Radical Hope

In Episode 22 of A Culture of Possibility, François Matarasso and Arlene Goldbard interview Yuriy Vulkovsky about his decades of experience working with communities and institutions in Bulgaria and nearby states.
You’ll learn about Bulgaria’s network of 3700 independent community cultural centers, a unique feature of this culture; and from vivid stories that illuminate the challenges and opportunities in engaging people and resources in a country marked by poverty and history, where people “live in different centuries.”

François Matarasso and Arlene Goldbard discuss power in the context of cultural institutions.
For cultural democrats, when does working with institutions promise real change and when does the lumbering power of institutions perpetuate the status quo despite best efforts?
In episode 21, with some funny and some infuriating stories about their work with arts agencies and foundations, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso offer insights and guiding questions that help to clarify a confusing question.

Joe Lambert is one of the originators of the digital storytelling phenomenon and founder and Executive Director of Storycenter, an international participatory media training and consulting nonprofit organization based in Berkeley. Nearly 30 years on, he talks with Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso about the practice, its ethics and values, its challenges, and its power.

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk with David Ramy and Bruno Homem of SAMP in Portugal about co-creating original opera with incarcerated youth.
This episode focuses on one of three projects that are part of Traction, “opera co-creation for social transformation.” David Ramy and Bruno Homem work with SAMP, The Sociedade Artística Musical dos Pousos, an independent music school in Leiria, central Portugal. They tell us how they worked with young inmates, their families, the cutting-edge technology of the Co-Creation Stage, and a great range of artistic collaborators to make a powerful new community opera, and what may come from it.

How and why should we evaluate community-based arts projects? In this episode, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso offer their own answers and explore many of the ways current practice misses the mark.
They ask what has gone wrong with “best practices?” What role does risk aversion play in funding? They look at how nonprofit funding has become distorted by corporate models; the underlying class biases that shape funding; and how these problems are structural, affecting the sector regardless of how conscientious and well-intentioned the individuals running programs may be.
Arlene and François don’t always agree and you may disagree with both of them!

Dave Loewenstein is a muralist, printmaker and community organizer based in Lawrence, Kansas. In addition to his more than twenty public works in Kansas, examples of his dynamic and richly colored community-based murals can be found across the United States, and in Northern Ireland, South Korea and Brazil. Loewenstein’s prints, which focus on social justice issues, are exhibited internationally and are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Yale University, and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles.
Arlene Goldbard and Francois Matarasso talk with Dave Loewenstein. We talk about the strength of the US mural movement, the centrality of place, the challenge of supporting the work, the amazing story of In ‘zhúje ‘waxóbe/Sacred Red Rock Project, returning a sacred object to its rightful owners, the Kaw Nation—and much more.

Arlene Goldbard and Francois Matarasso talk with Lucy Wright, a visual artist, artistic researcher, writer, and contemporary folk artist based in West Yorkshire, England.
Who defines "folk" and why? What aspects of folk art may be invisible to (or suppressed by) tradition's gatekeepers? Can we reclaim and renew language as the practices it describes change with the times? Join us for a fascinating conversation.

Arlene 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?