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.netMuseum of Unrest: community arts collectionWe interviewed John Phillips about The Museum of Unrest on December 6, 2024, at the time it launched its second collection, Good Design. You can listen to that discussion again if you click here.Next month, in the middle of June 2025, the Museum of Unrest will launch its third collection, called Community Arts. This collection has been co-curated by John and Belinda Kidd, who has had a long and varied career in community arts, arts research, and evaluation. Currently her work focuses where it began: in Hackney, at Hoxton Hall and Four Corners centre for film...2025-05-2333 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.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 min
MIAAW.netThe Long GameOwen Kelly looks at three things that seem to have occurred over the last few months:
1. The failure of cultural democrats in Britain to present a manifesto, policy proposals, or cultural programme to the incoming Labour government;
2. Our collective failure to write our own narrative, and thus our reliance on perpetually opposing the dominant narrative;
3. Our continuing acceptance of just-in-time “arguing-against”, rather than developing long term strategies based on “arguing-for”.
Owen proposes we look at how the IEA moved privatisation from the shadows to the mainstream and work out how we can play...2024-11-0124 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.netNew government, new deal?Susan 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 ar...2024-08-0237 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.netMind Like WaterLast month we completed a three part mini-series and asked for responses. To our surprise the ones we got did not propose digital tools but enquired about a comment in the show notes here at miaaw.net.
We noted that “Rather oddly he does not mention Todoist at all despite the fact that it sits at the heart of his attempts to stay organised. He obviously didn't stay organised long enough to remember to talk about it.”
Tell us more about Todoist, you asked, and ask Owen to explain about his attempts to stay organised.
2024-05-0323 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.netSpirituality and cultural democracyIn Culture of Possibility #36 – the podcast’s third anniversary — Arlene Goldbard and Miaaw.net guru Owen Kelly will talk about cultural work and spirituality.
Some community artists reject non-material understandings, but Owen and Arlene each find their work infused with spiritual ideas and practices — albeit very different ones.
Is spirituality necessarily non-material? What can spiritual practice bring to our work? How can ideas and stories from sacred texts infuse and inform work for cultural democracy? How can they connect rather than separate us? 2024-01-1943 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.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.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.netAfrica 2.0Russell Southwood worked as a journalist before becoming one of the three founders of Comedia. He later founded the consultancy and research practice, Balancing Act, which has focused on telecoms, internet and media in sub-Saharan Africa over the last 20 years. He has previously written Less Walk, More Talk - How Celtel and the Mobile Phone Changed Africa, and with Kelly Wong, Building a Data Ecosystem for Food Security and Sustainability, Agtech V3.0.
In this episode he talks with Owen Kelly about his recent book Africa 2.0 which, its publisher says, “provides an important history of how two technologies...2023-05-1238 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.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.netIs terrain theory a conspiracy?This inquiry has a convoluted beginning. While on holiday in the north of England recently Owen Kelly found himself given a copy of a newspaper called The Light. This seemed at first like the ravings of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists. On further reading, however, it appeared more interesting than that. It proposed that the germ theory of disease transmission contained fundamental flaws.
In this episode Owen Kelly looks into the history of the controversy, and the competing claims of the germ theory and the terrain theory. He discovers a bad-tempered discussion that obscures as much as it reveals...2022-09-0921 min
MIAAW.netCultural democracy & communityIn the previous episode of A Genuine Inquiry Owen Kelly inquired into a key question that has hovered over every one of our podcasts: what might we mean when we talk about cultural democracy? Why might people need the term, and what can they do with it? He drew upon the work of Rachel Davis DuBois to suggest that cultural democracy forms one part of a triad that includes economic and political democracy.
In this episode he looks at how culture and community relate to each other, and what we might actually do to foster community and...2022-05-1321 min
MIAAW.netWhat might we mean by cultural democracy?In Episode 15 of A Culture of Possibility Arlene Goldbard, Owen Kelly and François Matarasso discussed the Porto Santo Charter and a set of issues that arose from that.
In this episode of A Genuine Inquiry Owen Kelly continues a line of thought from that discussion and inquires into a key question that has hovered over every one of our podcasts: what might we mean when we talk about cultural democracy? Why might people need the term, and what can they do with it?
He delves into the history of the term and finds that i...2022-04-0821 min
MIAAW.netPorto Santo: Charters, Manifestos, and Cultural DemocracyArlene Goldbard and Francois Matarasso join forces with Owen Kelly to talk policy for cultural democracy with Owen Kelly, taking off from the Porto Santo Charter adopted last year as part of Portugal's Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Who are such statements for?
What impact can they have?
How should they be done?2022-03-181h 05
MIAAW.netThe Social Mind HypothesisIn 2015 Thames & Hudson published a book called “Thinking Big: how the evolution of social life shaped the human mind”. The book had three authors: Robin Dunbar, head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Oxford; Clive Gamble, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton; and John Gowlett, Professor of Archaeology at Liverpool University.
The book developed out of a seven year research study called “Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain” and argues in favour of the social mind hypothesis. Simply put this states that “a link has always existed bet...2022-02-1115 min
MIAAW.netDefy the pandemicWe have spoken with Abhijit Sinha and Megha Sharma before. They founded Project Defy, based in Bangalore, and dedicated to creating new types of learning spaces in which members of a community can come together and decide what they want to learn for themselves.
In this episode Owen Kelly talks with Abhijit about how Project Defy has coped with the devastation that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused across India. We talk about their rapid changes in approach including their digital and phone-based program FLITE, where Defy facilitators spoke with families over the phone and...2022-01-2822 min
MIAAW.netArt, NFTs & DemocracyEllis Brooks wrote an article on Medium claiming that “NFTs Are Critical for the Future of Art”. Owen Kelly inquires into the premises of her argument and the remedy she proposes.
He argues that using blockchain technology to authenticate digital artworks will create many more problems than those it set out to solve. He also argues that the problem, as defined in the article, raises complex issues and we should not therefore take it at face value. In fact the opposite: we should interrogate it and see what lies behind it.
Blockchain technology can in prin...2022-01-1415 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.netHo Ho HoOwen Kelly looks at a few of the common practices that occur in the Christmas season celebrations. Where did Santa Claus come from? How does he differ from Father Christmas? What does the Christkind have to do with any of this (and why does it sound like something from the Stephen Moffatt era of Doctor Who)?
We explore the development of the current incarnation of Santa Claus / Father Christmas during the nineteenth century, in parallel with the invention of shopping as a leisure activity and department stores as event-driven venues where shopping took place.
Finally...2021-12-2422 min
MIAAW.netWhat went wrong with copyright?In the third episode Of Friday Number 5 Owen Kelly mused about the limitations that copyright laws impose on musicians’ abilities to use other music as starting points for their own work. He promised to think this through in a more structured way, and this represents his first attempt at doing just that.
In this episode Owen looks at the history of copyright from the invention of printing in 1476 to the creation of the Berne Convention in 1886. He asks when Mickey Mouse will step into the public domain, and points to the ways in which the copyrights laws be...2021-12-1016 min
MIAAW.netPlay that Fungi MusicIn the first episode of Common Practice we talked with Agnieszka Pokrywka about her long-standing interest in fermentation and her creation of Ferment Radio which looks at the many feminist and queer theories of fermentation and their political and social implications.
Ferment Radio has now celebrated its first anniversary with an episode in which Tosca Terán discusses her collaborative work with mushrooms with results in some very fungi music.
Tosca Terán works as an interdisciplinary, ecofeminist, human holobiont whose work is located somewhere between art, ecology, and craft. As part of the duo Na...2021-11-2647 min
MIAAW.netHow might we think about ethics and Artificial Intelligence?Owen Kelly participated in an online seminar recently with Mike Ananny, an associate professor of communication and journalism at USC Annenberg, where he “studies how technologies and cultures of media production have the power to shape public life”.
In the seminar Mike Ananny talked about ethics in an age of artificial intelligence and afterwards Owen went back and looked at a 2016 paper of Ananny’s: “Toward an Ethics of Algorithms: Convening, Observation, Probability, and Timeliness” which Sage published in a journal called “Science, Technology & Human Values”.
This paper proposes the concept of NIAs, or networked information al...2021-11-1213 min
MIAAW.netStrange RebelsWith this podcast we begin a new series, Meanwhile on an Abandoned Bookshelf, in which we discuss books that mean something to us or have a particular importance for us. While we might sometimes discuss new books we will mostly concentrate on older and overlooked publications.
In this episode Owen Kelly and David Morley discuss Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century written by Christian Caryl and published in 2014.
Neither of them agree with Caryl’s political position but instead argue about the usefulness of the approach he takes to history. Rather than fo...2021-11-0525 min
MIAAW.netBaroque Copyright LawsThis month contains five Fridays and so on Friday Number Five we continue an irregular series of podcasts of music issued under Creative Commons licences: this time we have music to think about as autumn fades into winter.
The music consists in this episode consists of five different variations on one reasonably well known piece of baroque music. The variations reveal different approaches to the piece from musicians of various backgrounds, interests, and abilities.
The music also raises questions about how far and in what ways musicians may tamper with this music as compared to...2021-10-2927 min
MIAAW.netHelsinki Open Data revisitedTimo 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. They discuss Kvartti, a printed and online publication produced each quarter. They talk about the approach Helsinki has adopted towards open data, and the ways in which...2021-10-2228 min
MIAAW.netClive Sinclair, culture & democracyIn this bite-sized shorter-than-usual episode 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.
For a short period the ZX Spectrum, and its rivals the Commodore 64 and the BBC Micro, created an ecosystem of bedroom hobbyists-turned entrepreneurs, cassette-based games, and monthly magazines that advertised and reviewed them. The coders formed the primary audience for each other’s work and offered living examples of what Alvin Toffler referred to as prosumers.
This opened up a range of...2021-10-0115 min
MIAAW.netThe Metaverse, Millionaires & DemocracyLate last June while addressing a meeting of Facebook employees, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook would grow from a company involved in social media to building “a maximalist, interconnected set of experiences straight out of sci-fi — the metaverse”. He argued that “you can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it. And you feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or webpage, like dancing, for example, or different types of fitness”.
Second L...2021-09-1024 min
MIAAW.net{openradio} calling!{openradio} describe themselves as “a platform to support independently produced open-content audio streams and provide listeners with a way to find this content”.
The team consists of Kaustubh Srikanth, who created India’s first independent online radio station, Infinity Radio, dedicated to discovering and sharing fresh music and promoting open content, and Sophea Lerner who directed Finland’s first open-content FM & online station and has championed open-content awareness in the public broadcast sector in Australia.
Outside {openradio} Kaustabh acts as an open-source technologist specialising in digital security for human rights defenders. Sophea works freelance as a creativ...2021-08-2726 min
MIAAW.netHow do vegan meat and vegan cheese make sense?Owen Kelly has held a number of workshops in Helsinki exploring ways of making industrialised products at home. He has made face creams and oat milk. This year he turned his attention to vegan cheese which led him to look at the various ways in which industrialists have begun to create plant-based meat substitutes.
In this episode he looks at the different approaches to replacing meat before returning to the vexing question of why most vegan cheese tastes disgusting. He offers a reason that relates to the whole business of industrial substitutes, before offering a different way f...2021-08-1322 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
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 min
MIAAW.netWhat might we mean by soft skills?For the last year Owen Kelly has worked with a group of educators from across the Nordic and Baltic regions to develop the VAKEN project. This has begun developing a rapid learning process to enable students (and later others) to improve their soft skills.
The process has raised a number of interesting and difficult questions starting with “how do we define soft skills?” On the one hand they can easily seem to mean whatever you want them to mean. On the other hand it remains far from clear whose benefit they serve. Should we see them as sets...2021-06-1127 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 min
MIAAW.netIcelandic Cultural PracticesIcelandic culture offers many surprises for an alert visitor: not least in the sheer amount and quality of it.
In this episode 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 approximately 20,000 people in the north of Iceland.
They talk about the by-now unique naming convention in Iceland and how it acts as an example of cultural continuity. Akureyri houses a professional theatre, a professional symphony orchestra, and a very active cultur...2021-05-2823 min
MIAAW.netElectric McLuhanThis 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”.
He starts at the beginning, with the introduction of street lighting in Wabash Indiana, and then looks at some illustrative examples from the invention of celebrity to the introduction of the Walkman and the arrival of the computer gaming industry. He concludes by asking which came first: the desire to publicise your sex life or the invention of the home video...2021-05-1421 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.netFriday Number Five: Historical SoundscapesMost months have four Fridays, and we know what to do with them. We put out a podcast: a different but related one for each Friday in the month.
Sometimes, however, a month has five fridays, and then we have to think again. We put out an episode of our occasional series, designed for just this purpose. This, then, is the first episode of Friday Number Five.
Owen Kelly looks at (and listens to) the very first sound recordings ever made and then asks how they turned into public radio, and what we might consider...2021-04-3024 min
MIAAW.netUnderstanding McLuhanThis episode begins a trilogy of audio essays concerned with the work of Marshall McLuhan and its continuing relevance in the digital age.
In this first essay, entitled Understanding McLuhan, Owen Kelly offers a brief introduction to McLuhan’s life and work. He offers a potted biography and a quick run through his six most celebrated books, including Laws of Media, edited by his son Eric, and published eight years after his death.
He also sets the stage for the second episode by looking briefly at several of McLuhan’s key concepts from the medium is the messa...2021-04-0918 min
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.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.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.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.netAccess Space onlineOwen Kelly talks with Jake Harries, the director of art and innovation at Access Space, in Sheffield, England.
Access Space offers people interested in art, design, computers, recycling, music, electronics, photography and more, opportunities to meet like-minded people, share and develop skills and work on creative, enterprising and technical projects.
Access Space runs Refab Space, a DIY FabLab, developed and completed in 2012. With its suite of rapid prototyping tools, including a laser cutter, 3D printer and CNC router, this benefits artists, business start-ups and the community as a whole.
Access Space offers an...2020-05-2236 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.netDeath House RescueIn 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, a radio series that ran for thirteen seasons from 1937 to 1954. For the first eighteen months a young Orson Welles played The Shadow, and allegedly added to the dramatic quality of the series by looking at the script for the first time when he read it live on air.
2020-04-2433 minMIAAW.netRadi Miaaw - the sounds of the commonsIn 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!2020-04-0954 minMIAAW.netGuerrilla Translation, DisCos & the marketplaceStacco Troncoso co-founded Guerrilla Translation with his partner, Ann Marie Utratel, as a living project to ground P2P and Commons theories in real practices.
He talks with Owen Kelly about the work of the group, and the ways in which they see the structure of their group as a vital part of its practice. They have developed a model of governance that guides their practice while acting as an example that others might build upon.
This model has grown into the idea of DisCos - distributed coops that exist in the market place without...2020-03-2731 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.netField Community ArtStephen 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.
In this episode Owen Kelly talks with Stephen Pritchard about his intentions.
Stephen talks about the challenges of working both locally and internationally through the lens of a decentralised collective. He promises that all will become clear by the end of the year.2019-11-2241 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.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.netDavid Rovics: strategies for productionThis 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.2019-09-1332 minMIAAW.netCultural Democracy at Mauna KeaOver 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.2019-08-3027 minMIAAW.netHelsinki Open DataTimo 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.2019-08-1630 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.netTemporary democracy in a cultural spaceIn 2016 John Fail and Agnieszka Pokrywka began the first in a series of cultural experiments. They called it Temporary and they envisaged it as a space that would be 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.2019-07-1935 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.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.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.netProject Defy 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. 2018-12-0729 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.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