An online conversation between Jo Wheeler, who helped initiate YLC and 3 of its Youth Council: Kris Kirkwood, Isaac Munslow and Alfie Ropson, & .

Owen Kelly talks to John Phillips and Clive Russell about the Museum of Unrest: how it began, how it works, and where it might lead.
Brendan Jackson talks about the finale of the Jubilee Archives programme and the structure of Laundry.
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly discuss whether Bill Willingham can put Fables into the public domain, and what it might mean for co-creation.
This year Miaaw celebrates its fifth anniversary and so every time we find a fifth Friday in a month we will relive an episode from our history. This month we slide back in time to December 21, 2018.
Arlene Goldbard and François Mattarasso talk with Ben Fink and Kate Fowler about Art in A Democracy, from Roadside Theater in Appalachia.
This year Miaaw celebrates its fifth anniversary and so every time a month has five Fridays we will take the opportunity to look back at some memorable episodes from our short history.
Owen Kelly looks at the web of arguments put forward by Jason “Propaganda” Petty in his book Terraform: Building a Better World.
Owen Kelly and Irina Mutt look at the 20th anniversary celebrations through the words of Antti Ahonen, one of the founding members.
December 22, 1949. An episode of the police procedural series Dragnet. A boy goes missing, along with the rifle he was due to get for Xmas.
This episode occurs one or two days before the annual Christmas celebrations and so we opted for a festive podcast starring Sherlock Holmes.
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.
Beverley Harvey & Brendan Jackson, co-founders of the Jubilee Archive project, discuss the archive, its purposes, and its future.
Owen Kelly inquires into the heated arguments between proponents of the germ theory and the terrain theory of disease transmission.
Joe Lambert talks with Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso about Storycenter.
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.
Owen Kelly asks how culture and community relate to each other, and what we might actually do to foster community and cultural democracy.
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.
Sophie Hope, Lizzie Lloyd and Katy Beinart recorded a live conversation at a public event to launch Acts of Transfer.
Owen Kelly asks what might we mean when we talk about cultural democracy? Why might people need the term, and what can they do with it?
Francois Matarasso reads Making Nothing Happen, a talk he first gave in September 2016. He has revised it in the light of current events.
Co-host François Matarasso returns to talk with Arlene Goldbard about the first year of A Culture of Possibility.
Copyright from the invention of printing in 1476 to the creation of the Berne Convention in 1886, and where it all went wrong.
Jan Cohen-Cruz and Rad Pereira have curated stories from over 75 interviews and informal exchanges that offer insight into the field of Socially Engaged Performance in the United States over the past 55 years.
Owen Kelly and David Morley discuss Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century written by Christian Caryl and published in 2014.
Owen Kelly offers two surprises and a look back at Clive Sinclair and the impact of the ZX Spectrum, which ushered in a brief period of democratic bedroom coding.
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.
Owen Kelly and Sophie Hope discuss G.D.H. Cole’s book Guild Socialism Restated and inquire into the relevance guild socialism might have for debates about cultural democracy today.
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”.
Listen to the very first sound recordings ever made and ask how they turned into public radio. Then find out what all this has to do with cultural democracy.
This episode begins a trilogy of audio essays concerned with the work of Marshall McLuhan and its continuing relevance in the digital age.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.