François Matarasso presents an audio essay examining the depoliticisation of community art in Britain between 1970 and 2011.

François Matarasso explains why, as an area of conscious policy, culture has never been more important to democratic states than it is today.
François Matarasso on Orcadian culture: “the unique creation of interaction between people and place, coming and going, over centuries”.
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.
Owen Kelly asks what relevance the social mind hypothesis has for those interested in developing a coherent theory of cultural democracy.
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.
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.
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.