAGGED
cultural democracy
 
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.