Shows
MIAAW.netThe Only Way is EthicsIn this episode Sophie Hope talks to artist, researcher and teacher Anthony Schrag about a symposium he organised on 9 May 2025 at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh.The symposium, entitled Getting it right/Getting it wrong: Socially Engaged Art and Ethics was supported by Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Sophie attended the symposium and in this discussion she and Anthony reflect on some of the discussions that they took part in during the event. They reflect on what ethics means to practitioners and their practice, and to...2025-07-0432 min
MIAAW.netNitty Gritty Future PlansYouth Landscapers Collective (YLC) operate as a youth arts organisation based in the National Forest area of England. They describe themselves as “a collective of young people, artists and technicians who collaborate with our local community to explore this landscape’s industrial past and forest future.” In the final episode of the current series of YLC Special Editions, Sophie Hope interviews Youth Landscapers’ Producer Rebecca Lee along with members Alfie Ropson and Georgia Harris-Marsh, and board member Jo Wheeler. YLC reflect on their experiences of last year’s song-making project, get into the nitty gritty around the...2025-04-0438 min
MIAAW.netPractices, Contexts and FuturesOwen Griffiths describes himself as “an artist, workshop leader and facilitator. Using participatory and collaborative processes, his socially engaged practice explores the possibilities of art to create new frameworks, resources and systems.” From 2017-2019 he acted as co-director of Gentle/Radical, a community arts and social justice project based in Cardiff. He also leads several long-term projects.Lucy Elmes works as a Contemporary Art Curator and Producer based in Plymouth. She leads the Curatorial Programme at Take A Part, strengthening the socially engaged art sector by connecting communities with artists to co-create impactful projects. Kim Wide...2025-03-2839 minMIAAW.netWheeled users in the cityThis episode addresses two questions. How can we ensure more access and equality in the development of public spaces? How can we make certain that the voices of young people become embedded in planning processes?Sophie Hope and Hannah Kemp-Welch discuss with Ben Bordwick and Leo Valls who both made presentations at Social Making in October 2024.Note:Social Making iteration 5 took place on October 10 and 11, 2024, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. 2025-02-2858 minMIAAW.netReclaiming & using post-colonial landThis episode addresses the question: how can we reclaim land from white colonial power structures? In it Hannah Kemp-Welch & Sophie Hope talk with Nadia Shaikh and Mark Teh, who both made presentations at Social Making 5.
Nadia Shaikh “joined Right to Roam in 2021 after 14 years in the nature conservation sector, convinced that mainstream 'nature protection' wasn't involving people in a meaningful way and that the connections between enclosure, land ownership and our devastating biodiversity loss were too big to ignore. She now lives in Scotland where she enjoys roaming free, rock pooling and kayaking. She co...2025-01-2450 minMIAAW.netEmbedding creative enterprise modelsThis episode addresses the question: should embedding creative enterprise models be a fundamental approach to sustaining the future of Socially Engaged Art?
Hannah Kemp-Welch & Sophie Hope talk with Kathrin Böhm from Company Drinks, a community space and cultural enterprise based in Barking and Dagenham; and Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell from Bank Job and Power Station, based in the London Borough of Walthamstow. All three of them participated in Social Making iteration 5.
Company Drinks works as a long term project in which each step of the production, distribution, and planning operates as a public s...2024-12-1351 minMIAAW.netJugaad: frugal innovationAs part of the fifth edition of Social Making: “the UK’s only biennial symposium dedicated to socially engaged art practice, co-creation, and place-making” Kim Wide and Anurupa Roy led a workshop exploring the implications of jugaad.
Kim Wide works as the founder and director of Take A Part. Anurupa Roy works as an award-winning puppet designer and director of puppet-based theatre.
The BBC has described jugaad as “an untranslatable word for winging it”. The word exists in Hindu, Urdu and Punjabi and describes using whatever you have to hand to make something you need; a process...2024-11-2246 minMIAAW.netDay 1: Live from the Coffee BreakTake A Part organises Social Making: “the UK’s only biennial symposium dedicated to socially engaged art practice, co-creation, and place-making”. For the fifth edition of the symposium Take A Part moved from their base in Plymouth to host the event in Bristol. It took place at Brix on October 10 and 11, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Sophie Hope and Hannah Kemp-Welch recorded a conversation during a convenient coffee break on the first day of the programme with participants who included Maureen Arhin, Claudia Collins, Damien McGlynn, Tamar Millen, and Claire Tymon.
This episode looks...2024-10-2541 min
MIAAW.netIntroducing the De-CentreGuildhall De-Centre focuses on the support structures, networks and collaborations that form the basis of socially engaged practices by developing a community of researchers, practitioners, producers, teachers and administrators at Guildhall School.
Sophie Hope talks to Sean Gregory and Jo Gibson about the new De-Centre for Socially Engaged Practice and Research. They discuss the roots of this initiative, their different lines of enquiry threading through it, and approach the question of what a socially engaged, de-centred conservatoire might be and do.
The De-Centre operates under the stewardship of Guildhall School staff members who convene monthly...2024-09-2739 min
MIAAW.netSocial Making - a new iterationAccording to their web site, “Take A Part are the UK's leading socially engaged art (SEA) organisation, dedicated to supporting, furthering and sustaining SEA practice, community co-creation and community embedding placemaking in the UK.
We take a community-first approach to culture, supporting areas and people underrepresented and underserved in our society to develop cultural confidence, advocacy and skills to take action on change in their own communities through culture.
Our home is Plymouth, where we develop and test our models of best practice, but we work across the UK and internationally to support a larger co...2024-09-0616 min
MIAAW.netPublic RestBarry Sykes lives and works in Walthamstow, London. He makes sculptures, drawings and performance about authenticity, interaction and pleasure, often working at the edges of value, skill and acceptable behaviour. Recent projects have looked at fake laughter exercises, social nudity and sauna culture, using group participation and various handmade processes like cyanotype photography, life-drawing and rough ceramics.
In this episode Sophie Hope and Barry Sykes sit in Barry's studio in Walthamstow and discuss his current art project exploring permissable spaces for respite, refusal and reclining through drawing, making, waiting, witnessing and sweating.2024-08-2325 min
MIAAW.netSummer remix - Live from the Raymond Williams Society, 2019On April 26 and 27, 2019, seven months before Jeremy Corbyn led the British Labour party to unexpected defeat in a general election, the Raymond Williams Society held its annual conference. Now, in July 2024, as Keir Starmer celebrates a landslide victory for the Labour party, and a new Labour government prepares its long-term agenda, we present a completely re-edited and remixed look at the session on cultural democracy.
The conference 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...2024-07-2641 min
MIAAW.netSummer Reading 1 - Solidarity Not CharityOwen Kelly and Sophie Hope discuss Solidarity Not Charity, written by Nati Linares and Caroline Woolard. This “rapid report” analyses “arts and culture grantmaking in the solidarity economy”, a term that it borrows from a long standing radical, feminist economic movement.
As often, discussing parts of the report leads to a wider discussion about the issues that the report addresses. Can we assume that grantmakers have our interests at heart? Can we assume that we have a working relationship with funders, or should we see ourselves in a struggle against what they stand for?
Wh...2024-06-0726 min
MIAAW.netAlternative School Of EconomicsThis episode is a live recording of an event in which Sophie Hope talks with artists Amy Feneck and Ruth Beale. Together they reflect on 12 years of collaborative practice, spanning art, politics and the ongoing need to talk about economics.
The conversation that forms the heart of this episode was recorded at an event organised by the Alternative School of Economics on 9 March 2023 at Gasworks,in London, England.2024-05-2443 min
MIAAW.netThe Village Hub in PlymouthKaren Pilkington and Sophie Hope met doing their duties as board members of a community arts organisation.
They want to get to know each other better and so in this podcast Sophie hears all about Karen’s inspiring work as a community activist in Plymouth, the origins of the Village Hub, how they’ve been organising their work through collaborative decision-making, transparent finances, disaster-proofing and how making relationships, equitable collaborations and decent conversations underpin everything.2024-04-2641 min
MIAAW.netHighlands & IslandsIn this episode Sophie Hope talks to four people connected to the MA degree course in Art and Social Practice at the University of the Highlands and Islands. According to the UHI website, “We are the only university based in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and we're a little different - we offer you the choice of studying at one of our colleges or research centres, over 70 local learning centres, or online from wherever you are.”
Sophie talks with Roxane Permar, founder and programme leader; Siún Carden, lecturer and module leader; Nicola Naismith, lecturer and modul...2024-03-2235 min
MIAAW.netRest & Rage in RomeIn early February Sophie Hope went to Rome to present Manual Labours’ work at a conference. In this episode She and Fabiola Fiocco tell us about the workshop they did at MACRO - the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome.
The workshop was organised by Fabiola Fiocco in collaboration with the Arts Module of the Master in Gender Studies (Roma Tre University) and facilitated by Fabiola and Sophie. They explain the background to the workshop and their research into bodies at work and the politics of exhaustion.
Sophie and Fabiola then reflect on some of...2024-02-2342 min
MIAAW.netThe Experimental Station for Research on Art and LifeBased in Bucharest, Raluca Voinea works as a curator and art critic, based in Bucharest and, since 2012 as co-director of tranzit.ro Association. In 2013 she acted as the curator of the Romanian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale and in 2015 she co-authored, with Alexandra Pirici, The Manifesto for the Gynecene: Sketch of a New Geological Era. The Manifesto subsequently became translated into several languages and included in different publications and exhibitions.
In this episode she talks with Sophie Hope about The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life, described as “a bet and a promise, an ex...2023-12-2242 min
MIAAW.netThe Impossible Arts ConundrumSu Jones worked as the director of a-n The Artists Information Company from 1980 to 2014. Her doctoral thesis Artists livelihoods: the artists in arts policy conundrum, Manchester Metropolitan University 2015-2019, exposed baseline flaws in the interrelationship between arts policies and artists’ livelihoods over the last 30 years and articulated a unique new rationale for better support to artists that could enable many more to pursue livelihoods through art practices over a life cycle.
She now works as an independent arts researcher and writer who holds specialist knowledge and insight about the social and political environment for artists and contemporary vi...2023-12-0142 min
MIAAW.netSSW, Sculpture, Soup & Sam TrotmanSophie Hope talks to Sam Trotman, Director of Scottish Sculpture Workshop about the work SSW do in the rural community of Lumsden.
They focus on how their Community Making Space came about, who uses it and how SSW work with a wide range of makers, near and far.
They talk about working with wool, working with clay, and what’s for lunch.2023-10-2744 min
MIAAW.netFables about CopyrightOn September 14 Comic Book Resources reported that “Bill Willingham, the creator of the long-running Vertigo series, Fables, which was recently revived as part of DC's Black Label line of comics, has announced that he is putting the characters into the public domain as a result of years of disputes with DC over his contractual rights to the characters of the series, which is about a group of mythological beings who were exiled from their homelands to go live among humans. … Willingham announced that, as of tomorrow, "15 September 2023, the comic book property called Fables, including all related Fables spin-offs and char...2023-10-0634 min
MIAAW.netRural School of Economics at Scottish Sculpture WorkshopSophie Hope recorded this live report on the final day of the Rural School of Economics summer camp, organised by Kathrin Böhm and Wapke Feenstra of Myvillages, and the Scottish Sculpture Workshop. The camp took place in July 2023 in Lumsden in Aberdeenshire, the home of the Scottish Sculpture Workshop.
She talks with fellow participants about what they got up to during the summer camp and some of the questions that came up during their stay in rural Aberdeenshire. They explore reflections and suggestions on the issue of “Who has the Energy?”, the question set for the summe...2023-08-0440 min
MIAAW.netCollective Encounters: provocationsAccording to the front page of their website, “Collective Encounters is a professional arts organisation specialising in theatre for social change through collaborative practice. We use theatre to engage those on the margins of society, telling untold stories and tackling the local, national and international concerns of our time.”
Sophie Hope talks with Annette Burghes, Aidan Jolly, and Marianne Matusz from Collective Encounters about their work, the provocations that they have organised, and the provocations they created for The World Transformed when it took place in Liverpool in September 2022.2023-07-011h 12MIAAW.netTheatre Box in SingaporeIn this episode, Sophie Hope talks to Koh Hui Ling and Han Xuemei, co-artistic directors of the socially-engaged theatre company Drama Box in Singapore. "Founded in 1990, by Kok Heng Leun, Drama Box is a socially-engaged theatre company known for creating works that inspire dialogue, reflection and change. By shining a spotlight on marginalised narratives and making space for the communal contemplation of complex issues, it seeks to tell stories that provoke a deeper understanding of Singapore's culture, history and identity".
They discuss the nature of the organisation, its different aspects and projects, and their...2023-06-2339 min
MIAAW.netCultural Democracy Now: a conversationOwen Kelly has written a new book called Cultural Democracy Now, and Routledge published it at the start of the year. According to the blurb, while positioning “cultural democracy in a historical context and in a context of adjacent movements such as the creative commons, open source movement, and maker movement, this book goes back to first principles and asks what personhood means in the twenty-first century, what cultural democracy means, why we should want it, and how we can work towards it … It combines theory and practice with a view to inciting both thought and action.”
In thi...2023-06-0241 min
MIAAW.netCards on the TableIn 2016 five cultural workers felt frustrated by collaborative working. They wanted a tool to openly and critically talk about process. From an initial spark of inspiration they created Cards on the Table, a card game designed to help people have potentially awkward conversations about a collaborative process they had just been through.
Sophie Hope was one of those cultural workers and she went on to develop the game with Henry Mulhall. Owen Kelly talks to them about how it works, whether it works, and what plans they have for it in the future.2023-05-0530 minMIAAW.netThe whys of documentingIn the third special report on topics addressed at the ICAF Festival in Rotterdam in March and April 2023, Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly talk to Kerrie Schaeffer, who gave two presentations on documenting community performance processes.
According to the festival programme Kerrie set out to “examine the documentary form itself, its history, the relevance of new technologies from film and radio to documentary theatre, as well as political and ethical debates relevant to documentary theatre, film and digital media. Whilst paying close attention to practical examples, questions such as how video and film documentaries narrate aesthetic and so...2023-04-2143 minMIAAW.netReflections of a FestivalAccording to the ICAF website, "ICAF is a multi-trajectory, international program. We are at once a digital platform, a global network, and, every three years, an international festival that emerges in Rotterdam, showcasing community arts organisations, professionals, and practices from across the world. ICAF’s main goal is to offer space for reflection and development of the community arts movement, locally, nationally, and internationally.
Everything ICAF produces is built around the idea that community art is a worldwide, cutting edge and urgent arts movement – the only one of its kind. Furthermore, for ICAF, understanding the context behind each community arts prac...2023-04-0736 min
MIAAW.netRevisiting Miaaw 01: October 12, 2018We have arrived at the first month of 2023 with five Fridays, and so we start another set of Friday Number Five. This year, as Miaaw gets ready to celebrate its fifth anniversary, we look back at some memorable episodes from our short history. We begin with the very first episode in which Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly look at a report by 64 Million Artists, and the responses it has drawn; and wonder what they thought they were up to.
Although they don't quote from it directly, they start their discussion from a perspective similar to that proposed...2023-03-3128 min
MIAAW.netEscape from the Bedpan
Sophie Hope draws on her recent experience as an NHS patient to explore the histories, economics and significance of the bedpan in acute care settings.
Taking the title from a 1951 article in the Canadian Medical Journal, Sophie embarks on an enquiry into why, despite protestations over 70 years ago that “the use of a bedpan is a horrid, humiliating business” it remains in usage today.
With the help of Stuart Hall’s circuit of culture method Sophie spends time contemplating this embarrassing, awkward object from different angles.
2023-03-1025 min
MIAAW.netAlways Coming HomeSophie Hope returns to talk to Marc Herbst about cultural movements and their crossover with political movements, “post-migrant” studies, precarious research and cultural methods for working with possibly traumatized people.
Marc has recently carried out Always Coming Home: A precarious worker’s inquiry into “creative work” in refugee homes in Saxony, Germany that looks into the relationship between art workers and refugee children and the conditions of labouring together around German concepts for cultural integration.
Marc works as an independent artist, curator and co-editor of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest.2023-02-241h 05
MIAAW.netPixelache turns 20According to the Pixelache website, Pixelache in Helsinki “is a transdisciplinary platform for emerging art, design, research and activism. It is an association of artists, cultural producers, thinkers and activists involved in the creation of emerging cultural activities. Amongst our fields of interest are: experimental interaction and electronics, code-based art and culture, grassroot organising & networks, renewable energy production/use, participatory art, open-source cultures, bioarts and art-science culture, alternative economy cultures, politics and economics of media/technology, audiovisual culture, media literacy & ecology and engaging environmental issues”.
Owen Kelly has been a member of Pixelache for ten or more years...2023-01-2723 min
MIAAW.netHow Extensión worksIn the second part of a two episode podcast, Professor Ana Laura López de la Torre and Sophie Hope discuss the specific role and function of ‘extensión’ at the Universidad de la República, Uruguay.
All academic activity is organised under 3 essential functions: teaching, research and extensión. This last function - loosely translated as ‘outreach’ - is a distinctive element of the Latin-American university movement. Extensión mandates public universities to serve society and the public good. Over the years, the way this has been interpreted and put in practice has changed alongside ideas of democracy...2022-11-2551 min
MIAAW.netDemocratic EducationIn the first of a 2 part podcast, Professor Ana Laura López de la Torre discusses the history and democratic structures of the Universidad de la República, Uruguay with Sophie Hope.
Ana Laura López de la Torre is a Professor in the Facultad de Artes, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay and for 2022-23 is an Honorary Research Fellow with the School of Arts, Birkbeck. She has an established participatory arts and research practice established between 2000 and 2012 when she lived and worked in London, with major commissions from the ICA, Whitechapel Gallery, Gasworks, Tate Mode...2022-10-2839 min
MIAAW.netDemocracy in the Drawing Shed (again)A Common Practice episode.
In this episode we delve into the ever-expanding Miaaw archives to catch Sophie Hope in June 2019, talking 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 on the processes they have used, the people they have encountered, the way alliances, collectives and friendships form, the problems they have encountered a...2022-07-2248 min
MIAAW.netActs of TransferSophie Hope, Lizzie Lloyd and Katy Beinart recorded a live unedited conversation on 30 March 2022 at the Brighton Centre for Contemporary Arts during a public event to launch Lloyd and Beinart's new publication, Acts of Transfer.
The publication reflects Lloyd and Beinart's collaborative work revisiting past artworks that involve social engagement and/or public participation. The discussion here delves into their motives for doing this work, how they went about it and some of the issues and questions that emerged through the retracing of past projects to create new readings and interpretations.
2022-04-2257 min
MIAAW.netCruel OptimismSophie Hope has just written a contribution to a book called The Failures of Public Art and Participation. In this episode she expands upon some of the arguments in her chapter, We Thought We Were Going To Change The World: socially engaged art and cruel optimism.
She bases her analysis on a reading of Laurent Berlant’s book Cruel Optimism and uses a long running work of her own, the 1984 Dinners, as the starting point for a practical look at how we might thrive through solidarity in the face of the frustrations of our cruel optimism.2022-03-1113 min
MIAAW.netSolidarity Not CharityOwen Kelly and Sophie Hope discuss Solidarity Not Charity, written by Nati Linares and Caroline Woolard. This “rapid report” analyses “arts and culture grantmaking in the solidarity economy”, a term that it borrows from a long standing radical, feminist economic movement.
As often, discussing parts of the report leads to a wider discussion about the issues that the report addresses. Can we assume that grantmakers have our interests at heart? Can we assume that we have a working relationship with funders, or should we see ourselves in a struggle against what they stand for?
Whatever happened...2022-01-0724 min
MIAAW.netDigital innovations in community radioJo Coleman works as associate tutor in Film, Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College, London. She conducts practice-based research into programming practices in local community radio.
Her received her first degree (in Geography) from Cambridge University and began her professional career in radio in the late 1980’s as marketing and public relations executive for the Chiltern Radio network, and later with Jazz FM in London.
Having trained and volunteered in production and presenting at a public access/community cable television and radio station in Northern Virginia, Jo continues to volunteer in community media in the...2021-12-0346 min
MIAAW.netWhat might we mean by socially engaged research?Sophie Hope has worked as an artist and an academic. She currently works at Birkbeck, part of the University of London. Since 2010 she has co-developed a network of practice-based research students at Birkbeck, called Corkscrew. She also chairs the School of Arts Disability Committee and serves as a member of the Peltz/Arts Space Steering Committee, Birkbeck Institute of Gender and Sexuality (BIGS) and Centre for Museum Cultures Research Centre Steering Committee.
She describes her academic work as socially engaged research and in this episode of Genuine Inquiry she reflects on what the term “socially engaged research” migh...2021-10-0823 min
Corkscrew: Practice Research Beyond the PhDSeason One Round Up - Sophie Hope and guestsThis final episode of the current season is a short montage compiled from the first four conversations between Sophie and guests, sharing their experiences and expertise in all things relating to how we (can) academicize arts and humanities practice as research.
Dip your ears into the philosophical and practical musings of these scholars, researchers, and educators who use their artistic and creative practice in and as research: Anne Douglas, Emile Devereaux, Lucy Wright, and Rachel Hann. Their original discussions with Sophie are still available in our back catalogue and you can listen in full at your leisure.2021-10-0812 min
MIAAW.netCommunity radio & community developmentRob Watson runs projects using radio and podcasting to facilitate community development, and to construct a social economy model based on the belief that people should be empowered to tell their own stories.
In this episode Rob talks to Sophie Hope about researcher positionality, the importance of authentic participation in socially engaged research, and what positive steps we might take to ensure the effective communication of important messages for ensuring meaningful engagement, improving trust in our institutions, and building a better society.
Note: this episode forms a special festival edition and is also published as o...2021-09-2457 min
MIAAW.netAutobiography as culture politicsJonathan Gross researches and teaches in the department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London.
In this specially repeated episode, Sophie Hope talks to him about 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.
The conversation then broadens to include the work of Arist...2021-09-0334 min
MIAAW.netCommunity Art & Cultural Democracy revisitedFollowing directly from last month’s episode, we revisit a discussion between Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly about 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. In The Arts and the People, Shaw had written that:
The efforts of community artists to serve ‘the people’ in centres of urban decay or neglected rural areas are often...2021-08-0628 min
Corkscrew: Practice Research Beyond the PhDPart 1: What career? Presentations from practice-based/artistic research PhDsThis week's episode is the first of two featuring audio recorded from the CHASE-funded Corkscrew Workshop held in June for practice-based PhD students. The host, Dr Sophie Hope, kicks off by welcoming the participants and provides a short outline of her own doctoral journey. There follow four more short presentations
https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/profile/8004718/sophie-hope
https://sophiehope.org.uk/
Reflecting on her career, Sophie admits how privilege has informed her decisions without realizing quite how much at the time.
Dr Josephine Coleman
https...2021-07-1636 min
MIAAW.netGuild Socialism RevisitedThe ideas about cultural democracy that community artists in Britain began to talk about in the 1980s had a long pre-history. One of the important strands that fed into these ideas began in about 1914 when Samuel Hobson published National Guilds: An Inquiry into the Wage System and the Way Out. He presented guilds as a socialist alternative to state control of industry or conventional trade union activity.
According to Wikipedia, the “theory of guild socialism was developed and popularised by G.D.H. Cole who formed the National Guilds League in 1915 and published several books on guild so...2021-07-0933 min
MIAAW.netAudience Development & Cultural DemocracySophie Hope and Owen Kelly talk with Steven Hadley about his latest book, called Audience Development and Cultural Policy, published by Palgrave MacMillan.
They discuss the ways in which audience development grew out of arts marketing, and the contexts within which they both operated. They discuss the model that features in the book of two parallel traditions: the Arts Lovers and those wanting Social Justice. They look at how this fits into the 2020 policy paper from the Arts Council of England Let’s Create which, on the face of it, switches from promising to de...2021-06-2553 minCorkscrew: Practice Research Beyond the PhDRachel Hann - theatre and 3D visualisationIn this episode Sophie talks to Dr Rachel Hann who completed her PhD in 2010 from the University of Leeds in theatre and performance. The title of her PhD was 'Computer-based 3D visualization for theatre research: towards an understanding of unrealized utopian theatre architecture from the 1920s and 1930s'. Rachel talks about the importance of supportive, critical supervisors who motivated her to push her research forward. She refers to the influence of the principles of The London Charter for the Computer-based Visualisation of Cultural Heritage used by archeologists on her own methodologies and reflects on the importance of iterative approaches...2021-06-1140 min
MIAAW.netThe Be Part MysterySophie Hope and Henry Mulhall have begun work on a project within a project. They have begun creating an evaluation framework for a European Union funded project called Beyond Participation - a title that has got neatly truncated to Be Part.
In this episode Owen Kelly talks to them about this. He wants to know what the Be Part project aims to do, and how it aims to do it. He also wants to know how Sophie and Henry intend to carry out their evaluation.
Both lines of inquiry...2021-06-0430 minCorkscrew: Practice Research Beyond the PhDAnne Douglas - artists and public lifeIn this episode Sophie talks to Professor Anne Douglas, who completed her practice-based PhD in 1992 from Newcastle University. Anne reflects on the practical and philosophical backdrop to how her sculptural work as public art developed into a PhD in the late 1980s. Anne introduces some of the precedents to practice-based PhDs in music and visual arts from the 1970s and 1980s and her 22 year career at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen. Anne shares how she developed a focused research programme on the relationship between artists and public life at Grays from where she has supervised many artists to...2021-06-0132 min
MIAAW.netParticipation & DemocracyIn this episode Owen Kelly sits back while Sophie Hope shares some of her thoughts on participation and democracy.
She gives examples, some personal, of the ways in which participation can extend over time as well as space. She talks about the Joseph Beuys seminal work 7000 Acorns, and its afterlife as an inspiration to other participatory projects, some involving acorns and oaks.
Sophie draws inspiration from a series of articles and papers that are listed on the miaaw.net website and cover topics from policy making and gender politics to cultural policy in Chile and S...2021-05-0725 min
MIAAW.netCommon Practice: ReshapeAccording to their website “RESHAPE is a research and development project that brings together arts organisations from the Europe and the South Mediterranean to jointly create innovative organisational models and reflect on concrete answers to crucial challenges related to the production, distribution and presentation of contemporary art practices.
“The aim of RESHAPE is to imagine an alternative to the European arts ecosystem by rethinking its instruments and collaborative models, placing them in line with artistic and social innovation and the principles of fairness, solidarity, geographic balance and sustainability”.
In this episode Sophie Hope talks with Helga Ba...2021-04-231h 01
MIAAW.netThe Phial of the Open Source VaccinesThe availability (or unavailability) of covid-19 vaccines has become an international issue. Some people have begun asking the extent to which the problems in the supply chains stem from the proprietary nature of the vaccines and the need for exclusivity that this promotes.
At the same time a group of scientists in Finland have developed a nasal spray that they claim will prove cheaper, more effective, much easier to administer, and much easier to upgrade to deal with new variants of the virus. They have developed it as an open-source vaccine and they have found it difficult...2021-04-0227 min
MIAAW.netNumbi ArtsFor 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.
In this episode of Common Practice Sophie Hope talks with Kinsi Abdulleh, who founded Numbi Arts, and Hudda Khaireh, an independent researcher who is currently an associate there.
They discuss their work, their ambitions and achievements, what drives them, and their plans to create a Somali...2021-03-2658 min
MIAAW.netCultural Labour and Cultural DemocracyThis episode concludes Sophie Hope’s trilogy of audio essays, each looking at a different aspect of cultural democracy in practice.
In this conclusion Sophie explores the relationship between arts management education and cultural democracy by introducing epistemological ethnocentrism and the need for ex-centric perspectives. Through examples, she addresses the often awkward connections between employments rights and more informal, embedded relational aspects of making, creating and culturally producing.2021-03-1215 min
MIAAW.netThe Clubhouse CaperIn this episode Owen Kelly and Sophie Hope wrap up last month’s discussion about Gamestop and move on to look at a newer internet phenomenon: Clubhouse.
They look at how this audio-only app works, ask how it has gained so much attention so quickly, and ponder about whether it means anything or not from the perspectives of cultural democracy and the open web.
This leads to a broader discussion about the business models behind online businesses and the nature of data-scraping. In the middle of all of this Sophie Hope throws in a reference to...2021-03-0531 min
MIAAW.netGlobal StaffroomSophie 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.
The project reconsiders current time-based structures of work (when does work start and end?) and reasserts the significance of the physical (manual) aspect of immaterial, affective and emotional labour. It has gone through five disctinct phases so far.
As part of the current phases Jenny and Sophie launched a live video podcast on Twitch.tv called The Global Staffroom. T...2021-02-2643 min
MIAAW.netGenuine Inquiry: big data & cultural democracyIn this audio essay Sophie Hope inquires into the digital while thinking about processes of evaluation.
She addresses two questions. Firstly, how and why do people in the arts understand what they do? Secondly, who speaks and who listens?
There are 5 parts to this audio essay:
Part 1: Intro;
Part 2: Key terms;
Part 3: Data is king;
Part 4: Data discrimination;
Part 5: Big data and Cultural democracy.2021-02-1235 min
MIAAW.netMeanwhile: the Gamestop FuroreThe last few weeks have seen shares in Gamestop, a bricks and mortar games store that has seen declining sales over recent years, suddenly and dramatically increase in price. Initially puzzling, it quickly became clear that a sub-reddit had banded together to deliberately push the share price up in order to cause pain to professional investors who had begun to short the stock.
Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly discuss the way that this has unfolded to date, and its resemblance to the first economic bubble: the Dutch tulip mania of 1637. They ask whether this amounts to the...2021-02-0528 min
MIAAW.netA Culture of Possibility"Hope must be reinvented every day.” James Baldwin
Hosted by Arlene Goldbard and Francois Matarasso, this monthly series explores people, projects, and topics that expand possibility and choice through cultural work.
Our interests intersect in community arts and cultural policy (both broadly defined). Within those subjects, we see questions of possibility, choice, and hope as critical – especially now, as humanity struggles with the pandemic, climate crisis, and growing inequality. Virtually every community arts project engages people in working for the futures they desire, even if only on a local scale. Often that means overcoming a relu...2021-01-2238 min
MIAAW.netGenuine Inquiry: money & democracyIn the first episode of our new monthly audio essay Genuine Inquiry, Sophie Hope examines the relationship between money, culture and democracy.
She does this in the context of developments in arts management and policy, and she does this with reference to the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, north east London.
Sophie draws from two key texts: The End of Cultural Policy?, published in 2018, and Cultural Policies in the Age of Platforms, published in 2017.2021-01-1517 min
MIAAW.netA New HopeMeanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse went on holiday on August 28, 2020, when Episode 50 went live. Our intention was to take a short break to rethink our long term strategy. For various reasons, including the covid-19 inspired lockdowns and the consequences of moving all professional activity online, the holiday lasted four months rather than the intended four weeks.
In this episode Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly look back at 2020 and where they have got to so far. They discuss the differences that the pandemic has made to their professional and personal lives. They look at what they have learned...2021-01-0833 minMIAAW.netNow we are fiftyWith 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, their original goals, and the ways in which these developed as the series progressed.
They explain how the podcasts get made, and the recording and editing processes that they use to achieve this with little time and no money.
Finally they outline their plans for the future, which involve splitting the twice-monthly podcast into three, and (before the end of this...2020-08-2826 minMIAAW.netArt - Process - ChangeIn 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. They have recently published a paperback edition.
Loraine discusses her work from the 1970s onwards, including her work with Peter Dunn in the 1980s in London Docklands, and her subsequent work online and with a wider variety of face to face groups. She talks in particular about the twelve year Active Energy project she worked on with The Geezers, and the organic ways in which it grew.2020-07-3141 minMIAAW.netParticipatory art in Ireland: people, places, eventsSophie Hope and Owen Kelly continue their discussion with David Teevan, who has worked for 25 years as a cultural producer in the professional arts sector in Ireland.
In this episode David discusses some of the people and places that helped to shape the development of participatory arts in Ireland.
He also looks at how this relates to ideas of cultural democracy, and how these ideas have been discussed in Ireland.2020-07-1728 minMIAAW.netIreland: a history of collaborating, participating & making cultureDavid Teevan has worked for 25 years as a cultural producer in the professional arts sector in Ireland. He has recently completed a doctorate that examines the complex history of collaborative and participatory arts in Ireland.
In this episode he looks at some aspects of that history, as he experienced and witnessed it. He also talks about the research that he undertook and the underlying issues that his findings revealed.
David discusses all this with Sophie Hope, who took part in the examination of his thesis, and Owen Kelly, who didn’t.2020-07-0331 minMIAAW.netA little piece of landA 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.
Monika Dutta and Jake Harries use it to “develop ideas and formulate questions which we can mediate via artistic production. It gives focus to our responses to: the politics and economics of globalisation; climate change; accelerations in urbanisation; the increase in an urbanised, colonising world view and the decrease in agency experienced by ordinary people in areas of activity th...2020-06-1936 minMIAAW.netDavid Harding, Glenrothes, Public ArtAndrew Demetrius works as curator at the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews, where he conducts doctoral research on a project currently titled The Town art of Glenrothes and David Harding.
In this episode Sophie and Andrew talk about the history of the town artist movement in Scotland, the political and economic context in which the new towns were built and the different approaches the planners and artists took to the role of artists and art in these urban developments.
They focus on the embedded approach of David Harding who lived...2020-06-0554 minMIAAW.netA day on the commonsIn 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.2020-05-0837 minMIAAW.netRevolutionary teachers and post-capitalismSophie Hope recorded this episode in a café in a break from her ongoing picket. (See episode 37 for details of that.) As a result you will hear an interesting variety of background noises and conversations, and feel as though you have sat down at the next table.
You will overhear a conversation with Mike Neary, Emeritus Professor of sociology at the School of Social Sciences at the University of Lincoln, whose most recent work, Students as Producers, Zer0 Books have just published.
Sophie and Mike discuss the current academic strikes across England, the idea behind t...2020-03-1332 minMIAAW.netSophie is on strike!As well as podcasting and making art, Sophie Hope lectures at University College, London. The academic staff there have gone on strike to demand that their employer begins negotiations in several related areas: pensions, pay grades, differing pay in terms of gender & race, workload, and the casualisation of the teaching staff.
In this episode she explains why the staff have gone on strike, what they hope to achieve, and the complications of withdrawing your labour when your labour concerns the production of knowledge rather than tangible goods.2020-02-2826 minMIAAW.netCoding tacit knowledge in southern IndiaOwen Kelly and Irma Sippola have begun two cultural projects in Kerala, south India, in partnership with an NGO called SISP.
In this episode Sophie Hope talks to Owen about the purpose of the projects, their possible long term outcomes, and the practicality of passing on coding skills to teenagers with little or no prior experience of using computers.2020-02-1425 minMIAAW.netTime as a public goodIn 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.2020-01-3126 minMIAAW.netDistribution & Evolutionary MarketsOn 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.2020-01-1728 minMIAAW.netSlush in late NovemberIn 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.
In this episode he discusses a few of his experiences at Slush with Sophie Hope, whose scepticism about these kinds of things knows no bounds.2020-01-0326 minMIAAW.netProblematising in ZagrebIn 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.2019-12-0637 minMIAAW.netContagious Tapes: an artifactOn 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, di...2019-11-0828 minMIAAW.netStructures of FeelingDuring 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 Owen Kelly and Sophie Hope dig out their copies of Marxism & Literature and discuss the cultural theory that Raymond Williams develops there in considerably more detail. They reflect on Williams’ insistence on keeping in mind that we live our lives as processes, and that cultural theory needs to avoid turning these into finished products that we can dissect at our leisure....2019-10-2526 minMIAAW.netReturn to Cultural Democracy: the movieGeorge Fleming is a film maker and lecturer who has worked as a participatory artist.
During his doctoral studies he began exploring the concept of cultural democracy and produced a short film on aspects of the history of the idea for a conference. Sophie Hope attended the conference and persuaded George to join us to discuss what he learned while making the film.
He discusses the relationship between community art, participatory arts, cultural democracy and cultural diversity. He introduces us to the work of Rachel Davis Dubois, an American cultural activist who developed plans for...2019-10-1136 minMIAAW.netClimate strikes & consumer choicesIn 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?2019-09-2728 minMIAAW.netLive from the Raymond Williams Society Annual ConferenceOn 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.2019-08-0242 minMIAAW.netThe Story So Far...Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly use the twentieth episode of Meanwhile In An Abandoned Warehouse to look back at what has and hasn’t happened in the discussions so far. They discuss a number of ideas that have stuck in their minds, or served to start further explorations; and debate where they might go next.2019-07-0530 minMIAAW.netDemocracy in the Drawing ShedSophie 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, and they reflect on the processes they have used, the people they have met, the energy that they have encountered, and what they have learned from their work.2019-06-2148 minMIAAW.netCommunity Cultural Development in AustraliaThe idea of cultural democracy does not necessarily always wear that label. In different parts of the world it has acquired different names, and part of our quest is the attempt to discover it wherever we can find it hiding.
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.
Cathy begins with a short discussion about the Women of the World festival, with which she is involved, before moving on to talk about Scott Rankin’s re...2019-06-0642 minMIAAW.netCulture, Democracy & the right to make artAlison 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 conversation springs from the fact that Alison Jeffers co-edited Culture Democracy and the Right to Make Art with artist Gerri Moriarty. The book contains twelve chapters that look at the community arts movement from th...2019-05-2434 minMIAAW.netThe cultural democracy of amateur porn 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. 2019-05-1039 minMIAAW.netDEFY and cultural democracy in India 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. 2019-04-2638 minMIAAW.netGuild Socialism Restated 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. 2019-04-1234 minMIAAW.netFrom participatory arts to cultural democracy 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. 2019-03-2931 minMIAAW.netFrom community to participatory arts 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.2019-03-1528 minMIAAW.netThe resurgence of cultural democracy 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. 2019-03-0126 minMIAAW.netCulture & the Cultural Cities EnquiryIn February 2019 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. 2019-02-1539 minMIAAW.netAutobiography and cultural politics 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. 2019-02-0142 minMIAAW.netCultural Democracy across the oceanThis 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. 2019-01-1823 minMIAAW.netCultural Democracy in the USA 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. 2019-01-0426 minMIAAW.netCommunity Art & Cultural Democracy 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. 2018-12-2128 minMIAAW.netA pre-history of cultural democracySophie 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. 2018-11-2326 minMIAAW.netBeyond the manifesto: a new deal for the arts Kieran Curran has written an important essay in the online journal New Socialist, that suggests how the Labour Party manifesto of 2017 might be extended and improved in its commitment to culture. Sophie Hope and Owen Kelly look at different aspects of his article and discuss the possibilities inherent in his proposals. 2018-11-0931 minMIAAW.netReflections on The World Transformed & Social Tools The World Transformed took place in Liverpool in September 2018, just three days before Social Tools took place in Helsinki. Sophie Hope managed to attend both of them. 2018-10-2628 minMIAAW.netCultural democracy in practiceSophie 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. 2018-10-1226 min